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In 2021, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee history professor Thomas Haigh began teaching a course on the history of computers. Haigh, the coauthor of a book on the subject published around that same timenoticed that many classic histories of computing from the 1990s assumed that readers would have firsthand knowledge of technology from around that eradesktop PCs and Macs, early game consoles, and the once-ubiquitous floppy disk. But for many of his students, that equipment was obsolete before they were born. While it might make millennials grimace, Windows 95 and Nintendo 64s GoldenEye 007 are now firmly in the purview of the history department. With today’s undergraduates, they’re just as distanced from the days of the Apple II, or the IBM PC, or the first Mac as people [then] were from ENIAC and the very earliest computers, Haigh says. Haigh can’t practically show his students how to use the ENIAC or the other room-sized machines from the mid-20th century. But he realized he could stock a lab with equipment from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, letting students experience and understand what it was like to load a spreadsheet from floppy disk on an Apple IIe, boot up Windows on a Gateway PC, or play a game on a vintage Atari or Nintendo 64. The idea isn’t to collect one of everything, and it’s also not really to collect rare and exotic things, Haigh says. We’re more interested in recapturing what the typical experience was of using computer systems in different eras. Haigh believes the Retrocomputing Lab, or simply Retrolab, may be the only such lab run out of a U.S. history department. Its one of a handful of university labs around the country that provide students and researchers with access to machines and software from before the age of ubiquitous internet and cloud computing. Its stocked with a mix of eBay purchases, university surplus, and faculty hand-me-downs (meaning students are sometimes greeted with the names of users from decades gone by when they load vintage operating systems or floppy disks). Lab organizers say the labs help students and researchers understand how computing and communication technology has evolved, both for better and for worseand help them use ideas from the past to understand and shape what the future of tech might be. What I’ve noticed, especially in the last year, is that young people are just fascinated and utterly compelled by typewriters, by technology that they can see into, that they can understand how it works, that they sometimes can open up, says Lori Emerson, founder of the Media Archaeology Lab (MAL) at the University of Colorado Boulder. And especially the pieces of tech that we have in the lab that’s not connected to the internet, that’s not surveilling them, tracking them, collecting data. Its something that emulation, which can make it possible to use vintage software and games on modern equipment, doesnt fully capture. Emerson founded the lab in 2009 while working as a professor in the English department and teaching students about a digital poetry project called First Screening, released on floppy disk in the 1980s by the celebrated Canadian poet bpNichol. Emerson wanted to show students how the poems would have been seen on the computers of their day. The lab she set up for that purpose continued to expand, ultimately growing into a sprawling collection thats now available for use by students, visiting researchers, and curious members of the public. I think that was pretty much the beginning of the end for me as an English professor, says Emerson, now a professor in the media studies department. And then I just couldn’t stop collecting old pieces of technology, and I couldn’t stop convincing people to give me their things. Even with commercial software, the tactile experience of using particular keyboards, mice, and disks, and the entire concept of unpacking disks and manuals from a store-bought box, just cant be simulated. One of the things that surprises students is that software used to come in a box full of manuals and stuff, Haigh says. They just think of software as this purely immaterial thing that downloads. Emma Culver, a Ph.D. student in UW-Milwaukees media, cinema, and digital studies program, says she discovered installing and playing The 7th Guesta 1993 DOS horror adventure that helped pioneer the use of the CD-ROM for full-motion video and inspired a generation of game designerswas far from smooth, experiencing firsthand the trial-and-error frustrations of PC gaming in that era. And it’s much more satisfying once you actually sit down to play it after you’ve been through all that effort to set it up, she says. But though todays students will likely play a role in the next steps in technologys evolution, its not clear whether theyll be able to show future generations the technology they currently use. Thats because over the past decade or so, software has become dependent on connections to cloud servers, AI models, or online gaming infrastructure cant easily be archived in fully operational form. In the future, once systems aren’t there to activate copies and download patches and so on, none