Posts tagged: Essays
Everything I have posted to this site tagged "Essays."
December 29, 2023
Being Normal
In a world of influencer-peddled illusion, we need to normalize being normal....
December 8, 2023
Your Own Personal Picture Collection
On building a personal collection of reference imagery, with a few examples from my own....
August 18, 2023
Organization – Office
This is the office. My wife and I work here, Monday through Friday, 9 to 5. Our children play and create in here just as often. It’s where we...
July 9, 2023
Personal Machines and Portable Worlds
A lifelong fascination with technology begins with a single object. Think back to when you were a child, to when you first encountered something...
July 7, 2023
Gestalt Principles of Design – Symmetry
The Gestalt Principles of Design are a set of concepts and guidelines drawn from gestalt psychology, which theorizes that the mind tends to process...
June 30, 2023
Gestalt Principles of Design – Continuity
The Gestalt Principles of Design are a set of concepts and guidelines drawn from gestalt psychology, which theorizes that the mind tends to process...
June 25, 2023
Gestalt Principles of Design – Similarity
The Gestalt Principles of Design are a set of concepts and guidelines drawn from gestalt psychology, which theorizes that the mind tends to process...
June 16, 2023
Gestalt Principles of Design – Closure
The Gestalt Principles of Design are a set of concepts and guidelines drawn from gestalt psychology, which theorizes that the mind tends to process...
June 14, 2023
Gestalt Principles of Design – Proximity
If the term is new to you, the German word gestalt literally means the way a thing has been placed or put together. Like many German words, there...
June 9, 2023
Negative-Space Typography
Whenever I review design documentation, there are a few things I look for in the first few seconds. All of them have to do with how scannable a page...
June 3, 2023
How to Adapt Long-Page Designs for Better Scanning
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June 2, 2023
The Road Through Your Screen
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May 28, 2023
4 Levels of Grids for Web Designers
I just published an essay on how anchoring the most important information on a web page to the Y-axis will help viewer’s focus on it and pay closer...
May 27, 2023
Using the Y-Axis to Maintain Focus and Attention
Attention is the product of focus. It is what we give information — our observation, concentration, and consideration — when we are able to maintain...
May 20, 2023
The Rhythm of Your Screen
It’s 2023 and I’m still frequently asked by clients about scrolling. I understand why. Every design comes with assumptions about how much content...
May 13, 2023
How to Turn Good Design Direction into a Good System
Ideas don’t stand on their own. When a good idea turns into a good thing, it’s because structure and systems — ones that existed before the idea —...
May 7, 2023
What I Want From The Internet
I’m sitting in a small room in an old house in Durham, North Carolina, USA. When I look out the window, I can see the edges of homes nearby, peeking...
May 6, 2023
What happens when the computers disappear?
Not, of course, when there are no more computers, but when they are so ubiquitous and omnipresent that we...
May 5, 2023
Designing for (Realistic) Attention
When I advise that a webpage — like a service detail page — have a maximum main body word-count of 150 words, I’m really recommending that it ask a...
April 15, 2023
Persuasion
A good design might be persuasive on its own; the notion that a thing “just works” implies that its function, however novel, is an intuitive leap...
March 19, 2023
My Reverse Time Capsule
While rummaging in the WIRED magazine archives, I found this entry from 1995. In it, Douglas Copeland imagines a “reverse time capsule,” sent back...
January 28, 2022
We Live in the Uncanny Valley Now
Making virtual worlds can help us understand the real one, but they’re not places we can live permanently. As a parent, I’ve had the chance to...
December 17, 2021
What Eyes Want
If you drive up or down Interstate 95 between Virginia and Georgia, you will see sign after pun-riddled sign beckoning you to pull off the highway...
December 3, 2021
Are We Ready?
Inventions that were ahead of their time can help us to understand whether we are truly ready to live in the world we are making. Speculative...
November 19, 2021
There Is No Digital World
Everything digital costs something physical. It’s time for a digital conservation movement. The digital world is a parasite that we...
