I wrote here nearly a year ago that there would be no more annual lists of predictions and I’m sticking to that. I’m trying to retire, remember? The ads are gone, you might notice, and with them my income. But I’m not out the door quite yet and have time for a series of columns on what I think will be an important trend in 2013 — the battle for Hollywood and home entertainment.
The players here, with some of them coming and some of them going, are Amazon and Apple and Cisco and Google and Intel and Microsoft and maybe a few more. The battleground comes down to platforms and content and will, by 2015 at the latest, determine where home entertainment is headed in America and the world for the rest of the century. The winners and losers are not at all clear to me yet, though I have a strong sense of what the battle will be like.
Why fight for Hollywood? Because making our spreadsheets recalculate faster is no longer enough to inspire new generations of computer hardware. Because Silicon Valley has come to appreciate continuing income streams from subscription services. Because there are legacy players in the TV industry who are easily seen as vulnerable.
Notice I didn’t include Facebook in my list of combatants. Facebook will need the next two years to consolidate its existing businesses before it can even begin to think about Hollywood. Facebook will miss this cycle completely.
Another company I didn’t mention is Netflix. Though this pioneer of video streaming has been around since the 1990s it feels to me more like a acquisition candidate in this battle than a conqueror. Same for TiVO and even Roku: too small.
Still, it’s in Netflix-style Over-the-Top (OTT) streaming content where we’ll see lots of action that will eventually come at some expense to the incumbent cable companies. Some of these will choose sides, like Comcast is apparently doing with Intel, while others may be acquired or just fade away.
Look at both Motorola Mobility (Google) and Cisco trying to get out of their cable box businesses. This does not bode well for their customers, the cable systems.
Content comes down to TV, sports, and movies, with the big attraction of 2012 being sports because of its resistance to piracy. Sports means large live audiences that are unwilling to wait for a torrent to deliver the Big Game two days later. CNN always does well with advertisers when there is a war or a disaster, but sports figuratively is a pre-scheduled war or disaster complete with cheerleaders and good lighting, which is why ESPN is worth more than CNN, MSNBC, and FoxNews put together.
Video games have peaked as a business. It was a great ride but the days of the $60 video game title are limited as mobile, casual, and social gaming take over. This has Microsoft, for one, scrambling hard to make its xBox game console into something like a TV network. Nintendo and Sony are not significant players in this space even though Sony thinks it is. They, too, have peaked, which is surprising given Sony owns a major movie studio.
The dominant video platform or platforms will be determined by the content they carry, so we are going to be seeing lots of money going to Hollywood from Seattle and Silicon Valley, enriching networks and studios alike. Alas, I doubt that this effort, which is well underway, will show any clear winners simply because the major tech companies are going about it so stupidly.
I’ll explain tomorrow or the next day the right way for technology companies to conquer Hollywood.
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Man, I will hate to see you go. But you gotta cash in and do what you want eventually. Hope you still plan on doing stuff occasionally though.
As for the Hollywood thing, I agree that Netflix is a soon-to-be victim. I think that is why they were acting so weird with Qwikster and all the split-subscription garbage. They knew their vulnerability, and were trying to do something about it. All it did was piss me and a bunch of other customers off, however. That company’s real strength was consumer good will. It doesn’t have that anymore.
I am really interested in what your next column will bring.
The real problem with Netflix is their streaming stucks and unless you want to watch an old TV series they have very little movie content or the latest, hot TV show content.
I would rather rent something for five bucks on my Apple TV and watch it in real HD quality than look at the horrible picture I’m getting through Netflix.
It’s also nice to cancel cable, like we did and buy the shows we enjoy. An entire season of all our favorite series equals about 2.5 months of cable bills.
Netflix is pretty good. Their streaming is really good; but its the available content that has an issue. Still, many hollywood players are getting behind Netflix, and some are keeping their content from Netflix.
Netflix, as with any streaming service and every player mentioned, will only be as good as the content available on them, and the available audience wanting it. This will be an issue for everyone until hollywood wakes up to the new reality and realizes they won’t survive until they start licensing to everyone without DRM. Right now, they’re trying to license to their favorites – and their favorites are limited to the list of people that do the licensing the way they want to in very strict DRM styles. Those favorites won’t last, and won’t save them either.
