Sterling Proffer

To understand why foundation models represent a “phase change in ai”, in the words of Fei-Fei Li, the co-director of Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centred ai, it helps to get a sense of how they differ from what went before.

10. Bridge physical and digital worlds through NFTs: While NFTs are sometimes viewed as being exclusively digital, what they actually offer is the digitization of both physical and digital objects. By enabling digital scarcity, NFTs can now reflect the physical scarcity of our analog world.

In its early days, Substack primarily catered to a certain set of internet-savvy writers and journalists, lured by the promise of monetizing a direct relationship with their readers. But as it morphs from a niche publishing concern into a heavyweight start-up mentioned in the same breath as Twitter and Facebook, its user base is proliferating... See more

Streaming has changed all the rules. Musicians can upload songs on to a streaming platform without a label. If they still want to sell physical albums, Bandcamp has made it very easy—no label required. They can deal directly with fans, journalists, promoters, booking agents, etc. without a label. They can set up a publishing company with almost no... See more

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.

But social media has created a mass ability to publish images and curate them. On Tumblr and Pinterest and Are.na, you can group images into categories and comment on them. Through cheaper, consumer-grade media production tools, ideas once restricted to the underground or the zine now have glossy indie magazines, self-burnt mixtapes, and dozens of... See more

1. Sell music or visual art as a collectible NFT: This is the most common model for music NFTs today. Artists will sell music or media (photo/video) related to their music as an NFT. Platforms like Catalog, Sound, Nina or MintSongs focus on music itself. But you can also offer derivative assets like music videos, demo recordings, alternative... See more