November 5, 2021
What We Do When We See
What does it even mean to design when perception is reality? Do we all ever see the same thing? In, Visual Intelligence, a wonderful book about...
November 5, 2021
What If Phones Were Actually Designed for Hands?
Phones no longer fit in the hands they were made to be held and used by. How did that happen? The human hand is a marvel. Whether by design or...
October 29, 2021
Can a Robot Do a Designer's Job?
Automation isn’t as much of a threat as we have been told. “Wouldn’t it be better if websites just made themselves?” That was the pitch for...
October 22, 2021
A Pep Talk for those Who Work Bullshit Jobs
How do you know if what you do is actually meaningful? The late anthropologist David Graeber once wrote that “huge swathes of people in the...
October 15, 2021
The Last Time
Life has as many ends as it has beginnings. What can an end teach us about making our world? “Bye, Chris” were the last words a friend said to...
September 17, 2021
Move Slow and Preserve Things
Haste has created waste. Someone please tell Zuckerberg to slow the hell down. Low-rent Machiavelli Mark Zuckerberg once said, “Move fast and...
September 3, 2021
Less Doesn't Have to Be More. It Can Just Be Less.
How much is enough? So much of what we design assumes that either the question has not been answered or has no answer at all. This must change....
August 27, 2021
From the Desk Of
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could actually peer over another designer’s shoulder once in a while and see what they actually do? If I introduce...
August 20, 2021
Systems Design is Not Enough
What good is thinking ahead in a world built entirely upon rewarding the opposite? Many years ago, I scheduled a physical with a new doctor. It...
August 13, 2021
Books
still matter in the digital age. Here are a few recommendations you might find of interest. I have long been interested in media matters...
July 30, 2021
We Have Eight Years Left
We must radically reduce carbon emissions by 2030 in order to avoid the most catastrophic damage of climate change. How can you help? We have...
July 23, 2021
First Principles
Hiring for skills is mostly bogus. Hiring for soft skills is better. Hiring for principles is ideal. How’s this for an idea: Hiring for skills...
July 16, 2021
Why I Am Still A Designer
Why we became designers is not what will keep us in the practice. There are four skills that must become the substance of our craft. I am a...
July 2, 2021
Turn It All Off
This is an intervention. We are addicted to media. Our screen time crisis will not be solved by technology, but by will. For my generation,...
June 18, 2021
We Write, Therefore We Are Cyborgs
Language is as intrinsic to the human experience as many of our biological functions, and yet it is our own creation. That is strange. Text is...
June 11, 2021
The Mosaic
The digital experience has outgrown the names we commonly use. Now is the time to think deeply about what we call it. The Internet is a bad...
May 28, 2021
The World is Crowded and That is Natural
Minimalism is en vogue. But how minimal can a lived-in world really be? Tokyo, crowded and beautiful. A lived-in world is crowded. It is...
May 21, 2021
The Luddites Were Right
Luddism wasn’t really about technology. But was their skepticism toward development a good thing? This image depicts Ned Ludd in 1812....
May 14, 2021
We Don't Need More Information
How do we make sense of reality if we can’t trust facts, sources, or one another? This image was taken by the crew of Apollo 15....
May 7, 2021
The Problem With Design is Designers
Psychology and process can get in our way just as often as they can help us get things done. This painting by Rene Magritte is ironically...
April 30, 2021
Think About the Future's Past
Emotional Futurism is a different way of shaping the future by considering about how we will feel about the past. A package arrived in the...
April 23, 2021
Encapsulated Experiences
Desire Paths and Capsule Reviews are mashed up here, for your consideration. Simplicity is a deception. The plainest things will lure you in;...
April 12, 2021
73 Ideas that Should Provoke You
Not everything that can be imagined should come into being. The mind can only suspend so much disbelief, especially when it’s trying to be...
