Facebook founder Mark Zuckeberg has unveiled his new dream, the Metaverse. This word was coined by a sci-fi author Neal Stephenson in his novel, Snow Crash. In that book, it describes a virtual world which is the sum of all virtual worlds and the Internet.

The famous question - to be or not to be, came to mind again thanks to a Wall Street Journal video about how TikTok is finding content which one might consider highly addictive.

Do you remember SETI@Home? It was a massive distributed search for extraterrestrial life, by analyzing specific radio frequencies emanating from space.The SETI part is not as important as the @Home portion. It’s the idea that there is a massive amount of computing power sitting idly at homes and can be used for something useful.

Summertime is when many of us take a break, look at the stars and dream. While looking skyward, I started thinking about space. 

Did you know that Voyager 1 has now been in space for over 43 years? It is further from Earth than any other man-made object, at a distance of 152.2 AU (22.8 billion km, or 14.1 billion miles) from Earth.

Data. Machine Learning. AI. We hear these terms every day and we see the wonders this kind of technology can bring us. It’s like we’re on a magical merry-go-round where the ride gets better with each revolution. What will we see the next time around?

This was the plan: create a network of satellites to connect all of humanity in a way we’ve never seen before. Even in some of the poorest, most desolate, out-of-the-way places, if you’ve got a satellite phone, you’re okay. Fantastic!

Microsoft. The most boring trillion dollar company just announced the upcoming release of Windows 11, the operating system used by the majority of people on this planet.

In this week’s newsletter, we’re not just talking about technology. I wanted to also talk about marketing, specifically around branding.

Let’s get into it. What would be the words which you would think of when I mentioned the word Google to you?

Buying a car has become harder lately. Why is that? Car manufactures are shutting down plants because they don't have the electronics parts to put in their vehicles.

Amazon Sidewalk (AS) is the latest example of innovation in the area of smart cities, though probably not in the way you think. (The name, Amazon Sidewalk, is very unfortunate. It brings immediately to mind the failed attempt by Google to install a surveillance monstrosity in Toronto.)