“start licensing to everyone without DRM” I’d like that as much as the next guy, but DRM is what makes licensing enforceable. Without an enforcement method of some sort, licensing would be on the honor system. While that certainly is possible, we must face the fact that honest people would be subsidizing the “licensing violators”. What is needed is a DRM system that ensures that once someone pays for content, they never have to pay again or jump through hoops to prove they have already paid.
Don’t leave us, Bob. You’re too valuable!
Motorola Mobility has reportedly already sold its set-top business to Arris: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/20/google_sells_moto_tv_business/
So, Google will put to use the dark fiber they own?
When Being a Verb is Not Enough
BTW, still waiting for ACR! I hoped it would be a Christmas present, you can still make it by Julian calendar (hint, hint) 😉
ACR? I’m a little slow, please explain.
Sorry, I meant “AER” = Accidental Empires Rebooted 🙂
(It seems that I’m the one that’s a little slow…)
https://www.cringelymedia.com/accidental-empires-rebooted/
The serialization is still coming but Liz Darhansoff, my literary agent for the last 34 years (I’m a hobby client — her real bread and butter is Stephen King), asked us to wait until she rounded up all the rights to avoid any unpleasant surprises. With the book published in 18 languages this is not a simple task, but I expect we’ll start the serialization before the end of January.
Bob, I’m surprised you mentioned Roku. I bought a Soundbridge a few years back, which lasted a year before self-destructing. It wasn’t in the same league as the Squeezebox Touch, which replaced it, for design, ease of use or support. I should have got a Touch in the first place.
A major difference was that the Roku was sold as a stand-alone box which relied on third parties for software to stream from my own server and well as for Internet directory services. The equivalence to buying an FM tuner and plugging it into your stereo is exact. On the other hand the Touch was plainly designed and sold as the interface to a music delivery system that would, on installation, immediately stream from the Internet as well as any local sources (servers and SD cards). As a bonus it also supports specialised apps, e.g. BBC iPlayer, which provides a catch-up service for radio.
@Martin, FYI, Logitech has discontinued the Squeezebox line of products, which is really unfortunate. They had a great line and were really wonderful. Logitech is going the Roku route with a successor product that only takes streaming radio.
The guys making these machines get a lot more love from the content companies when they don’t handle pirated files out of the box. It’s be best if the local stuff wasn’t available at all, but putting up some hoops seems to be OK. For example Roku makes you go set up a Plex server to get your own files. The little guys don’t want to be a party to piracy litigation and there’s frequently a tech response that’ll fill the gap.
Maybe they just don’t want to play the game “My storage is bigger than yours”.
>>Video games have peaked as a business. It was a great ride but the days of the $60 video game title are limited as mobile, casual, and social gaming take over.
Have you tried playing so-called mobile/casual/social games? I can’t see them as a long-term threat to the real potential of gaming. They aren’t games, but cynical attempts to leverage addiction to maximize profit. They may be engaging for some in the short run, but they aren’t fun, they aren’t rewarding. And they are very primitive and owe more to operant conditioning than to actual gaming principles. I think you’re wrong on this one (remember that videogames have been more profitable than the movie industry in recent years).
I’m not a gamer, but I live with three of them. I get your point and I won’t even disagree with it. The issue here isn’t a superior or inferior platform but simply user-hours and disposable income. Social/mobile games aren’t as good but they take time and money away from the games that ARE good. The result will be a console game market that is even more driven by hits. There will remain large game franchises but the total game business will decline in size. At some point one of the three big console makers will stop competing.
User-hours assume that you are always making a trade-off of a console-hour vs a phone-hour. But you can play mobile games in hours where a console is unavailable, like on a plane or at the grocery store. Mobile expands the pie for gaming as a whole. Just as VHS didn’t destroy the movie industry, but expand it.
That said, 2012 was a big year for really good indie video games because publishing via services like app stores and Valve’s Steam digital download system makes it cheap and easy. Lots of the “top 10” lists for 2012 include about half big-budget games from traditional publishers ($60 games) and half mobile/indie games ($5-20, mostly self-published).
This is why many would agree that big hits will be more important than ever, and it will likely lead to reliable franchises like Madden and Call of Duty rather than innovative new titles. Indies may take up the mantle of true innovation that can then be incorporated into the big budget games.