April 9, 2021
Progress Jams
Why most innovation never actually happens. The MiniDisc’s big moment in Strange Days. On most evenings in 1999, you might have found me...
April 2, 2021
Other Ways
There are three reasons why what we make ends up the same as everything else. Here’s what we can do about it. Sameness is the enemy of...
April 2, 2021
The Power of Small Images
Stamps, Computational Linguistics, and Minspeak all share a reliance upon the way pictures can communicate faster than words. Though I am not...
March 19, 2021
Future Objects
An object made for a better future will be locally controlled, indefinitely powered, sustainable, autonomous, private, and imaginative. Sixteen...
March 12, 2021
Your Phone is Destroying the World
Our cultural obsession with the new has created a destructive cycle of consumption and destruction that affects so much more than just us....
March 5, 2021
The Circle of Now
In our home, there are eleven clocks. Some may say that eleven clocks in a home is eleven too many. I disagree. I will grant that a clock is no...
February 26, 2021
The Riddle of the Square
Shapes are mysterious. They are basic, rudimentary forms — simple ideas upon which we build more complex systems of understanding. They are also...
February 19, 2021
Attention Stewardship
Some people saw the thrashing idscape in which we tribulate coming from a long way off. And they called it “the attention economy.” A recent New...
February 11, 2021
This Is Not Good Design
Much has been written about what makes for good design. All of it is fiercely debated by designers, who would rather find ways to exclude one...
February 5, 2021
Search Engines Don't Work and They Are Not Good
“A good question is much more difficult than a brilliant answer.” That’s a decent summation of Richard Saul Wurman’s life’s work. That he said it...
January 29, 2021
The Biggest Dream is of the Small, Simple Life
Every other Tuesday, a few friends and I get together in the evening for what we jokingly refer to as “Church.” We’re all formerly of the fold, so...
January 27, 2021
Cross-Examining Coincidence in the Courtroom of Technology
So many readers sent in notes in reply to my last article that I thought something of a post-script was warranted. I must say, though, that I am so...
January 22, 2021
That Coincidental Advertisement is Not Just a Coincidence
I have never eaten a Bel Vita cracker in my life. I’d never even heard of the brand until I was visiting with my brother and he pulled them out of...
January 15, 2021
Good Prophecy Doesn't Have to Be Right
We shouldn’t try to predict the future. We should envision the futures we want and then go and make them. “Alexander Consulting the Oracle of...
January 8, 2021
We Have A Reality Problem
In the early 1990s, when the internet was still in its structural infancy, and its influence on broader culture was widely underestimated if not...
December 31, 2020
Success Mysticism
Few things make me sadder than the now predictable moment at which a successful person creates a sellable mysticism out of their good luck and...
July 1, 2020
The Place Where We Shelter
If the human eye suffered the same burn-in effect that some screens do, this would be the image now set against everything else for me. For the last...
April 20, 2018
Active Erasure
My favorite professor, Al DeCredico, used to begin his fall semester foundation year drawing course with a strange assignment: make a drawing in the...
April 6, 2018
Progress Bombs
Easter Island; Image sourced from Wikipedia. Over a century ago, Oxford University’s administration decided to finally do something about the...
March 8, 2018
Computer Nostalgia and Malignant Doppelwelts
I am nostalgic for the computer. Yes, for the thing that, today, I have more of than I ever needed — or ever wanted. In a world where computers are...
February 22, 2018
Want to Resist? Delete Your Facebook Account
Tags The only meaningful act of protest in the 21st century is to permanently delete your digital accounts. Facebook. Netflix. Amazon. The big...
July 28, 2017
Unexpected and Realistic AI Headlines
Picture me staring at eight different TextEdit windows, each full of notes of things I’ve been thinking about lately and had saved there with the...
July 18, 2017
Introducing The Liminal
I know. It’s been a while. More than six months, actually. It’s been a much longer break than I intended, and I’ll be up front with you, it’s not...
