Jan. 21, 2020
I’m here with a special Sunday essay for this week’s Exponential View. Katy Cook, a long-time reader, recently published a book, The Psychology of Silicon Valley. As I am busy kicking off the new podcast series, I asked her to step in this week.
Jan. 14, 2020
Our world is better off now than at any point in human history, but at the same time things have never been worse. It’s a contradiction that presents us with a seemingly unresolvable conundrum: the source of our progress has become the source of our downfall.
Dec. 30, 2019
“Interoperability” is the act of making a new product or service work with an existing product or service: modern civilization depends on the standards and practices that allow you to put any dish into a dishwasher or any USB charger into any car’s cigarette lighter.
Dec. 20, 2019
Over the course of a few short years, a technological revolution shook the world. New businesses rose and fell, fortunes were made and lost, the practice of reporting the news was reinvented, and the relationship between leaders and the public was thoroughly transformed, for better and for worse.
Dec. 15, 2019
For the designers of buildings, degrowth requires abandoning the idea of a final, pristine work of architecture. As a bar of soap, ARCHITECTURE is a communal resource for Triennale visitors to clean themselves.
Nov. 26, 2019
I had hoped that 30 years from its creation, we would be using the web foremost for the purpose of serving humanity. Projects like Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap and the world of open source software are the kinds of constructive tools that I hoped would flow from the web.
Nov. 25, 2019
I get it: I’m one of the last people you’d expect to hear warning about the danger of conspiracies and lies. I’ve built a career on pushing the limits of propriety and good taste. I portrayed Borat, the first fake-news journalist, along with satirical characters such as Ali G, a wannabe gangster, and Bruno, a gay fashion reporter from Austria.
Nov. 25, 2019
The Web was designed to bring people together and make knowledge freely available. It has changed the world for good and improved the lives of billions. Yet, many people are still unable to access its benefits and, for others, the Web comes with too many unacceptable costs.
Nov. 10, 2019
In July 2018, I ran a workshop called _What Is Your Utopia_ at SpaceUs Roslindale, an MIT DesignX project that turned empty shopfronts into artist studios. The goal was to not only to demonstrate how utopian thinking can help us imagine new ways to address problems but also to show how anyone’s vision of an ideal world would inevitably impose their personal values as universals.
Nov. 7, 2019
It’s funny how you can leave a place, like your hometown, or the city where you went to college, and when you return, so much is as you left it. The bar where you ordered your first drink with a fake I.D. has barely changed.