of this stuff is still going to be accessible unless enthusiasts do a huge amount of work to replicate parts of that system, Haigh says. But for now, universities are working to share and preserve what they can of the digital past. At Georgia Tech, a similar retroTECH program run out of the university library similarly helps archive and share with students vintage technology from the slide rule to millennial favorites like The Oregon Trail and early Mario Kart offerings. Games for historic consoles are a big focus, especially since they were released as static products rather than updated and patched over time like PC games, says digital accessioning archivist Dillon Henry. Students are sometimes intrigued by how quickly cartridge-based games could load compared to todays releases, and the games are often accompanied by print gaming media of the day, so students can see how they were advertised and promoted in outlets like Nintendo Power. The library has hosted informal gaming nights, but its also seen plenty of use by students in classes looking at everything from interactive narrative storytelling to game design. Engineering students also learn to fix the vintage machines. It’s a win-win, because you can’t o to an Apple Store today and ask them to fix your Apple II, Henry says. Theyre also inspiring students to make their own creations. One student brought classmates from a game design class to the lab to study elements of Final Fantasy IX9 (released for the original PlayStation in 2000), Henry recalls, and visitors are also often intrigued by the evolution of video game interfaces and forgotten elements of the industrys history. The collection includes technology like the Virtual Boy, a famously odd Nintendo VR system from the mid-1990s, and the Fairchild Channel F, which introduced the concept of removable cartridges and featured a unique, joystick-like controller. Now controllers are getting more or less standardized, Henry says. It was kind of a Wild West there at the beginning of the gaming world, when people were just trying stuff that hadn’t been done. The retroTECH programs vintage material isnt all computer-based. The library has an Edison wax cylinder phonograph from 1902 and a set of blank cylinders, and Henry hopes in the future to work on recording projects based around the medium, perhaps in conjunction with the universitys celebrated music technology program. Historic technology is also a creative medium at CU Boulder. The Media Archaeology Lab has hosted a residency series thats attracted artists creating work with the equipment, and seen musicians perform using vintage music software and computerized keyboards on site. The lab has also recently begun acquiring typewriters and other historic printing and copying equipment, and Emerson and lab managing director Libi Rose Striegl plan to offer zine-making workshops in the near future. Students weary of AI and cloud computing have generally been showing an interest in technology from before the age of the always-on internet, Emerson says. A theme that’s been coming up recently is that they say, I feel like my mental health would be a lot better if I used these machines, she says. And we laugh, but were also like, yeah, it probably would be.
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E-Commerce
The era of the empowered worker is behind us, at least for now. The last year has seen a stark reversal of the dynamics that were at play in the aftermath of the pandemic, when employers were scrambling to hold onto their workers. Companies couldn’t seem to cut jobs fast enough in 2025, as over a million layoffs swept across tech giants and other major employers. Hiring came to a standstill as the corporate world grappled with political headwinds and economic anxieties. Employers have gone all in on artificial intelligence, in the hopes that it will make their workers infinitely more productive. We are entering a new phase that is much more employer-centric in terms of who holds the keys, says Lars Schmidt, the founder of HR consultancy Amplify and the vice president of talent acquisition and innovation at superfruit startup Fruitist. With all the volatility of the job market, the displacement of jobs from AI and automation, and the economic uncertainty causing some companies to dial backI think that the power is very much in the employer’s hands again, and kind of at the detriment of employees. In this climate, the role of human resources has grown ever more complicatedand crucial, as they seek to keep employees motivated and manage burnout alongside mounting demands from their employers. Heres what HR leaders are focused on and expect to see in the year to come. AI: Were making it up as we go As workplaces invest in generative AI, many HR leaders are being tasked with not only using those tools to streamline their own operations, but also to help companies figure out how to deploy the technology effectively across their organization. Schmidt argues its an opportunity for people in HR to step up and help shape how their company approaches AI. Like any emerging technology with the promise of automation and less headcount and more profit, there’s going to be pressure to use that, he