December 4, 2016
Facebook Is Not necessary
I wrote this shortly after the 2016 election. Though it exposed deeper divisions among Americans than were commonly acknowledged beforehand, I...
November 4, 2016
Talking to Machines
Greetings from a very quiet kitchen at the Newfangled HQ. Mark’s Sonos Jazz alarm went off at 7:30 as usual, and right now one of my favorite...
October 29, 2016
Behind Every Robot is a Human
Hello from our quiet house on a Saturday afternoon. The pup is out sleeping in the sun, occasionally watching as the chickens peck around the...
October 10, 2016
Unearthed Time Capsules
Hello from Emerald Isle, where I am sitting on a porch listening to waves crash on the shore. The beach in October is a pretty nice place. I’ll be...
October 2, 2016
Words Matter
Where are you right now? If you were to set down the little screen you’re holding, or look past the big screen in front of you, what would you see?...
September 2, 2016
Design is Art with Rules
Current Status: Accepting the age-old truth that we are quickly who we are, as a recently unearthed postcard I sent to my mother and soon-to-be...
August 13, 2016
A Solution that Doesn't Exist
Current status: It’s early on Saturday in the very hot and humid city of Durham, North Carolina, and I am sitting in the dim morning light of our...
July 30, 2016
We don't fear the future…
I must admit to having been nervous to publish this. I’ve never been afraid to expose private things in my writing; if you’ve read my blog for long...
June 9, 2016
A Slice of Life
Current status: I received an interesting email from a reader recently. She wrote, “It’s easy to assume things about someone else’s life based upon...
June 3, 2016
How to Design a Different Future
Current Status: Ahead is a long read, so I’ll get out of the way as quickly as possible. I’m sitting at my desk on a Friday afternoon, drinking an...
May 27, 2016
The Magic of Ordinary Objects
Picture me marveling at the wonder of text, impervious as it is to the law of supply and demand. No matter how much we write, we want more. And by...
May 12, 2016
When the World Around You Shook
You are sitting on the couch in your living room. It is seven o’clock in the morning on a Saturday in April. You are the only one awake in the...
March 17, 2016
Unchecked Attention Avarice
Current Status: Much more this than this, but man, who wouldn’t want to be at the base of Chimborazo at least once in their life? That second link...
March 10, 2016
How to Think About the Future
Current Status: Trying, but in a roboty kind of way. You see, sometimes this blog is about design. Sometimes technology. Sometimes both. And every...
February 26, 2016
Sympathy for the Sim
Picture me on the couch with both cat and pup vying for prime real estate on my lap, both presumably annoyed that this cold, glowing machine is...
February 19, 2016
The Most Difficult Thing About Design
I’ve been thinking all week about design. What is design, exactly? Is it an idea? An action? A thing? Linguistically, it’s all of those things....
February 11, 2016
Technological Luxury is Powered by Oppression
The greatest lie of technology is that it is the great equalizer. Technology has its own caste system. If you don’t know that, then that means...
February 4, 2016
Beneath the Interface Layer
Hello friends. Picture me in the text editor. I’ve been there a lot this week. I wrote a couple of articles over at Newfangled, one On Letting Go,...
January 22, 2016
How to Get Your Time Back
Hello, friends, and another Happy New Year to you! My last post was mostly written in 2015, so this one feels like a fresh start. Current status:...
January 2, 2016
We Are What We Watch
Last year, I created a lifetime mix and shared it with you. It comprised thirty-four years of music; one song chosen for each year I’ve been alive...
December 18, 2015
Upgrading Our Way Out
Hello, friends. I’m back. I laid low for a month, focusing my time on closing out the year with goals met and new ones set. Meanwhile, a bunch of...
November 13, 2015
Time's First Principles
A little more than a year ago, I started this newsletter with the idea that I’d sit in the early morning darkness of my home office once a week and...
November 6, 2015
Until They All Have Faces
Hello, friends! I’m grateful that there are some of you who notice when I miss a weekly post, like my mom, who will reliably send a text: “no post...
