Adam J. Simon spent eleven years forecasting where media was headed, usually before the industry wanted to hear it. You Have to Be There is his book in progress.
Content is infinite and free.
Showing up isn't.
A book in progress
You Have to Be There
How AI Makes Presence the Last Scarce Resource
by Adam J. Simon
Fans are booking flights to see a movie because only a few dozen screens on earth can show it the way it was shot. A free Saturday run club has more registered members than Sweden has people. Candlelight concerts, revival houses, trivia nights, pickleball courts: all packed with folks who could have stayed home for less money and didn't.
The analysts keep calling it revenge spending. It isn't. Once anything can be generated, the one thing that can't be is being in a specific place, at a specific time, with specific people, and we're already happily paying more for it in every category. This book is the story of how that happened, and why AI, of all things, is the reason it’s accelerating.
I'm Adam J. Simon, and I write about culture and technology.
I went from directing theater and designing street games to running technology strategy for the world's largest experience company. Same job the whole time: get people into a room and give them a reason to stay. For eleven years I wrote IPG Media Lab's Outlook forecast and co-created, produced, and hosted Floor 9, which Adweek named the Best Thought Leadership Podcast of 2020. Recently, I've been leading emerging technology research for Disney Experiences.
That’s the short version of a longer story →