Happy Sunday! Ever notice the product placement in sci-fi blockbusters? Not just E.T.’s Reese’s—we mean the future: IBM’s eerily accurate FaceTime setup in 2001. The airborne McDonald’s drive-thru in The Fifth Element. Wall–E’s first-gen iPod. It’s easy to call that cynical advertising. But you can also look at these brands as hints at the business climate of the utopia or dystopia on display. Are the corporations we’re seeing the only ones left? What else survived? What got bought? Is everyone else in
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The Sunday Digest: Consolidation, Censorship…
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Happy Sunday! Ever notice the product placement in sci-fi blockbusters? Not just E.T.’s Reese’s—we mean the future: IBM’s eerily accurate FaceTime setup in 2001. The airborne McDonald’s drive-thru in The Fifth Element. Wall–E’s first-gen iPod. It’s easy to call that cynical advertising. But you can also look at these brands as hints at the business climate of the utopia or dystopia on display. Are the corporations we’re seeing the only ones left? What else survived? What got bought? Is everyone else in