I agree that the console makers are going to get hit by this because it’s not just a competition between Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony now. Google could make a play. Apple could also. Mobile/Tablet gaming is also a substitute in the Porter sense. Sony seems to be more completely embracing the indie movement. Nintendo has too much history of first-party development and honestly it seems like they’d benefit more from just making software for all platforms at this point — their hardware is again going to be woefully out of date very quickly.
There’s some major convergence going on between TV, movies and video games right now. Real-time sports/news doesn’t seem to be as evolved yet and is a major missing piece. I think that computing is getting so cheap and small and powerful now that it will be some sort of software ecosystem that wins. Google or Apple maybe. I think Sony and Nintendo won’t be able to do it. Microsoft might but they have just been constantly striking out lately. Maybe a Microsoft-Amazon alliance. There are so many possible angles to approach the space it’s difficult to tell today who will win — e.g. is it a smart TV like Samsung has (they are clueless here), AppleTV, Xbox, Amazon cloud services? How does Steam fit in? Amazon+Valve?
TV content is just such a mess because it’s all so much more local than music is.
Anyway this post is too big to be coherent now because I’m writing it in a little box 🙂
People play games in grocery stores?
Oh, also mobile and low-priced indie games just might also have lower piracy rates because they’re cheaper and so far harder to rip off.
Traditional games have lots of piracy. So dollars per gamer may not take such a nose-dive.
Not all mobile games are like the so-called social games (i.e., dependent on a small percent of consumers paying lots of money for addictive clicks). There are even $10-20 mobile games with high production values. The really disruptive part of mobile is the app stores, where distribution and publishing has tipped over the cart for the traditional publishers. And this is no longer limited to mobile…
The reason that mobile does not entirely destroy traditional console/PC gaming is that it fits into a time and space that is different. I can’t play xbox in line at the post office, but I can play angry birds on my phone.
But why would you want to? I’ve spent thousands of hours on Everquest, WoW, Rift, etc., but after 10 min, I never wanted to see Angry Birds again…
What about Sony? They are having a hard time but they aren’t gone yet. They have their movies, their PS platform. They still got a lot to do but the combination of both might be the winner in the end.
Sony’s problem is they can no longer demand higher profit margins than their competitors. They are competing mainly in low margin businesses. And years of misguided management have left the company bloated and woefully short of cash. Even with near-zero interest rates Sony couldn’t do a $10+ billion deal today.
The one wild card here is, ironically, the Bank of Japan. If the BoJ under the new Japanese government really does go on a buying spree to drive down the Yen and encourage domestic inflation, Sony and every other big Japanese company will be paying with government checks and an unlimited bank balance. But this is far from certain.
Sony has had one full generation of engineers and managers (manglers?) join, grow, and retire with the idea in their heads that nobody can survive in retail if they don’t sell Sony. everybody else in Japan thought that from the 70s on.
so when China and Korea ate their lunch, stole their supper and their dates, and took their sleeper box on the train home, they didn’t really notice it.
Sony bought sleepy studios and the sleepy studio owners ran Sony sleepwalking.
NostrilDrippus Predicts! ™: Sony gets merged at the point of a pen like Sanyo did.
if Mitsubishi Electronics aka Panasonic doesn’t get with it, some Won Hung Lo outfit gets them for patents, too.
top dogs now are the data banksters… Google and Amazon, with Apple a close second, and Microsoft fighting for respect at third. media will fragment with not really equivalent “compliant” systems that will enervate everybody, some to shootin’ mad when their stuff won’t play.
Add to this the fact that they’ve allowed their copyright dependent area of the company to pursue truly draconian DRM measures (rootkit anyone?), and all the tech savvy users who used to swear by buying Sony products have sworn to never buy Sony again.
RIP Sony. I for one, will not miss them when they are gone. The arrogance of the Hollywood companies has fostered in me a searing hatred of them. This “New Hollywood” Silicon Valley seeks to create had damn well better treat its customers an order of magnitude better than old Hollywood has.
Outside of Netflix the is really NOTHING out there that Hollywood and Silicon Valley have offered in the way of video streaming that is worth my attention. I will not buy crappy DRM encumbered HD movies for the price of my entire Netflix subscription! Its not gonna happen. In this whole mess they better figure out how to give the customers what we really WANT.