October 23, 2015
Back to the Real Future
Hello, friends, and welcome new ones! Some of you must have shared last week’s letter with others, and so our numbers grow. If each of you shared...
October 16, 2015
The Fit Filter
Hello, friends, and welcome, new ones! Thirty-six of you have been with me since the beginning, that first post, written just over a year ago. We’ve...
October 9, 2015
Street Ritual
Current status: back in the office after a few days at HOW Interactive in Chicago. It was such a pleasure to listen and learn from the many...
September 25, 2015
The Gift in Our Work
Current Status: Officing it. Coffeing it. Sonosing it loud here to the sounds of some Newfangleder’s energetic Spotify playlist. Current song:...
September 18, 2015
Sabbaticalifragilisticexpialidocious!
Current Status: Up early, shaking off the debate hangover (three hours?! my god!) and marveling that The Joker has indeed manifest a tulpa and its...
August 21, 2015
The dream of the Nineties is alive…
Picture me tapping this message out to you on my phone, hoping that the weak signal I’ve caught will hold for long enough. I’m out in the mountains...
August 14, 2015
It won’t be interesting until we can’t see it anymore.
Hello, friends. I guess you guys were snacky last week! Many of you sent thoughtful replies to the mixpost, especially the bits about women and...
August 7, 2015
Step aside, keep quiet, and listen.
Hello, friends. Greetings from the other side of the apocalypse that was last week’s post. Somehow, it was the most divisive thing I’ve sent out...
July 30, 2015
Greetings from the Rubbish Patch
The commercial opens with a series of quick, intimate shots. Someone writing a letter by hand; someone shaking a polaroid as its exposure settles; a...
July 24, 2015
The Last Thing We Need
Picture me at home, in the office. It’s 9:41 PM, Eastern Standard Time. The sun has set on Durham. The chickens are roosting. The lights have been...
July 15, 2015
Enter the Void
Hello, old friends! And welcome, new ones. I invite you to not think about the future with us, this small but gathering crowd of the curious, we...
July 2, 2015
Perceiving the Machine
Hello, friends. Good news: we survived the leap second. I was worried, you know, after that Y2K fiasco and all. You never know what kind of computer...
June 26, 2015
Where are you, Digital Le Corbusier?
Hello there. According to the numbers, you are probably new to the Don’t Think About the Future fold. You are part of a recent swell of interest...
June 19, 2015
Randoposto
Picture me stuffing a bunch of text into the random-letter-machine and seeing what comes out. I stayed up late and got up early and was driving to...
June 12, 2015
Keeping the Fire Lit
Picture me asking for help. God grant me the strength to not watch Season One of The X-Files all over again for the thousandth time simply because I...
June 4, 2015
The Power of Perspective
Picture me monopolizing the conversation. I mean, not really, but when I look at my wordcount in the transcript of a recent roundtable I did with...
June 3, 2015
Emails are the new blogs.
A few weeks ago, Ian Fitzpatrick — of Dark Matter fame — sent an email to me and a few other writers that began a long and in-depth conversation...
May 28, 2015
What is an idea worth?
Picture me up at five; laced up, earbuds in; up and down hills and around the city; back home, cooling down; showered; packed lunch; to the office;...
May 26, 2015
We Always Start Now
I wrote the Interaction column for the Spring, 2015 issue of PRINT magazine, which was a true honor because this issue also celebrated PRINT’s 75th...
May 8, 2015
The Designer Stands Firm
Picture me in the early morning light of my office downstairs, filling its silence with the muted clatter of the keyboard, the pause and pin-drop...
May 1, 2015
Etc. Etc. Etc.
Picture me in the cloud. Look, I’m a pretty tech savvy guy and I’m all about the future and what not, but this is the first time I’ve actually...
April 17, 2015
Advertising is an Anachronism
Picture me frazzled. It’s been a busy past few weeks. I’ve been here and there, at events and planning for upcoming ones. I missed last week because...
