Notas del episodio
A generation ago, a fever dream took hold: a vision of tools for storytellers, built to liberate creators rather than constrain them, and to free their work from the gatekeepers who have long controlled public expression.
In this opening episode, Michael Topic, a product manager and engineer with decades of experience building things people love, tells the story he has wrestled with for twenty-five years. What began as a way to pay freelance creatives more fairly grew into a blueprint for a parallel economy, one that rewards lasting value, discourages speculation and exploitation, and fosters innovation. It is a sketch for billionaire-proofing the Internet.
The story starts in 1990s Hollywood, where film was cut with razor blades and tape, and where non-linear editing first gave editors the power to undo, experiment and change their minds. Michael and his collaborator Patrick Gregston saw a small step toward democratisation. But while cameras, YouTube and TikTok put the means of production in everyone's hands, distribution stayed in the hands of the few. That gap inspired NeoPixSys, a company born of fever and possibility, and a reminder of Carl Sagan's warning that making an apple pie from scratch means first inventing the universe.
Along the way, Michael borrows from Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth, treating this podcast as his way of scratching his name into the rocks for the next explorer to find.
It's a story about power, ownership and who gets to tell stories. And it ends with a glimpse of the product itself: software that turns every device into a node in a distributed fabric of computation, where the machine is the cloud and the people are the power.
Original blog posts were posted on: pm4p.net
Direct link to the first post in the series: pm4p.net/a-fever-dream-of-democratised-storytelling-episode-1-413b69bcfc98
The e-book of the series is available at: Gumroad.com
Cover art: Clare Topic – Copyright 2026 – All rights reserved.
Editor: Alex Topic
Music: composed and produced by Michael Topic