They can whine about piracy all they want too, but when supporting your business model requires police state control of the internet, they can go to hell on that front too.
https://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvdhd.html
I’m one who has never bought a Sony product since the rootkit fiasco. One of the things that made me mad was it was so poorly engineered. My machine had a third party disk manager (to get around the then-existant 512 MB size limit) and the Sony rootkit killed my machine by installing on the same blocks of track 0 as the disk manager.
If “literally” means “figuratively”, then, yes, sports is literally a pre-scheduled war or disaster.
But, yeah, your point is valid.
romzburg
Fixed, thanks. I thought of buying that t-shirt, too.
Haven’t movies peaked as a business also? Maybe I’m just a miserable old git but I can’t think of a single movie released in the last few years that has been truly entertaining. I don’t see the 100 million dollars being spent on each film as adding that much value.
In purely dollar terms 2012 will be the biggest year ever for U.S. box office sales. Some of this is ticket inflation, but movies are still a very big business.
Maybe it is different in the US but sport doesn’t look very piracy-resistant from where I am sitting in the UK – I can stream any of the games in the top soccer leagues, live (or almost live) – rebroadcast via Russian or Chinese web sites.
@Syd: it’s probably not that different – in the U.S. almost almost nobody (as a percentage) will go through that bother. I’d guess that’s true in the UK as well, but I could be wrong.
The bigger point with sports is that they are highly resistant to time shifting which is a very big deal to advertisers.
Look at “internet” TVs today and you’ll find that they can stream off the internet already. In the UK the main one is the BBC iPlayer, after that you’ve got other catch up services. But the BBC you can now do live TV, if your intenet is fast enough (I’m about the only person I know who doesn’t have quick enough internet!).
But the next generatio of TVs won’t be connected to an external player at all. No X-Box and no Blu-Ray. They’ll have a built in hard drive to act as your PVR (some already have the ability to add external ones). And perhaps even they will have the Blu-Ray player built in?
One good thing will be that the need for HDMI connections will be reduced. HDMI is probably the worst and most ill-conceived connections that ever been devised. Any new technology added to your TV will require another version of HDMI – we’ve already had 1, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and are on 1.4. Plus they’ve had the a, b & c versions too! Please let HDMI die!
Then the next question is what will replace Blu Ray? It will need 2048p or 4096p, with 3D. And for that you really need something better than HDMI. Thunderbolt could do it easily. Plus separation of the transport to the application is needed, something that HDMI is terrible at.
I think it is very doubtful we’ll commonly be seeing hard drives in TVs, at least not in the USA.
In the UK we have Freeview (Digital TV via terrestrial broadcasts), Virgin Cable, or Sky Digital (satellite). All TVs have Freeview built in, Virgin and Sky are paid for extras with a set-top-box (although you can have some TVs with satellite receives built in too). Sky and Virgin are now both PVRs, so they’re hard disc recorders. Freeview can be too – typically via an external set-top-box. But the latest generation of TVs has the ability to add that via the external disc.
Once users see the advantage of adding external discs they’ll do so. However, I think manufacturers will start to add these to differentiate their products. The likes of Panasonic produce TVs with the best picture, but are undercut by other marques which produce terrible images by comparison but offer lower cost per inch of screen. Unfortunately people buy on price alone.
The only way for companies such as Panasonic to convince people to buy their product therefore is to add features. Hence why some have gone in for 3D as much as they have done.
Plus a completely integrated product that simply works without messy wires to external boxes would be something that Apple would love to produce. Apple already has the streaming via Apple TV. They might even produce a TV with ultra-high resolution. It could be interesting!
It’s available now (I think): https://www.techradar.com/us/news/television/hdtv/sonys-4k-ultra-hd-tv-comes-with-10-4k-resolution-movies-1116263 “The 4K Ultra HD Video Player’s hard drive will come packed with 10 native Ultra HD resolution films”
Ronc, that’s fairly spot on. Price is huge at the moment, but it is 84″ in size. Once the delivery system for 4k movies is sorted then you’ll see more.
Companies such as Panasonic and Sony will have to drive this market to differentiate themselves from others who just produce nasty screens for a low price.
Blu Ray is the end of the line for physical media.
Bowie,
I do wonder that myself. But I believe they can do four layer Blu Ray discs, and I’m sure the data rates from them can also be higher. So it’s certainly viable. I’m sure that someone will figure out how to make a larger capacity disc such that you’ll have to buy all your movies again.