says. It’s just as important to have a clear point of view of where not to use AI than where to use AI, and you can’t be a strategic adviser to your C suite peers if you are not informed yourself. Melanie Naranjo, the head of people at HR compliance training startup Ethena, believes companies are now reevaluating their AI investments, after throwing money at expensive AI tools or unsuccessfully attempting to automate jobs. Many HR teams are also thinking about how to encourage employees to get adequately trained on AI without making it an onerous burden: How do you keep a workforce trained on the latest and greatest in AI adoption, when AI is constantly changing? she says. How do you structure that? What does that fall under? How do you hold people accountable? Is there space to do it in a strategic way that doesn’t burn everyone out? Another challenge for some HR leaders is how to determine compensation and pay packages for valuable AI talent, or potential hires who are well versed in AIsomething that many of them are figuring out in real time, amid economic uncertainty. It’s really worth as much as you’re willing to pay for it at this point, Naranjo says. I imagine over time this will even out, because the long-term expectation will likely be that everyone has some level of AI expertise within their field. But right now we’re all just asking each other and making it up as we go, candidly. Focus on retention over hiring Amid a hiring slowdown and a tricky job market that favors employers, many workers are staying putotherwise known as job hugging, in recent parlancerather than looking for new opportunities. For companies, this presents its own challenge. A lot of employees are hesitant to make a move right now, given all the volatility and uncertainty, Schmidt says. So they are kind of growing roots, which creates some tension. The natural attrition of an organizationthrough both voluntary and involuntary turnovercreates a bit of a steady flow of talent in and out of the organization. Workers also face new pressures as their employers expect them to both embrace AI and use it to boost their productivity. Companies, in turn, may see a dip in morale and find that employees are checked outwhich means HR leaders need to figure out how to incentivize them. Even in the midst of this being an employer market, I think smart employers are going to start thinking a little bit more about retention, says Naranjo. The reality is your top performers are always going to be able to find work, regardless of the market. And then everyone else? Even though they’re not leaving in droves because of the market, productivity and morale is going to start to shift. In the past, the answer might have been to give employees a generous raise. Now, Naranjo says, many HR leaders are trying to figure out how to reward them in a low-cost, low-lift way. Beyond looking at compensation, one way companies could address this is by expanding benefits. While benefits are not nearly as much of a focus as they were during the Great Resignationwhen companies were clamoring to retain employeesthey remain a competitive advantage for many organizations, particularly around fertility and caregiving. Mita Mallick, a workplace strategist and former DEI executive, argues that companies have an opportunity to differentiate themselvesand retain top performersby investing in unique benefits. Mallick points to platforms like Multiply Mortgage, which helps employees get a mortgage and discounted rate. With some of these benefits, you might be like, well, it’s niche utilization, Mallick says. Cost utilization is low, but then those individuals become your company advocates. Housing-related benefits are also an example of employers essentially providing social services that would not otherwise be covered. Mallick cites paid leave, which has repeatedly faced pushback as a federal policy. When government fails, and there [are] gaps in the infrastructure, companies are stepping up, she adds. Investing in DEI . . . quietly Back in 2020, the racial reckoning in the aftermath of George Floyds murder led many companies to make bold promises about diversity, equity, and inclusion. Some of them pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to bolster these commitmentsbut in the years since, the appetite for DEI has radiclly changed. After the Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action in 2023, corporate America slowly backed away from DEI work, particularly as right wing agitators like Robby Starbuck ramped up public pressure on companies. And over the last year in particular, the Trump administration has set its sights on DEI programs across both the federal government and private sector, even threatening to investigate corporate employers who engage in illegal DEI work. All this has seemingly set the stage for a public retreat from DEI, as many employers fear legal action and being targeted by the Trump administration. Across the federal workforce, DEI offices were shut down, and many DEI professionals in the corporate world lost their jobs as the work fell out of fashion. Companies eliminated representation goals and pulled out of external rankings that measure workplace inclusion. But while