Michael Jackson’s Cutting Edge

Most people remember Michael Jackson for his singing and dancing, but he also was at the cutting edge in other ways

Michael Jackson, the self-proclaimed King of Pop, is dead, felled allegedly by a heart attack at a relatively young age.

But he was also at the cutting edge of technology with his John Landis-directed Thriller video being but one example of where he pushed the bounds of technological know-how to the limit.

For his Smooth Criminal video from the 1987 Bad album, he went as far as to patent his ‘anti-gravity’ lean that was incorporated into the video. And he was even granted said patent.

Then in 2001 he got on the bad side of digital rights advocates when his record company Sony modified his Rock Your World CD so it could not be played on PC CD-Rom drives, and therefore be downloaded to portable MP3 players.

Then on the 25th anniversary of the Thriller album, he, his music label and multimedia company Big Stage, made it possible for people create a 3D image of themselves and replace Jackson in the iconic Thriller video.

Finally, even in death, he was at the cutting edge of technology with both Twitter and Internet sites stating huge amounts of traffic we going through portals.