Jonathan Taplin's extraordinary journey has put him at the crest of every major cultural wave in the past half century: he was tour manager for Bob Dylan and the Band in the ’60s, producer of major films in the ’70s, an executive at Merrill Lynch in the ’80s, creator of the Internet’s first video-on-demand service in the ’90s, and a cultural critic and author writing about technology in the new millennium.

Taplin is the Director Emeritus of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab and author of The Magic Years: Scenes from a Rock and Roll Life and Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google and Amazon Have Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy which was nominated by the Financial Times as one of the Best Business Books of 2017. Taplin has produced music and film for Bob Dylan and The Band, George Harrison, Martin Scorsese, Wim Wenders, Gus Van Sant and many others. He was the founder of Intertainer, the first streaming Video On Demand Platform in 1996.

Jonathan was a Professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism from 2003-2016. He is a member of the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He currently sits on the boards of The Authors Guild, Americana Music Association and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Council on Technology and Innovation. His commentary has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Time Magazine, The Huffington Post, The Guardian, Medium, The Washington Monthly and the Wall Street Journal.