However, I think what you’re getting at is if the next generation of technology will use physical media at all? I only know a couple of people who buy rent films from the likes of Netflix. The majority prefer to buy the disc, and I also believe that it’s higher quality too. When you consider how large the filesizes are on disc the films are then you really have to ask if you’re getting the same when you “rent the the film”. Some discs are dual layer, which means they’re over the 25GB limit of a single side. Are you getting the equivalent in a download?
Whatever the next generation of media is it must be able to handle both 2160p and 4320p modes. Plus 3D. And the connection to the screen must be subsantially better than HDMI without all it’s incompatibilities (it was a joke played on the consumer).
For gaming that connection will also have to be able to handle multiple screens too. I see the next generation of games not only being in 3D but also with an extra screen left and right to give a super panoramic view. Again, something that HDMI can’t do.
My circle is the opposite; only one of us has a blue-ray player. The rest of us have been doing d/l and streaming of movies and TV since 2004.
If it means the death of “reality TV” I’m all for it.
It would be interesting if reality tv went live.
In the Netherlands the XBox can now be used to receive the cable channels via apps developed by the cable companies. Thus it can fully replace the proprietary cable box. This means one box, one interface. Remote control via voice, gestures (kinect), phones, tablets and laptops (Smart Glass). Smart Glass also facilitates second screen functionality for which the content companies only need to create websites.
Next, the XBox subscription can incorporate the cable subscription. Or vise versa.
If anything, I think Apple is talking with the cable companies to get access to their channels as well. This will become Apple Tv.
you think it was easy for Apple to get music content, it was compared to what they’re fighting trying to get video content.
said it before, will say it again, even though I’m getting tired of it… the first one out of the box with the True Media Connection will be Apple. they have family at Disney, now one layer removed, since largest Disney shareholder Steve Jobs has died. That opens up all the Disney channels, ABC, ABC Family etc, the vaults, the possibilities in the parks and cruises… and The Apple Store as the big kahuna that spawned them all. their integrated TVs should roll out for 2013 Christmas sales.
Ballmer, meet chair. chair, meet stage. billg, meet another round of Chief Architect.
Facebook might miss the tv resolution, but they are powering the tv renaissance. It’s not so much about sharing your self-made video (Youtube); it’s about sharing your thoughts about video (Facebook). Because of Facebook, we are all watching the same shows. And we are all talking about them while it happens. Tv changed, without changing.
Facebook is so bound up with trying to sneak all your free howdys to friends and cat pictures into paid advertising that they don’t have a clue what else is going on in the world. when you spend all your time pouring mojo on security settings and hoping nobody notices this time, all you’re looking for are alarms and coppers. you don’t see the real stuff going on away from your sneaky ways.
In re videogames:
It’s true that the whole console pigopoly/$60/Call of Imperial Duty 6,703,390,395/pay-through-the-nose model of videogaming is about to hit a brick wall — a shift which will hit the US market and its peculiar oligopolies hardest. Globally, Nintendo and Sony have deep studio networks and can generate original content, so they’ll survive. The real changes:
1. The BRICS and their neighbors (e.g. Poland’s CD Projekt and Techland) — 3 billion new consumers with money in their pockets — are going to be key centers of the videogame industries from now on. They will develop fundamentally different business models, based on a $15 or $20 price point for top-tier releases, multiplatform content and customization.
2. We gamers and fans are going to become more and more powerful over the next decade, and oligopolies and studios less powerful. The rise of the digital commons means smaller, savvier and more nimble players who respect and feed the commons will thrive — Valve, Mojang, Naughty Dog, Sony Santa Monica, CD Projekt, etc.
1) The BRICS have very active piracy cultures, in part built up through the selling of blockbuster titles for much, much lower prices and / or just ripping them off wholesale.
2) It seems you’ve just listed studios you like here. Valve as a small player who “respect[s] and feeds the commons”? That’s not the case at all. Valve has massive market power – if you aren’t listed on Steam, you are missing something like 50% to 70% of the digital market.
The future is a battle of digital distributiors who win customers by constantly offering the lowest prices. This is great in the short-term for gamers, but bad in the long-term as developers struggle to earn enough money to remain viable.
