Taplin is an author and director emeritus of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab. Taplin’s book Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google and Amazon Have Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy was published by Little, Brown & Co. in April of 2017. The book 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. Taplin graduated from Princeton University. He 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.