April 3, 2015
A 200-Word Mixpost
Picture me lorem ipsuming here because I’m actually just sitting in a chair in an office staring at a big rectangular lamp and typing like we do...
March 27, 2015
The Cost of Cognitive Surplus
Picture me back in the habit. I took a break last week. It was needed. But I’m back with a bunch of words (prepare yourselves! prepare your...
March 13, 2015
A.I. is U.I.
Picture me running on a treadmill yesterday at the gym. I’ve only been on about five minutes when a woman hops on the machine to my left, plugs in...
March 6, 2015
The way to make good things is to make many things.
Picture me waking, making, breaking, steaking, baking, flaking, taking, faking, shaking, aching, caking, mistaking and bellyaching. Well, that got...
February 27, 2015
Neighborhoods, the Anti-Algorithm
Picture me snowed in. Eight inches of it is enough to shut things down for a day in these parts. But, hey, it sure is pretty. So, look, bear with me...
February 20, 2015
Everyone is someone else’s marketer…
Picture me huddled up inside where the ice can’t get me. But whatever. I live in a typically warm place and we had a little ice storm. If you live...
February 11, 2015
Don't Think About the Future
Picture me back in the habit. Another week lapsed. Another grandparent lost to the other side. Two weeks after my father’s mother, my mother’s...
January 29, 2015
Through the Looking Glass
(Hi, friends! And welcome, new ones. Old friends may have noticed that I took last week off. My Grandmother passed away after 100 years of intrepid...
January 16, 2015
Futures of Making and Being
Picture me picturing myself at home tonight, sitting on the couch with a lady, a pup, and a cat, feet up, a drink in hand, watching that show...
January 9, 2015
Liner Notes for a Lifetime Mix
Picture me in full High Fidelity mode. You’ll soon see what I mean by that. Oh, and welcome, new friends. Yes, this is ordinarily a post about...
January 1, 2015
Thirty-Four (a lifetime film list)
Just as I finished my lifetime music mix, it occurred to me that a lifetime film list would be a good idea. So here it is. There were some very...
December 31, 2014
Thirty-Four (a lifetime mix)
It’s the end of the year; why not another list? This one is a bit different, though. A friend shared with me the idea of making a mix of songs from...
December 19, 2014
We'll get there fast and then we'll take it slow.
Picture me eating a cookie for breakfast. You know it’s the holiday season when you do ridiculous things like eat a cookie for breakfast. And with...
December 12, 2014
The information is not entirely online.
Picture me staring at Chrome and marveling that I’ve pushed it to the point where the tabs are barely big enough to fit the “X” and my Textedit page...
December 4, 2014
"I just want something real to happen."
Picture me up early, half hour sitting in silence on the floor, up and tying my shoes, chasing my own breath on dark streets, back home, shave,...
November 28, 2014
Blackfridaycore
Picture me sitting by the fire, mass-deleting emails from companies who want me to be shopping right now. It’s Black Friday. (Friends in foreign...
November 21, 2014
We are all working for different futures.
Picture me at 37,000 feet in a United-brand flying tube hurtling eastward at 505 miles per hour. I’m returning home after a great time speaking at...
November 13, 2014
Hyper-local NIMBYism (and Other Easy Critiques)
Picture me in the office alone last night when I wrote this. It was thoroughly November. The post-sunset blue light peering in through the windows...
November 6, 2014
The Inexorable March of Convenience
Picture me pouring the coffee. I’m working from home today. The pup is sprawled out on the floor; she’s working on her Cong which I’ve filled to the...
October 30, 2014
21st Century Simulacra
Picture me fussing around with some sketches of a product I need that doesn’t exist yet. It’s a bit half-baked at the moment, but it’s something...
October 23, 2014
Something Wetter than Pixels
Picture me upstairs in a dark and quiet house. It’s 11:15 p.m. I’ve just returned from three very full days at a conference in Chicago. The animals...
October 16, 2014
A cup of tea and a crowbar materialize in space...
