Slot machines, magicians, and app designers
Around the turn of the century, people started talking about the “attention economy.” A natural outgrowth of the ad-supported Web, […]
2016
My brain was begging me for relief from social media
Taking control of your social media use may be the most rewarding life hacking technique I know of, given its ratio of benefit to effort. I
31 days of writing
Like many people, my attention is fragmented and my concentration broken. I’m going to try working my way through this with the skills I know best: Writing and editing.
Rough Drafts
The people who believe themselves to be white
Ta-Nehisi Coates, in Between the World and Me, repeatedly refers to “the people who believe themselves to be white.” This curious phrasing opens up the possibility of hope in what for me, as the father of two black children, is otherwise a terrifying and disturbing book.
Field Notes
Hate.
“I honestly feel bad for anyone with that much hate.” –Anastasia Somoza, DNC speaker, July 25, 2016
Field Notes
Invoicing.
I taught the 15 year old how to create an invoice so I could pay her for some work she
A future we may not want.
Kevin Kelly paints a disturbing vision of the next 30 years: A world governed by alien AIs, with screens on every surface, crowdsourced advertisements and influencer marketing campaigns assaulting us from all directions, and overwhelming flows of ephemeral data and “facts” making it impossible to judge the truth of anything. Is this really what we want?
The VR office of the future.
“Oculus Rift headsets are expensive, bulky, and block out the real world completely. But like the early Logitech webcams, they’re
Narrative specificity.
Narrative specificity means avoiding generalizations and using details to make your story come to life. Leave it out, and your
Field Notes
“I have to say, I get a lot of inspiration from just going out and pretending I’ve never been to