employers have, in fact, slashed DEI programs, a number of them are merely rebranding it as belongingor doing the work behind closed doors. For certain companies, this shift is more about revising the language of DEI, which has been weaponized by conservatives: When you look at the fundamentals of why DEI is important, that didn’t change, Schmidt says. What [has] changed is how people are twisting the definition for political purposes. As DEI teams have shrunkor have been dismantled altogethersome of this work has fallen to employee resource groups or is now within the purview of HR. But on the whole, many of the companies that have publicly pulled back on their investments in DEI were never particularly committed. There are people quietly doing the work, Mallick says. And there are people who never wanted to do the work. It was performative. It checked the boxand now they have permission to say they don’t need to do it. Navigating a new political climate A few years ago, many HR leaders felt compelled to speak out about politics and current events. But the tides have turned, as many CEOs and other executives have largely avoided weighing in on political issues since Trump assumed office again. There was a lot of pressure on HR leaders to take a stance on every event that took place, Schmidt says. Now we’re obviously in a very different environment You’re seeing very few companies speaking out in this current environment for fear of retribution. For some folks in HR, this has been a bit of a welcome correction; for others, its an adjustment after years of being more vocal. At the moment, against the backdrop of an immigration crackdown that has claimed the lives of two civilians in Minnesota, some HR leaders have felt like they need to acknowledge whats happening around them. What I’m sensing in one-off conversations with HR professionals is: I kind of want to say something, but I don’t know how it will be received, and I don’t know if it’s the right time, Naranjo says. While a handful of tech workers and leaders have finally commented on the violence in Minnesota, most of them have remained relatively silent. An open letter from the CEOs of Minnesota-based companies like Target and Best Buy called for an immediate deescalation of tensions but stopped short of any pointed condemnations. You’re seeing very few business leaders stepping into the moment and making a statement, Schmidt says. CEOs understandably don’t want to put a target on their company. This reticence leaves HR leaders in a tough spot, if they feel a responsibility to speak out or their employees are demanding it. But Naranjo says companies should recognize there can be a cost to not acknowledging the political moment. From an HR perspective, that’s not actually a distraction, she says. Your employees are already distracted. So if you’re being really strategic about this, and your employees are struggling, you can actually help them focus and be more productive by addressing it correctly.
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E-Commerce
The best recruiter I know is going to spend the next three months hiring without posting to a single job board website, like Indeed or LinkedIn. LinkedIn? She laughed. You mean Facebook for thought leaders? No, I wont be using any of those sites. Rosa is head of HR for a large tech startup, and someone I trust to tell me whats really going on in the world of professional recruiting and jobs the unflinching truth. The last time we talked, she had finally taken back control of her companys recruiting process, rescuing it from over-automation, misguided AI, and what she called results-last hiring. Ive hired hundreds of people to work with me over my long career. And Ive partnered with some great recruiters and some not-so-great recruiters along the way. I can tell you she has a point about LinkedIn, but its not just LinkedIn. Rosa wants to sidestep the whole damn hiring system, even down to how her company views hiring and talent. We were treating people like fuel when theyre actually critical machine parts, she said. Once you understand that, you realize the whole damn hiring system is broken, and the path becomes clear. Not easy, but at least clear. Her latest experiment, over the next three months, with her executive team behind her: Hire without LinkedIn and the rest of the job boards. The Digital Job Funnel Is Not Going to Be Fixed Anytime Soon On the other side of the country, a CTO friend of mine spent his holiday break clearing a backlog of support tickets. Why? Because a bunch of folks quit, and when he tried to replace them, the modern automated hiring systems his company was using kept throwing up roadblocks. Wasnt that what all of this automation was supposed to do? he asked me. Find me people quickly? He lost three support people the week before Christmas and figured he could get by with two. After getting vague answers from his HR team, the last day before everything shut down for the holidays, he went full White Goodman and took the bull by the horns. I got into the system myself, thought Id be a hero, and I spent hours going through stacks of applications just trying to filter out the bots, or the résumés that werent even close