Om Malik

The early entrants into the world of A.R., as with its cousin virtual reality, were disappointing: the phones were too weak, the networks were too slow, and the applications were too nerdy. But now the technological pieces are in place, and a whole generation - much of which is on Snapchat - has come to consider the camera almost a third arm.

The possibilities that come with thinking about the camera as a portal into the realm of information and services are attractive not only to Snap but also to every other big player in the tech world. Facebook, for instance, has slowly been enhancing the visual capabilities of its Messenger.

QR codes have always been a kind of half-measure, a useful but inelegant transitional technology; the ultimate goal is augmented reality.

Cameras can look down from on high and predict crop yields, traffic in Walmart parking lots, and travel patterns on Labor Day weekend. On the ground, they form the foundation of autonomous-driving systems.

If you look at something like Spotify, many record labels are investors in the company. So from that standpoint, the money is all going back into the labels.

For a while, I have had this theory that we, as a society, are coming to the end of the mass production, industrial phase of the human race.

Whether it is through stock-market trading or the sale of hotel rooms, the Internet has a way of bringing deflationary forces to all businesses that were hitherto inefficient and involved many middlemen.

In the digital realm, companies are free from the friction of producing physical goods, and as a result, we see companies like Google go from zero dollars in revenues to billions at a much faster rate.

If you're texting a friend about dinner, Google will give you restaurant reviews and directions automatically.

Instead of standing in the way, technology is increasingly an enabler of emotion. A message at the wrong time at dinner can turn a gourmet dish into something insipid because of the interruption.

Living a 24-hour news life has come at a personal cost. I still wake in middle of the night to check the stream to see if something is breaking, worrying whether I missed some news.

Its definition can be a bit murky, but to me, native advertising is a sales pitch that fits right into the flow of the information being shown. It doesn't interrupt - native ads don't pop up or dance across the screen - and its content is actually valuable to the person viewing it.

Because Apple's corporate DNA is that of a hardware company, its activities are meant to support hardware sales.

Unlike Facebook or Instagram, Twitter's core experience isn't about photos. It's a world of text, with occasional embedded photos, animated gifs, and short video clips.

The funny thing is that I used to be a blogger, but it wasn't known as 'blogging' at that time. This was in the '99/2000 time frame.

We are splintering what was the 'camera' and its functionality - lens, sensors, and processing - into distinct parts, but, instead of lenses and shutters, software and algorithms are becoming the driving force.

Sure, Google's and Apple's ecosystems look a little different, but they are meant to do pretty much the same thing. For the two companies, innovation on mobile essentially means catching up to the other's growing list of features.

When it comes to the mobile web, the technology industry seems to be split between two camps - native apps and HTML5 web-based apps.

I think the emotional appeal of a platform is what works. I think the old-media entities still have not figured out that part of the game plan.

Google came of age when search was inefficient and cluttered, and made it simple and easy to find what you wanted online.