Quibi’s epic fall and the future of books | The Vergecast

Sec­ond week of vaca­tion?! Where do live? Europe?!?

Oblig­a­tory David Pierce thirst comment

You need to inter­view the hosts of Streami­verse, the pod­cast that start­ed as Quibi­verse until they got a C&D from Quibi

Lov­ing this format !

Hon­est­ly I don’t think the name “Quibi” is much worse than a lot of estab­lished things we’ve come to accept. Face­book, YouTube, Twit­ter, Tik-Tok… imag­ine hear­ing those for the first time and not know­ing what they are. They’re all dorky names that don’t real­ly explain what they are

Lov­ing this debate addi­tion to the verge­cast. Would love to have a video ver­sion of this pod­cast! Big fan of the fun that hap­pens in this podcast

Books: mar­gin­a­lia: I was raised in Catholic school. The nuns were very clear, one does not write on books. Plus, the books were passed down from class to class, so mar­gin­a­lia was for­bid­den. Since then, I can’t stand books that aren’t per­fect and clear.

San­Disk has a 32GB Clip Sport Go mp3 play­er for $40 (on Ama­zon and on West­ern Dig­i­tal sites). More mem­o­ry at 1/2 the price.

Dude. You are on vaca­tion. Don’t work man.

real note: george lucas decid­ing to make star wars episode one a test to see how many visu­al effects shots he can squeeze out of a VFX stu­dio is hall of fame. it changed movies for­ev­er, you can touch on Rat­tle and Hum hav­ing to close even with Life of Pi win­ning the oscar for best visu­al effects.

at 39:29 when The Gang is basi­cal­ly roast­ing core con­ceits of the pilot its a awe­some friend­ly ener­gy that i like. i apol­o­gize for the unhelp­ful note

I quite liked this for­mat. Please keep doing these kinds of episodes!

Ebooks. They have dic­tio­nary. It’s good for your own lan­guage and per­fect for learn­ing anoth­er language

Alright, so beyond the name and the math Tik­Tok had a real advan­tage over Quibi . Tik­Tok is a social media plat­form. Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic it made peo­ple feel con­nect­ed, whether through pub­lish­ing their own con­tent or view­ing some­one else’s and com­ment­ing. YouTube also has this advan­tage to a large degree. The cre­ators are ‘Oth­er Peo­ple’ — not elite Hol­ly­wood film­mak­ers. These are social media plat­forms. Quibi was just an enter­tain­ment stream­ing ser­vice, and did­n’t have what that requires — a ‘Game of Thrones’ equivalent. 

Re the exper­i­men­tal for­mats: I like this for­mat a lot. The three of you dis­cussing tech whether in the present or his­tor­i­cal­ly is always enter­tain­ing — because you’re fun­ny AND have fun, smart insights. I thought the ‘debate’ for­mat was pret­ty fun­ny, but it sound­ed like a one-off satire on today’s polit­i­cal debates 🙂 Not some­thing I’d want to lis­ten to more than once — felt like it kind of cramped your style. Also, what’s fun about your opin­ions are that they’re real pas­sion­ate opin­ions. Debates are about win­ning no mat­ter what you think and are there­fore to me, much less inter­est­ing. In fact, I lis­tened to the last one, but got bored imme­di­ate­ly on this one and did­n’t fin­ish lis­ten­ing. And any­way you all debate all the time on the reg­u­lar show. Why restrict your­selves to this weird, for­mal debate format?

Maybe it’s just me, but I find the approach to the debate for­mat real­ly unsat­is­fy­ing. If you are going to struc­ture some­thing around the premise of a for­mal debate includ­ing timed state­ments, plac­ing a rep­re­sen­ta­tive on one side that does not seri­ous­ly argue for that side feels like a let­down. I think this was most promi­nent in Nilay’s fall­back to call­ing David a com­mu­nist in the last episode. Was it fun­ny? Absolute­ly, but it left a huge hole where I think an actu­al argu­ment should have been. That tells me an argu­ment may not have exist­ed, so why are we here? I think you need to plan these in a way where the peo­ple on each side gen­uine­ly argue for their stance, oth­er­wise you might as well just have a nor­mal dis­cus­sion of peo­ple dunk­ing on Ama­zon which is what this sec­ond episode turned into. Each show should be divi­sive. Just the idea of a token debate between iOS and Android would be absolute­ly killer if you had two sides who could real­ly argue their mer­its. Does that take effort and plan­ning? Sure. You will prob­a­bly need to talk to peo­ple in the tar­get indus­try or oth­er reporters who feel dif­fer­ent­ly, and it will involve research. But I think a full ver­sion of this show that has its wings and takes itself a lit­tle more seri­ous­ly is where the mon­ey is.

Hon­est­ly I’m lik­ing both “Ver­sion His­to­ry” & “Tech Debates”

Vir­tu­al Boy for ver­sionn his­to­ry. The birth of VR, but not in the way that any­one cur­rent­ly thinks of it.