I figured out the reason I find tech punditry – I guess punditry in general – distasteful. I'm writing the first draft of this post in the afterglow of the Apple Watch event, as they announced bigger iPhones and Apple Pay. Of course, all of these announcements have been leaked: the manufacturing pipeline has long...
Whiffies. A silly name for a foreboding concept. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is a book with a few concepts ahead of its time. It takes place in a time when resources are...
My dad just forwarded me the latest family photo email. It's something that parents like to do. And as I watch the email crash my phone from sheer payload size, I began to wonder: why not just connect via Facebook? Or link to a private Dropbox, Flickr, or some other account with a...
Recently my friend and colleague Jack Danger tweeted this question: We engineers say we want to work on "hard problems." Know what's the hardest problem, though? Building a product that's worth a damn. Jack Danger (@jackdanger) January 18, 2014 To which I responded: @jackdanger Take it a step back...
I had written about privilege previously, but this article by Philip Guo on his experience in college really tells of how powerful silent privilege can be and how utterly unnoticeable and indeed unremarkable its recipients can feel. As someone who basically shares the same privilege and demographics, it's easy for me to empathize...
I've been reading Tyler Cowen's Average is Over, in which he argues that as computing takes on more and more aspects of modern society, those who use technology to complement human intuition and skill will race to the top of the (increasingly bifurcating) economic ladder while jobs that can be easily...
