I think we need a new word for "future." When I hear people talking about "the future," I usually make a couple of baseless assumptions: It's in my lifetime, but far enough away that I don't really have to worry about it. Maybe 20 or 30 years. Maybe more. This tendency to arbitrarily assign a timeline can be misleading.

The online ad business in 2016 is starting to look like the TV ad business in 1964: focused on a significantly simplified ecosystem.

There have been a significant number of studies looking at how the psychology of the individual contributes to the corporate bottom line. Some interesting paradoxes are emerging -- many of which deal with the nature of the workplace.

One of the most-quoted strategies to overcome consumer-reach challenges is to develop "content factories" that have the ability to break through with engaging storytelling efforts so attractive they will be welcomed into consumers' social media feeds and other digital platforms.This may very well work. But I would like to argue that before you start creating engaging content and try to influence people's opinions and perceptions about your brand or service, there is another thing you must do first.

Television, the grande dame of commercial media, is now at an inflection point. Right now, we are experiencing the convergence of several trends impacting TV: namely, sufficient bandwidth to carry great quality video to a living room; big data; cheap pixels; and software to manage monetization. The future is here! The big TV jukebox in the sky is here. Drop a dime and binge all night. But where does that leave advertising, programmatic or otherwise? A quick look at history will give us a few clues.

Twice a year I teach a class on entrepreneurism, which has always struck me as something of an oxymoron. How do you learn to be an entrepreneur in a classroom? Entrepreneurs, by definition, do: they work long hours to build something from nothing, they neglect families and friends, they drain bank accounts (their own and others'), and they grind it out.

If you're like me, you border on being somewhat obsessive-compulsive. I constantly make lists just so I can cross things off. I can't go to sleep without my inbox being less than one page. If I have number notification on any app on the homepage of my iPhone, I have to click in and see what it wants me to do. This last example is only getting worse, because if you weren't borderline OCD before, then your phone is slowly pushing you to the edge. It's training us to be like that little dog and Pavlov. It's amazing marketing, and …

We Online Spinners are talking a lot about disruption. A quick look back at the past few months' Spin columns show that well over half of them deal with disruption in one way or another. Maybe it's time we did a primer on the idea of disruption.

Never mind "content is king." Never mind creating engaging brand stories. Their chances of being heard or seen are decimated by a rigged system designed for many things, but not consumer impact. What baffles me the most is that the industry has never, ever accepted ANY percentage of fraud or loss to non-transparent practices for ANY other medium.

"The chips are down for Moore's Law," read the headline in last month's Nature. Finally, the semiconductor industry was going to admit "what has become increasingly obvious to everyone involved," and the party will be over. After 50 years of riding an exponential wave, we're maxing out on our ability to double the number of transistors on a chip.