Agent Palmer

Twenty Twenty-Two. No jetpacks, no faster-than-light traveling, no flying cars (at least not mass produced and widely available or reliable). In short, this isn’t the Jetsons future we thought it might be.

Why does that matter? Because by any metric for arguably anyone born on the other side of Y2K, 2022 was the future. Well, the future is now, and it’s not living up to expectations, I can tell you that. So let’s look back on the year as it was, and ignore the things it would or should have been.

It would seem illogical at best to expect that a physical game like Magic: The Gathering would be my entrance into the digital world and the many communities and chats of Twitch, but that is exactly how it happened. And in my case, I’m still close enough to the beginning to understand how it happened.

My podcast, The Palmer Files, is a prime example of my interest in beginnings at the moment, so I figured I would track how this all went down.

Upload is a good show on Amazon Prime that could be great if it didn’t follow the binging streaming formula. (The following may contain spoilers.)

The writing and biting social commentary on future capitalism, technology, and relationships that still manages to hit close to home. But, and this is, for me, what keeps this show from being a great show, is the “whodunnit” nature of the plot throughline.

It always starts with one podcast. Or it usually does. You find that one podcast either through a friend or coworker or perhaps just happenstance. You listen to that one podcast and then you subscribe and you consume all of it. Perhaps you even go through the back catalog.

That one podcast speaks to you. You get to know the host or hosts, their style of joking, their tastes, and depending on the podcast their lives. You know them, or at least you know their persona.