to what I needed. I wondered if I should just write some code to filter [the applications] myself, but I was running out of time and [support] tickets were piling up. I gave up and said Id just handle the tickets on my own over the holidays. After a holly jolly Jira holiday, he had an epiphany. This never should have happened, he said. Were going to take a hard look at why we have all this hiring technology. Its Always the Quiet Ones In my last column, I speculated that were reaching a bottom in the job market, especially in tech, where a sense of capitulation has leaders in the recruiting industry advising tech employees to become baristas, bartenders, and builders. Yeah, thats the right amount of capitulation. I mentioned in that column that, out of the dozen or so SMB tech startup leaders Ive talked to while going down this particular hiring rabbit hole, not one of them is using a major hiring channel to fill their talent needs. In their view, the LinkedIns, the Indeeds, basically all the job boards, have devolved into an automated slippery slope that, in their eyes, produces no signal, just noise. A lot of noise. Were Hiring, Just Without the Purple Sash So these companies are opting out. Theyre posting jobs on their own websites, or sometimes not, and using their current employees and investors networks of networks to find channels. Theyre going through traditional but smaller recruiters, trade associations, user groups, colleges for entry-level positions, even niche online communities like Reddit and Hacker News. Theyre going through me, not to hire me, but asking if I know anyone who knows anyone who would be perfect for the role, like they used to before LinkedIn ate all of hiring which is right before LinkedIn decided there was more money in letting ambitious professionals post AI-written opinions on everything. Oh, sorry, before you ask me who these companies are, Id love to tell you, and I am telling people whom I think they might find a perfect fit, but if I splash their names here it defeats the purpose of what theyre trying to do. Theyre tightening the aperture, as one put it, which sounds uncomfortable, but is really just a way of saying they want 100 targeted résumés for an open position and not 10,000 résumés that are mostly people who didnt read the job requirements plus bots. Crazy, right? But oddly enough, with the sheer volume of talent already on the sidelines, theyre filling these roles much more quickly than they did using LinkedIn, Indeed, and such. So, no, I cant out them, but I can tell you this. Based on how Rosa and her low-tech colleagues are hiring, heres my best advice for joining this worldwide loose hiring network. Turn Your Friends Into Recruiters Good old-fashioned networking is back in vogue. And this isnt just about blasting an email asking everyone you know if they know anyone who knows anyone who is hiring. You want to build an army, a group of folks who will work for you. Be specific about what you can do and what you want, Rosa told me. A personal, concise message is best. Your friends are already willing to help you, they just need to know how they specifically can do that. Itll be different for everyone. Take Time to Do Deeper Company Research Smart companies are, like Rosa said, looking for critical machine parts, not fuel. They need talent, not labor. They want results, not butts in seats. Your best shot is going to be finding a company that can use you, right away, to get the results they need. Use AI to find these companies that are sidestepping tese channels, instead of using AI to turn your résumé into one more needle in an ever growing haystack. Then, instead of sending an application to 50 companies if you might be a fit for five, find 50 companies where you would be valuable and hope that five of them are hiring, whether they have a job posted for you or not. Look for Positive Proof That the Job They Have Is for You When you do find a job that looks right, dig a little. Is it real? Is it what it says it is? Are you going to be dumped into an applicant pool with thousands of other candidates? Then dig a little deeper. Read the job description with some skepticism. Is it generic? Is it a carbon copy of all the others youve seen? Are they hiring just because they have fresh money? Is it more about joining a club than getting results? On that last one: Companies will do that when they have a lot of problems but they dont know what they need, said Rosa. Instead of a finely tuned job description, theyll spend a lot of time on values and goals and what they believe. Theyre hiring fans, not talent. And finally, focus on companies that move quickly. The truth is there is still a huge supply of available talent out there, thus theres no need for a hiring company to wait for the right fit. If theres no urgency, the company might be just testing the waters or, again, not really sure of what they need. Neither of those aspects works in your favor. Dont Fall For False Progress These are desperate times in the job market. I know there will be counterarguments to these strategies, probably led by Well, thats nice advice, but I need a job now. Heres the thing. Job now is more about luck than reach. Scanning or spamming