Vice Media‘s Motherboard and CBS Interactive‘s CNET have set aside their competitive differences to make some money on a series exploring the tech of tomorrow.
Under the pact, Vice and CBSI will jointly produce “Dear Future,” a series focusing on technology topics including space travel, the ethics of genome editing, internet freedom, the future of virtual reality, robotics, artificial intelligence and the future of transportation. “Dear Future” will run on both CBSI’s CNET and Vice’s Motherboard tech sites, as well as their respective mobile and social platforms — designed to marry CNET’s reach with the street cred of Motherboard’s tech-culture vibe.
The collaboration kicks off Monday with the first “Dear Future” installment, a cyborg-themed piece titled “How We’ll Eventually Control Everything With Our Minds” (pictured above). The companies will produce additional long-form stories and plan to release a docu-series later this fall.
Vice and CBSI have signed two sponsors for “Dear Future”: Microsoft’s Surface line of tablet computers is the global sponsor, and Audi is the U.S. sponsor.
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“It’s gratifying to have found a kindred spirit in CNET,” said Thobey Campion, head of publishing at Vice. The alliance provides a unique opportunity “to bring this wealth of editorial and video to a greatly expanded global audience, ultimately waking people up to innovations that will impact all of humanity.”
Added Mark Larkin, senior VP and GM of CNET, “This partnership enables us to combine the editorial expertise of CNET and Motherboard to produce new and unique content that showcases the possible.”
CNET, which first launched in 1994 at the dawn of the internet, publishes news and reviews focused on consumer technology. Vice originally launched Motherboard in 2009 as a docu-series sponsored by Dell. Motherboard’s focus on the cultural impact of technology fills what Vice calls “the gap between more sterile gadget-review sites and industry news” — a diss surely meant to exclude CNET for the purposes of the “Dear Future” partnership.
