The Last and Next 15 Years of Twitter

The Last and Next 15 Years of Twitter

Lying beneath the angry, sensational game for influence, attention, and shame is still the quaint coffeeshop and witty banter. Can we still find the best of Twitter without getting distracted by the worst? And can Twitter, in its current state of disarray, find a business model that nudges us to become our better selves online? Or at least not our worst selves?

Two Maps and 21st Century Exploration

Two Maps and 21st Century Exploration

The following text was written for an art installation at the new Skylink Terminal of Vienna Airport. The title of the installation, Zeitraum, is a German portmanteau combining zeit (time) and raum (place), and roughly translates to “period of time.”...
Fame, Followers, Anonymity and Activism

Fame, Followers, Anonymity and Activism

What follows is more or less a rough approximation of my notes for a presentation I gave on Monday at a conference organized by the United Nations Development Program and the Institute for Elections and Citizen Participation of Jalisco. The panel, “Technological...

A Delicious Proposal For An Annotated Web

How a takeover of Delicious by Twitter could prepare the web for the 21st century. What can I say, I’m tired of big-ass internet corporations taking over my favorite internet platforms and hanging them on the clothesline only to let them die. I am equally...
April Showers (of too much information)

April Showers (of too much information)

I spent most of the past week reading around 200 pages of academic papers about transparency, accountability, and governance in a cabin in Mexico’s Sierra del Tigre mountain range. No tweeps tweeting; only birds chirping and the wind rustling through the pine...