No edit button? Oh well. The comment about Valve should read “50% to 70% of the digital PC gaming market”.
I’m not sure if you heard or are aware of this upstart game changing gamer, called Ouya, but it’s taking aim at MSFT, SONY and Nintendo.
https://www.technewsworld.com/story/76983.html
I doubt that will be a game-changer at all.
The following article is a bit old and you can dismiss any criticism about the hardware now that it is shipping to devs, but there are still many good points about the software.
http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/the-reality-of-the-ouya-console-doesnt-match-the-hype-why-you-should-be-ske
We’ll talk about gaming changing status when it launches.
I’m yet to be convinced that the future of consoles is taking mobile games and playing them on TV. Instead, the OUYA approach (and GameStick, for that matter) seems more like a grab for a large player base that has value to other Android developers. That’s what the company will be bought out for, not an open platform built using existing hardware.
If you do decide to disappear, the Internet as a whole will the ones who lose out. As someone who watched you on Australia’s version of PBS (www.abc.net.au) your honest telling of the rise of the internet; one that many of your viewers were living in the moment and gave use justification to our being : )
While I DO agree with your statement that the imminent collision of the Internet and Hollywood on us now (albeit thru uTorrent, etc) Until worldwide copyright law is sorted out, we have a few years yet…
I hate to see you go see you transform as a semi-retirement… another Boomer closer to the retirement age… it sucks!… The Boomers who in the 70’s inspired the kids of the 80’s and 90’s to reinvent the industry and to think out of the box… It has to be all that LSDs you guys did in the 60’ and 70’s.
As for the video-game industry… yes it has peaked as the current version but it will transform as it has done in the past:
– Atari brought the game to the masses… not the first game system but the very first successful one. I remembering paying $50 back in the 70’s for lousy Atari 2600 game.
– Then Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) rescue the game-console industry in the mid 80’s… made me a cool kid in college
– Sony PlayStation made it possible to mod and rip the media, Sony didn’t design it that way by choice. But more PlayStations were sold because of it.
There are other minor ones but since then PlayStation the game industry has become as the current the movie industry one sequel after another and hardly any innovation… I get it there’s too much money to risk. However, once in a blue moon you will get one fresh and innovative hit and the plague of sequels. How many Shrek movies can you make before you realize they are horrible. And how many times do you have to rescue princess Zelda, by now she should rescue herself and let Link go back swing a few hits with the Octorocks!
In a few words I wish you the best!
Thanks Bob,
You just fulfilled my own 2013 mobile prediction #(12) at https://www.pdxmobile.com/?p=96
I knew you would.
Nice try. Not looking.
“(12) Robert X. Cringely makes a prediction.”
Don’t go. The world needs your insights.
I understand the financial restrictions… but can you maybe continue on a limited basis?
I’ve been following you for more than a decade and in 2000 even bought Apple (for $9/share) upon your analysis that the cash in the bank was worth more than the whole company. And I have not regretted this decision.
I just paid Andrew Sullivan $20 to subscribe to The Dish for a year, even though his blog will remain open to non-payers and will not rely on ads after Feb 1 when he leaves the Daily Beast.
I’d gladly pay you at least as much if given the opportunity. What I’d really like is for you, Sullivan, and other independent content producers could “channel” yourselves somehow.
[…] I won’t steal his thunder here. But I would recommend you checking out his three part series. Part One. Part Two and Part […]
[…] X. Cringely has just finished his mini-series Silicon Valley conquers Hollywood 2013 (Setting the scene, There’s no business like show business, Think small, not big) with some great anecdotes on the […]
Go fxxx yourself you moron. Look at your 8 stupid predictions made last year. Shame on you, can’t imagine you still have the courage to come out to B.S.
Newbie.
[…] by Robert X. Cringely […]
[…] Read Part 1 […]
your content, I really like
[…] (12) Robert X. Cringely makes a prediction Yep. Back at the start of 2012 Robert X Cringley was looking to turn off his blog and make prediction 8: No more predictions. Here it is: https://www.cringely.com/2012/01/05/prediction-8-no-more-predictions/ Of course that wouldn’t last as his blog is a great place to promote his other works. However Bob did make a prediction which you can read at: https://www.cringely.com/2012/12/29/silicon-valley-conquers-hollywood-part-1-setting-the-scene/ […]