Daily must-read:
TLDR News – I’ve probably fielded more emerging tech headlines from this than any other single source, and it’s also one of the quickest reads of the day.
Emerging Tech Brew – One of the most entertaining things in my inbox (along with the companion general business edition Morning Brew).
Weekly must-read:
Farnam Street – Thinking about thinking. Mental models and insights from wise people current and past. This is the kind of stuff I read, and then chew on while I’m out for a walk.
Galaxy Brain – Charlie Warzel at The Atlantic with deeper dives on current tech and online trends and events. (A July 2022-ish issue on Web3 and cryptocurrency profiteering was particularly good.)
Stratechery – Ben Thompson is probably the most consistently insightful person to land in my inbox. I’ve never read one of his posts and not come away with new insights.
This Week in Security – Zack Whittaker’s roundup hits everything that matters, is entertaining, and can be finished in about 10 minutes.
Intermittent:
Eye on AI – occasional companion to Fortune’s daily tech newsletter “Data Sheet”, this is a weekly thoughtful treatment of current trends and topics in AI/ML.
Protocol Entertainment – despite the name, this newsletter (3x weekly) is more on XR, streaming, gaming, and the convergence of tech into the metaverse than anything else. Excellent longer-form articles too. Most recent (July 2022-ish) article that discusses poll results about metaverse engagement was really good.
McKinsey has had some excellent pieces on quantum computing (current real-world use cases!) and metaverse lately. They have a smorgasboard of subscription options, but it’s worth checking out The Next Normal, Shortlist, and Highlights. See the “Featured Insights” section for the good stuff.
Non-tech but good:
Money Stuff – Matt Levine’s near-daily newsletter about economics and finance is the complete opposite of what you’d expect, and is just about the funniest writing I read every week. Crypto has been featuring prominently of late.
Work In Progress – from The Atlantic, every issue is a deep dive exploring a single topic of current interest.
Noahpinion – Noah Smith’s weekly-ish newsletter on global economics, tech, and policy. Very thoughtful.
Jury is still out:
Intelligence – this is from the World Economic Forum, and the site looks very slick and has data and reading on almost every topic imaginable (looks like high-quality sources/authors too), but I haven’t dug into it in depth yet. Free to sign up.
My Twitter – is a filter of the best of everything above, when I remember to post it there. YMMV. Update: I have abandoned Twitter, for Reasons. Find me on Mastodon instead.
And finally:
This Week in XR – Charlie Fink (former tech exec, now covering XR and metaverse for Forbes). Broad but also finds the interesting nuggets I don’t find elsewhere.
WIRED – The OG. I’ve been reading and subscribing (to the print edition off and on) since the 90s. If I had to pick a single tech subscription, this would be it. Their expansive piece on the future of reality (20 years after The Matrix) was one of the best things I read last year.
Last Week in AWS – required reading for AWS folks.
Metaverse-specific reading:
Matthew Ball's Metaverse Primer - This is the canonical reading material; comprehensive and deep dive across all layers
WIRED's Future of Reality - 20 years after The Matrix, how much of it has become reality?
WIRED - What Is the Metaverse?
Paradise at the Crypto Arcade - WIRED on Web 3 and what it could mean for the Internet
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson coined the term metaverse in the early 90s in this novel, which is still the fastest-paced novel I've ever read.
Otherland - Tad Williams' four-volume epic that takes place primarily in the metaverse, and predates Snow Crash - explores the idea of consciousness transfer (a la Avatar) to a digital realm
Ready Player One - The film adaptation of Ernest Cline's novel is the most direct exploration of the Metaverse seen in theaters so far, aside from The Matrix
Working From Orbit - This was the single most interesting thing I read in 2021, and convinced me that VR/metaverse was ready for prime time work, not just games. Fascinating dive into working in VR all day, every day.
Ways To Think About A Metaverse - Benedict Evans does an excellent job illustrating why your very first question should be "tell me more": "We probably don’t know what ‘metaverse’ means. More precisely, we don’t know what someone else means."
Several items from the brilliant Ben Thompson on the business implications of metaverse:
The Metaverse and Zero Marginal Content - this one is really important to understand
Microsoft and the Metaverse - it's too soon to say who the big winners in this space will ultimately be, but history provides some clues