The Remarkable Narrative Life of “The Walking Dead”

In turning a product into a platform, AMC transformed a TV show into a cultural phenomenon that invited fans to interact and co-create. Excerpted from “The Sea We Swim In.”

July 26, 2021

More Essays

Swept Away by the Stream

“Is the Albanian army going to take over the world?” Old-media conglomerates famously dismissed Netflix when it was a fledgling startup. Time Warner, Blockbuster: Where are they now?

April 22, 2022

After the Disruption

The digital transition was always going to be a messy one—look at the antitrust ﬁghts that followed the telephone during the analog era. "System Error," by Rob Reich, Mehran Sahami and Jeremy Weinstein.

September 23, 2021

The New Big Brother

Tech companies have shown themselves to be increasingly cavalier with our personal data. Are we handing over too much information? “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,” by Shoshana Zuboff.

January 14, 2019

The Promise of Virtual Reality

The story of VR, the most immersive communications technology since cinema, as told by two of its pioneers, Jeremy Bailenson of Stanford and the charismatic inventor Jaron Lanier.

February 6, 2018