Desde Bogotá

Desde Bogotá

Often times I work myself harder than my body is able to support, but this past month has been especially rough. And now I’m paying the price. I arrived to Bogotá yesterday morning with deep purple bags under my eyes, a sore throat, and about enough energy to...

Two Sides of a Window: Technology and Transparency

What follows is a hyperlinked version of my talk at this year’s re:publica conference in Berlin. For a 30-minute talk it was probably a little dense, a bit abstract, and maybe too close to home for a Berlin audience, but here it is nonetheless. This morning...

No More Opera

In the 20th century we sat silently in the opera house; in the 21st century we find ourselves surrounded by the chaos of the karaoke bar under the pressure to participate. Karaoke bars are a hell of a lot more fun than any opera house. And, while to this day I would...
Techno-utopianism and Techno-skepticism

Techno-utopianism and Techno-skepticism

We rented a scooter, my sister and I, and decided to ride the damn thing all the way from Candidasa on one side of Bali to Ubud, almost all the way on the other. On the way my lower back began to ache and, to my eternal frustration, my sister was determined to knock...

Everything is amazing and nobody is happy

And the neo-luddite backlash looms ever nearer on the horizon. I will, really, one day sooner or later, close the laptop, work on a farm, and write … on paper. This and other useful meditations on the good and bad of technological ‘progress’ found on...
South Africa's Joule Electric Car

South Africa's Joule Electric Car

Optimal Energy CEO Kobus Meiring Presenting the Joule Electric Car Who Killed the Electric Car? is a 2006 documentary which shows the roles of American automobile manufacturers, the oil industry, and the US government in stopping production of electric cars in the US,...