job board websites might feel like progress, but weve gone so far down the digital black hole of hiring that a lot of the companies that are hiring now, quickly, and for the right reasons, are bypassing those job boards entirely. Im not talking about Easy Apply and Im not suggesting these strategies will speed the process. Im talking about adding a growing channel that isnt getting attention because it doesnt want the attention. Theyre not going to find you. Youll need to find them. I can also speculate that these companies wont stay in the shadows for long. The success of this loose network will get noticed, and it will get centralized, maybe not with AI, but it wont be long before Rosa and all the recruiters like her are up to their eyeballs in tens of thousands of applications again. So now is a good time to go job hunting instead of job scrolling. Now is also a good time to join my email list, a growing rebel alliance of professionals who want a different perspective on tech and business. Joe Procopio This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister publication, Inc. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
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E-Commerce
A variety show thats still revered for its absurdist, slapstick humor debuted 50 years ago. It starred an irreverent band of characters made of foam and fleece. Long after The Muppet Shows original 120-episode run ended in 1981, the legend and legacy of Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Gonzo and other creations concocted by puppeteer and TV producer Jim Henson have kept on growing. Thanks to the Muppets film franchise and the wonders of YouTube, the wacky gang is still delighting, and expanding, its fan base. As a scholar of popular culture, I believe that the Muppets reign, which began in the 1950s, has helped shape global culture, including educational television. Along the way, the puppets and the people who bring them to life have earned billions in revenue. Johnny Carson interviews Muppet creator Jim Henson, Kermit and other Muppets on the Tonight Show in 1975, ahead of one of an early The Muppet Show pilot. Kermits origin story Muppets, a portmanteau of marionette and puppet, first appeared on TV in the Washington, D.C., region in 1955, when Henson created a short sketch show called Sam and Friends with his future wife, Jane Nebel. Their motley cast of puppets, including a lizardlike character named Kermit, sang parody songs and performed comedy sketches. Hensons creations were soon popping up in segments on other TV shows, including Today and late-night programs. Rowlf the Dog appeared in Canadian dog food commercials before joining The Jimmy Dean Show as the hosts sidekick. After that show ended, Rowlf and Dean performed on the Ed Sullivan Show, where Kermit had occasionally appeared since 1961. Rowlf the Dog and Jimmy Dean reprise their schtick on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1967. From Sesame Street to SNL As Rowlf and Kermit made the rounds on variety shows, journalist Joan Ganz Cooney and psychologist Lloyd Morrisett were creating a new educational program. They invited Henson to provide a Muppet ensemble for the show. Henson waived his performance fee to maintain rights over the characters who became the most famous residents of Sesame Street. The likes of Oscar the Grouch, Cookie Monster and Big Bird were joined by Kermit who, by the time the show premiered in 1969, was identified as a frog. When Sesame Street became a hit, Henson worried that his Muppets would be typecast as childrens entertainment. Another groundbreaking show, aimed at young adults, offered him a chance to avoid that. Saturday Night Lives debut on NBC in 1975 when the show was called Saturday Night included a segment called The Land of Gorch, in which Hensons grotesque creatures drank, smoked and cracked crass jokes. The Land of Gorch segments ended after Saturday Night Lives first season. Saturday Night Lives first season included Land of Gorch sketches that starred creatures Jim Henson made to entertain grown-ups. Miss Piggy gets her closeup The Muppet Show was years in the making. ABC eventually aired two TV specials in 1974 and 1975 that were meant to be pilots for a U.S.-produced Muppet Show. After no American network picked up his quirky series, Henson partnered with British entertainment entrepreneur Lew Grade to produce a series for ATV, a British network, that featured Kermit and other Muppets. The new ensemble included Fozzie Bear, Animal and Miss Piggy Muppets originally performed by frequent Henson collaborator Frank Oz. The Muppet Show parodied variety shows on which Henson had appeared. Connections hed made along the way paid off: Many celebrities he met on those shows sets would guest star on The Muppet Show, including everyone from Rita Moreno and Lena Horne to Joan Baez and Johnny Cash. The Muppet Show, which was staged and shot at a studio near London, debuted on Sept. 5, 1976, in the U.K, before airing in syndication in the United States on stations like New Yorks WCBS. As the shows opening and closing theme songs changed over time, they retained a Vaudeville vibe despite the house bands preference for rock and