Update: I have minted this story as an NFT! The NFT comes with the right to republish the story. You can see it here. In consumer tech, product designers talk about “psychological friction.” It’s that feeing you get when you pause before you enable notifications or before you upload a…

(or, “GPT-WHAT?!”) — Matt Hartman is a partner at betaworks ventures. Betaworks builds & invests in products that re-think the way we interact with computers and each other. Some builds include bit.ly and GIPHY and investments include Hugging Face, Medium, Anchor, RecRoom, Twitter & Tumblr. There seem to be two emerging camps in…

Why Technologists and Normal Humans should understand Differential Privacy — These are some insights from the first Betalab talk, our new program at Betaworks, focused on how to “fix the internet.” We want to fund startups and researchers focusing how to fix the internet from data and privacy to attention hacking and misinformation. …

or, “How do you get podcast listeners in 2018?” — Background When we first started investing in the audio space at Betaworks, I decided the best way for me to really understand the market was to start my own podcast. I wanted to use the tools, and to experience the distribution issues first-hand. …

A lot can change in a week. — First, a disclaimer: I’m an investor at betaworks ventures where we’ve invested in over a dozen companies focused on voice/audio. I mention several of them below, including Anchor, Gimlet, and Breaker. Last week marked the beginning of at least two distinct experiments for monetizing podcasts: deeper integration of the patronage…

On the Authenticity Awareness Gap & Near-Term Future of Synthetic Media — There is a new media type emerging at the intersection of computer generated images, video, and voice. At present, the results are holographic pop stars that hold concerts in the real world, and Instagram celebrities that don’t actually exist but post selfies with “real” friends. …

Or, “Alexa, what’s the wifi password?” At betaworks, we like to go very deep in a set of specific categories so that we understand the nuances of a particular interface. …

or, Google voice + chatbot + amazon polly + oculus lip sync + morph3d avatar = awesome VR bot — This is an excerpt from my weekly email newsletter on voice interfaces, HearingVoices. Join leaders in the industry from voice-focused startups, VC funds, and agencies interested in voice by subscribing at hearingvoices.xyz Great Reads (and listens) Velveteen Rabbits: What a Children’s Story Can Teach Us About Computers that Talk: A blog post by @tripodell…

The rise of services that live in Chatbots, Voice Computing, & Mixed Reality — We are at the very beginning of a fundamental shift in the way that humans communicate with computers. …