Picture me rounding the corner this morning, heading in the opposite direction of coffee, just to take another look at the arcade that is presently...
October 9, 2014
Truth and Ditto
Picture me alone in a silent office. It’s so quiet that I can hear the distant and muffled sound of water moving through pipes throughout the...
October 4, 2014
Take Time
Picture me up in the air, at 35,000 feet, with a six inch screen inviting me to sit back, snack, and enjoy the entertainment. I would if I could,...
October 1, 2014
Flesh and Machine
Picture me sitting in the dark of my home office, staring in disbelief at two things. Number one, the absurd number of open tabs in my browser. One...
September 29, 2014
Going Postal
Picture me finishing up my lunch at the Game-of-Thrones-ish table in our office dining room. This massive and gorgeous thing was handmade by a local...
September 27, 2014
Independent Brains
Picture me watching my younger brother play Hill Climb Racing on our Amazon TV while he eats what he calls a “peanut butter surprise.” Somehow, an...
September 25, 2014
The Disappointment of Now
Picture me on the couch in my den, trying my best to type three or four words in between being pawed by a certain Border Collie who insists I’ve...
September 23, 2014
Time-Collapsers, Great and Small
Picture me downstairs in my little office at home. It’s 6:15 AM. My partner is upstairs sleeping. She’s recovering from a day-long fever. My brother...
August 13, 2014
On Expertise and Control
Just a moment or so in to an hour-long consulting session, something unexpected happened. I was hunched over, hands planted shoulder-width apart on...
April 14, 2014
How to Tell the User's Story
User Stories, User Scenarios, and Use Cases can all help you better understand who your users are and ensure that what matters to them makes its way...
March 30, 2014
Remote Viewing
In the 1970’s, physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff were studying a variety of parapsychological phenomena at the Stanford Research Institute...
March 26, 2014
Maybe that acquisition is just good advertising.
Google and Facebook, they’re up to something. I mean, they have to be, right? All these acquisitions must mean something! This reminds me of when...
March 14, 2014
"Disruption"
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, Dan Hon has been killing it lately with his daily dispatches. Here’s a clip from yesterday that really spoke to...
March 9, 2014
Guts
A few months ago, I woke up from a dream that left me feeling upset for days, though the more I recount it, the less upsetting it seems. In the...
March 4, 2014
This Mediated Life
Time to report! How did you sleep? What time did you wake up today? Are you working? What are you doing? Where are you? Who are you with? What did...
February 25, 2014
Groupthink
videoessay About midway through the interview, Lofgren is explaining how he first became interested in digging deeper and sticking his nose where it...
February 21, 2014
There’s a person at the other end.
Last summer, Charlie Rose hosted a short segment on 60 Minutes about David Kelley. It covered a short history of IDEO through the lens of David...
February 20, 2014
More destabilizing ideas, please.
An idea doesn’t have to be objectively true to be valuable, does it? Some ideas are intrinsically valuable, irrespective of their truth or...
February 19, 2014
We don't solve real problems anymore.
Yesterday, on the way home from work, I heard someone on the radio say, “The last thing we need are smartphones.” It was said as a quick aside. The...
January 22, 2014
Detroit
I’ve just returned from a brief visit to Detroit. My father, step-mother, three brothers and sister live there. So do my three uncles, three aunts,...
January 3, 2014
Being Online in 2014
Hours in to the long, slow drive up north for the holidays, with nothing but wilderness around me, I was still thinking about the web. I had left in...
January 1, 2014
Loves and Resolutions
I don’t normally make New Year’s resolutions, but if there was one lesson that 2013 taught me, it is to be intentional in all things. On this first...
October 15, 2012
Don't Be So Linear
The October issue of PRINT is out, and with it, my latest Interaction column. This issue is focused on international design, so it gave me an...
August 11, 2012
Stuck in Idle
The August issue of PRINT Magazine is out, and with it, my latest column. It’s a different type of piece; this one is about information overload and...