jazz. The Muppets hit the big screen The Muppet Show was a hit, amassing a global audience of over 200 million. It won many awards, including a Primetime Emmy for outstanding comedy-variety or music series for which it beat Saturday Night Live in 1978. While his TV show was on the air, Henson worked on the franchises first film, The Muppet Movie. The road film, released in 1979, was another hit: It earned more than US$76 million at the box office. The Muppet Movie garnered two Academy Award nominations for its music, including best song for Rainbow Connection. It won a Grammy for best album for children. The next two films, The Great Muppet Caper, which premiered in 1981, and The Muppets Take Manhattan, released in 1984, also garnered Oscar nominations for their music. As The Muppet Movie opens, Statler and Waldorf tell a security guard of their heckling plans. Fraggle Rock and the Disney deal The cast of The Muppet Show and the three films took a break from Hollywood while Henson focused on Fraggle Rock, a TV show for kids that aired from 1983-1987 on HBO. Like Hensons other productions, Fraggle Rock featured absurdist humor but its puppets arent considered part of the standard Muppets gang. This co-production between Henson, Canadian Broadcast Corporation and British producers was aimed at international markets. The quickly conglomerating media industry led Henson to consider corporate partnerships to assist with his goal of further expanding the Muppet media universe. In August 1989, he negotiated a deal with Michael Eisner of Disney who announced at Disney-MGM Studios an agreement in principle to acquire The Muppets, with Henson maintaining ownership of the Sesame Street characters. The announcement also included plans to open Muppet-themed attractions at Disney parks. But less than a year later, on May 16, 1990, Henson died from a rare and serious bacterial infection. He was 53. At the end of Fraggle Rocks run, its characters look for new gigs. Of Muppets and mergers Hensons death led to the Disney deals collapse. But the company did license The Muppets to Disney, which co-produced The Muppet Christmas Carol in 1992 and Muppet Treasure Island in 1996 with Jim Henson Productions, which was then run by Jims son, Brian Henson. In 2000, the Henson family sold the Muppet properties to German media company EM.TV & Merchandising AG for $680 million. That company ran into financial trouble soon after, then sold the Sesame Street characters to Sesame Workshop for $180 million in late 2000. The Jim Henson Company bought back the remaining Muppet properties for $84 million in 2003. In 2004, Disney finally acquired The Muppets and most of the media library associated with the characters. Disney continued to produce Muppet content, including The Muppets Wizard of Oz in 2005. Its biggest success came with the 2011 film The Muppets, which earned over $165 million at the box office and won the Oscar for best original song Man or Muppet. Muppets Most Wanted, released in 2014, earned another $80 million worldwide, bringing total global box office receipts to over $458 million across eight theatrical Muppets movies. The Muppet Show goes on The Muppets continue to expand their fandom across generations and genres by performing at live concerts and appearing in several series and films. Through these many hits and occasional bombs, and the Jim Henson Companys personnel changes, the Muppets have adapted to changes in technology and tastes, making it possible for them to remain relevant to new generations. That cat of characters made of felt and foam continue to entertain fans of all ages. Although many people remain nostalgic over The Muppet Show, two prior efforts to reboot the show proved short-lived. But when Disney airs its The Muppet Show anniversary special on Feb. 4, 2026, maybe more people will get hooked as Disney looks to reboot the series The Muppet Show will be back for at least one episode on Feb. 4, 2026. Jared Bahir Browsh, Assistant Teaching Professor of Critical Sports Studies, University of Colorado Boulder This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
Some high-profile acquisitions take out a rising competitor, such as Facebooks acquisition of FriendFeed in 2009, some immediately expand a businesss suite of offerings, such as Salesforces 2020 purchase of Slack, and some may morph into an unrecognizable asset, like Amazons 1999 purchase of Alexa Internet, then a web traffic-tracking website. (The first Amazon Echo marking Alexas debut would launch in 2014.) But many lower-profile tech company acquisitions are made at least in part to gain access to specialized engineering talent. So-called acquihires havent traditionally raised many eyebrows. But the terms definition has been expanding as the AI arms race has accelerated a new form of tacit takeover, the reverse-acquihire. In this move, which isnt technically an acquisition, a company either takes a minority interest in a company or makes no financial investment in it at all. However, it hires one or more founders or key members of the executive team. This can leave the reverse-acquihired company rudderless or can cut off less senior staff from employment opportunities or liquidity. It