Riding the web3 wave. I setup this account to document the adventure. Hoping one day the Mondragon accord will be a thing.
A New Science of Cities?
Late 2014, when I was a graduate student at NYU's Center for Urban Science and Progress, I wrote a long essay trying to make sense of something that felt genuinely exciting and slightly overhyped at the same time: the idea that cities had become legible to science in some new way. Geoffrey West and Luis Bettencourt had published their scaling law work. Michael Batty had written "The New Science of Cities." Santa Fe Institute researchers were finding power law relationships in urban data that ...
A New Science of Cities?
Late 2014, when I was a graduate student at NYU's Center for Urban Science and Progress, I wrote a long essay trying to make sense of something that felt genuinely exciting and slightly overhyped at the same time: the idea that cities had become legible to science in some new way. Geoffrey West and Luis Bettencourt had published their scaling law work. Michael Batty had written "The New Science of Cities." Santa Fe Institute researchers were finding power law relationships in urban data that ...
Tending the Garden
On tomatoes, toddlers and touching time
Everything is Translation
On IO structures, shibboleths, and what symbolic systems can't carry
Everything is Translation
On IO structures, shibboleths, and what symbolic systems can't carry
What Happens When Pirates Swap Sails for the Statehouse?
It's a timely question. Silicon Valley's pirate techies increasingly collide with public life. Reflecting on what actually might be going on today, I keep going back to Colin Woodard's The Republic of Pirates and Linda Colley's The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen. Read together, they reframe the early 1700s as a workshop of political technology, where discarded sailors and anxious empires were both running experiments on the basic operating system of collective life. Woodard's pirates were not the...
What Happens When Pirates Swap Sails for the Statehouse?
It's a timely question. Silicon Valley's pirate techies increasingly collide with public life. Reflecting on what actually might be going on today, I keep going back to Colin Woodard's The Republic of Pirates and Linda Colley's The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen. Read together, they reframe the early 1700s as a workshop of political technology, where discarded sailors and anxious empires were both running experiments on the basic operating system of collective life. Woodard's pirates were not the...
Off the Edge, Part Two
Notes from a Conversation with Helena Hythloday
Be Like Water: Field Notes from the Trenches of Regional Climate Adaptation
Written in collaboration with a (new!) cognitive prothesis
Be Like Water: Field Notes from the Trenches of Regional Climate Adaptation
Written in collaboration with a (new!) cognitive prothesis
Buried under the unbearable lightness of infinite information
How much does a hipster weigh? An “insta” gram. Har har har. But wait really how much is that? It doesn’t sound like a lot, does it? Avalanches offer a great metaphor for experiencing the digital revolution not least because information, like snow, is super light yet also capable of suffocation. We’ve all experienced the feeling of scrolling aimlessly through a social media feed, of checking email, texts and other notifications not really for any particular purpose, a loop excellently capture...
Buried under the unbearable lightness of infinite information
How much does a hipster weigh? An “insta” gram. Har har har. But wait really how much is that? It doesn’t sound like a lot, does it? Avalanches offer a great metaphor for experiencing the digital revolution not least because information, like snow, is super light yet also capable of suffocation. We’ve all experienced the feeling of scrolling aimlessly through a social media feed, of checking email, texts and other notifications not really for any particular purpose, a loop excellently capture...
Is context the critical ingredient for not getting buried by the information avalanche?
*This post is part of the information avalanche series. Part 1 lives here. *“Context is that which is scarce.” -Tyler CowenI lit up the Technology a few days back, a typical Tuesday, not dissimilar from any other. Several red icons flashed with numbers inside. A thread of text messages from friends. 47 iterations of back and forth squabbles. My neck tightened with the weight of knowing that at some point I would check those messages. I did not look forward. Instead I felt trapped in the persi...
Is context the critical ingredient for not getting buried by the information avalanche?
*This post is part of the information avalanche series. Part 1 lives here. *“Context is that which is scarce.” -Tyler CowenI lit up the Technology a few days back, a typical Tuesday, not dissimilar from any other. Several red icons flashed with numbers inside. A thread of text messages from friends. 47 iterations of back and forth squabbles. My neck tightened with the weight of knowing that at some point I would check those messages. I did not look forward. Instead I felt trapped in the persi...
Strategies for surviving the information avalanche
Some initial thoughts…. epistemic status: summarizing reflections that I’ve been mulling for several years but things that I’m still testing and refining in operation. What do we mean when we say the digital revolution changes everything? Some things obviously don’t change like our biological need for food, water and shelter. Yet some aspects of the human condition, like how we share information with each other and understand the world around us, emphatically are transformed. The internet off...
Strategies for surviving the information avalanche
Some initial thoughts…. epistemic status: summarizing reflections that I’ve been mulling for several years but things that I’m still testing and refining in operation. What do we mean when we say the digital revolution changes everything? Some things obviously don’t change like our biological need for food, water and shelter. Yet some aspects of the human condition, like how we share information with each other and understand the world around us, emphatically are transformed. The internet off...