May 29, 2012
Several Things I Have Learned
Just a few things I’ve learned that are on my mind as I draw closer to my 32nd birthday… I’m nearing the end of my thirty-second year on this...
May 14, 2012
Playing with Data
I love the fusion of infoaesthetics and abstract expressionism that Holly Gressley put into her illustration for my column in June’s issue of PRINT....
March 13, 2012
On Digital Davids and Goliaths: Why the Design We Trust Usually Comes from the Little Guy
My latest Interaction column for Print Magazine is now out in the April issue! And, hey, look, they kept my original title (first time)! Neat. Also,...
January 10, 2012
Future Daydream
This is my fourth Interaction column for Print Magazine. My original title: “A Post-Screen Future.” No matter. The illustration by Zut Alors! is as...
December 15, 2011
Ethical Technology, 5
Well, I think I’m winding down here. I can tell that I’m close to being out of things to say (for now, anyway); my mind has begun to wander back to...
December 14, 2011
Ethical Technology, 4
So far, my ramblings have gone from monopolies of information to the filter bubble to the economics of the internet. Today, what about automation...
December 13, 2011
Ethical Technology, 3
Continuing these thoughts in a meandering sort of way (Part 1 → Part 2 → You Are Here). Yesterday I was talking about the filter bubbles that we...
December 12, 2011
Ethical Technology, 2
So, picking up on Part 1. The next thing that came to mind as far as ethics and technology are concerned is the filter bubble (as coined by Eli...
December 11, 2011
Ethical Technology, 1
A few weeks ago, I sat down for a cup of coffee and conversation with a new friend—someone who had been put in touch with me by a mutual friend of...
September 16, 2011
Smarter, Better Cyborgs
This is my third Interaction column for Print Magazine. …or, as I originally titled it, “Designing the Unseen.” But, this title plus Tim Lahan’s...
July 15, 2011
How Should We Contain the Cloud
This is my second Interaction column for Print Magazine. My original title was “Post-Desk Content,” but the editors reframed it as an interesting...
June 1, 2011
The Folly of the Flock
This is my first Interaction column for Print Magazine. I’m proud of the article, and very thankful for the opportunity to write for the same design...
February 10, 2010
We are Latently Enslaved by Our Own Ingenuity
Chuck Klosterman, in his essay, “Fail,” (one of several collected in the book, Eating the Dinosaur) wrote: “We are latently enslaved by our own...
July 24, 2009
Interview with John Maeda
I first encountered John Maeda during my third year as a student at the Rhode Island School of Design. I was fascinated by his work, which merged...
February 6, 2009
Can Any Problem Be Solved?
Bill Gates asks this question (specifically toward the problem of Malaria) in his TED conference talk from this week, but I’m interested in the...
February 3, 2009
21st Century Skillset
In a culture column of titled What Technology Has Taught us at Dizzying Speed, Alicia Rawsthorn muses on some areas in which technological change...
January 27, 2009
The End of Solitude
I came across a wonderful piece written in The Chronicle of Higher Education titled The End of Solitude, by William Deresiewicz, which emphatically...
January 26, 2009
Time Definitely Has Value
I am just finishing up reading Blown to Bits: How the New Economics of Information Transforms Strategy by Philip Evans and Thomas S. Wurster, which,...
January 23, 2009
The Great Equalizer
I’ve been reading a book titled What Are You Optimistic About? Today’s Leading Thinkers on Why Things Are Good and Getting Better, edited by John...
January 19, 2009
In Real Life
I just read an insightful post from Russell Davies about how screens are getting boring. He elaborates: “It’s really hard to impress anyone with...
January 7, 2009
Respond
I just saw an interesting post from Wired’s Epicenter blog discussing a new approach to user comments on blogs. The author points out that since...
September 22, 2008
Interview with Silas Munro
Silas and I were classmates at Rhode Island School of Design and have known each other for almost a decade now (wow). Silas is also a graduate of...