can also allow the company conducting the reverse-acquihire to avoid the kind of process and oversight that comes with an acquisition. The Federal Trade Commission has said that its starting to scrutinize both reverse and traditional acquihires more closely given their potential for abuse. The canonical answer is that one avoids regulatory scrutiny, right? says Kyle Jensen, professor in the practice of entrepreneurship at Yale School of Management. Particularly antitrust scrutiny. A formal acquisition can trigger merger reviews and give regulators a clear set of documents, valuations and control rights to interrogate to decide whether or not healthy competition has been diminished. Reverse-acquihires dont do any of that. So the FTC is now starting to ask whether hiring the team is basically the same as buying out a company (which would retro-correct the term’s definition drift), but avoiding regulatory scrutiny. My understanding is that [the FTC] really want to make it more of a level position between standard acquisitions and the so-called [reverse-]acquihires, says Igor Letina, associate professor at the University of Bern, Switzerland, speaking in an academic capacity. (Letina is also a vice president of the Swiss Competition Commission.) What they’re signalling is that they will examine both types of deals in the same way according to the same standard, and make sure that they are compliant with antitrust laws. Letina is wary of any attempts to call it a crackdown by the FTC. But what the Commission decides could have huge ramifications for the industry. Reverse-acquihires are expedient exits for the executive team. If the fastest exits become harder, what happens to hiring, to equity promisesand the idea that a soft landing is always an option when setting up a company? Mergers and acquisitions have long been key to the world of business, argues S. Somasegar, managing director at Madrona Venture Group, a Seattle-based venture capital firm. Its how companies can acquire talent, customers and technology. But particularly with the urgent imperative to tap leading AI talent, big firms strategic framework has shifted in recent years from build, buy or partner to build, buy, and partneran ideal scenario for reverse-acquihires. Its somewhat of a new construct, he says. Indeed, that construct is now becoming familiar: a big tech firm hires a founder and a chunk of the team while signing a licensing deal or service agreement with whats left of the startup. Google brought on board Character.AI co-founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas in August 2024 and then licensed its tech, all while avoiding an investment. Meta acquired 49% of Scale AI in June 2025 for $14.8 billion and made co-founder Alexandr Wang Metas Chief AI Officer. Given how closely the impact matches that of an acquisition, Letinas view is that competition authorities should treat it that way. We really shouldn’t focus on the form, he says. We should focus on the economic essence. Is it an acquisition of assets or not? Not everyone thinks reverse-acquihires are inherently suspect. For Jensen, there are plenty of legitimate reasons a buyer might prefer people over the corporate entity. There is a company that has really talented people, he says. Things haven’t really worked out. Maybe the company has a bunch of debts and weird assets and things like that. You don’t even want those. The danger, he suggests, is when a deal stops being just a hire and starts operating as a shadow acquisition. The problem is what to do about it. If such deals are made so risky in regulation that big firms stop doing them, entrepreneurs decision making could start to shift. Every founder wants their company to succeed, but a good backup plan is to exit by selling the top team. If thats closed off, it could impact the rate of new startups being founded. The individuals in the startups also potentially lose their free will to work for a potential acquirer, argues Jensen. Am I forbidden from working for Google? he asks. That’s a weird outcome, right? I ought to be able to work for whomever I wish to work for. Even if a clampdown is politically popular, its not obvious it would protect the people startups employ. Letina points out that the recent move to cherry pick staff and leave the remainder of the team can be especially ugly for what it leaves afterwards. All those people who were left behind got, in essence, a rather bad deal, he says. The recent trend of management leaving rank-and-file staff left holding the bag after they leave may also harm the ability for startups to hire staff. A stricter regime from the FTC could push big firms back towards full acquisitions that scoop up or provide liquidity for more staff. But Somasegar worries any regulatory change could impact on the speed of innovation. Things are moving fast, he says. Industries are changing fast. You can’t put arbitrary speed breakers along the way, he says. I don’t want to be in a situation where a company wants to buy another company and it takes two years before you know whether the acquisition can happen or not.
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E-Commerce
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