Society & Culture

Last week, having been inspired by (of all things) this awesome and awful samsung gear commercial, i ordered a Pebble smartwatch. I can’t remember the last time I wore a watch — maybe it was 20 years ago in high school.  My standard line for the past 10 years has been “why do I need… Continue readin...

There are a lot of great insights in Benedict Evans’ most recent report. It’s worth a read. One that stood out to me is this one: Because a lot of our social network lives at the phone OS layer (contacts), and because mobile social may be “sticky like nightclubs, not like banks”, perhaps the switchi...

Last week, I traveled to SF, and ended up on a flight with no internet (aaaaaaagh!). And, of course, I forgot to bring the book I’m currently reading. So, I went old school and bought a book at the airport bookstore.  I honestly can’t remember the last time I did that.   Actually, I bought two books...

Here’s a plug for Anthony Townsend‘s new book, Smart Cities (which I haven’t read yet but have discussed with him throughout the making).  I can’t wait to get my hands on it, and suspect that it’ll be an enlightening read for anyone watching the “smart cities” / “civic hacking” space. The angle I’m ...

Janelle Orsi has an article in Shareable that should be of interest for anyone following the “sharing economy” (or “peer economy”, or whatever you want to call it). It tackles one of the most difficult and interesting problems facing sharing economy platforms: the relationship (technically speaking,...

I’m here today at the Adaptive Metropolis conference at UC Berkeley, organized by ReBar.  Which, as I suspected it would be, is awesome.  The premise of the conference is how cities, and the way we plan, manage and engage with them, is changing — an in particular, how bottom-up, diy, adaptive, respo...

There are at least two startups that I know of (Pave and Upstart) that facilitate VC-style equity investment in individuals.  Upstart describes this as “the startup is you”. In both cases, the idea is as follows: raise money from backers in exchange for a percentage of your future earnings.  The ide...

I spent the day yesterday at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in DC, at an event discussing mobile payments and related innovations and regulatory issues. Naturally, this is a big issue, with the huge rush to mobile everything, the continued expansion of software-powered web businesses, and ...

I’m writing this from the DC metro, which I love.  Getting from the airport to downtown dc is one of the great joys of traveling.  I can’t think of a single airport that is as conveniently connected to a major city by mass transit. But the point of this post is not to talk about… Continue reading

(I’m writing this on the amtrak to NY as my computer quickly runs out of battery, and I have no charger, so this’ll be short…) Somehow, earlier this week, I came across Zenep Tufekci’s piece from last spring in the Atlantic on Social Media’s Small, Positive Role in Human Relationships.  I liked it, ...

Yesterday I gave a talk at this year’s Personal Democracy Forum.  For those who don’t know it, PDF is a great event, and is now in its 10th year of bringing together the community of folks working at the intersection of tech, politics, and civics.  You can see all the talks from yesterday (and today...

The week before last, I attended the Mesh Conference in SF, which brought together a big group of folks working at the intersection of the web and the “new economy”: i.e., the “sharing economy”, “peer economy”, “connection economy”, “collaborative consumption”, “the mesh”, etc.  As you might imagine...

What happened yesterday in Boston so sad and awful.  And it’s deeply scary.  All of the communities I’m part of — family, work, school, city — have been shaken by this. But the most important thing we can do coming away from this is not get scared in our core.  If that happens, they win… Continue re...

Today I turn 34. For some reason, I can’t get Fred’s post about turning 17 for the third time out of my head. As I have been approaching this milestone, I can’t help but feel like I’m turning the corner to a new phase. I definitely feel like the last 17 years have been about figuring… Continue readi...

Last week I was playing ping pong with Zander and the topic of conversation (naturally) turned to canal skating in Ottawa. You see, in Ottawa during the wintertime, the city’s canals freeze over and they turn into  temporary frozen streets.  As you can see above, Ottawans turn to using them for thei...

One of the more important, more contentious, and more complicated tech policy issues is radio spectrum allocation. It’s an issue I don’t have a lot of background experience in but have been learning a lot about lately. It’s a hot topic right now because the FCC is about to hold incentive auctions to...

Yesterday I spent the day at Princeton with Steve Schultze and the rest of the team at the Center for Information Technology Policy. The topic of my talk was “Peer Progress and Regulation 2.0” — something I’ve been thinking and talking about over the past several months, but haven’t yet written a to...

I am so inspired by Kid President.  If you haven’t seen the video, go watch it now, and get your pep talk on. So… with kid on our shoulder, let’s think about how to make NYC more awesome.  From a tech policy perspective :) A few weeks ago the (already awesome) NY Tech Meetup launched… Continue readi...

This was a pretty fun weekend for alternative media experiences. Of course, House of Cards launched on Netflix, testing a new model of distribution, and the Super Bowl was interrupted by a 30-minute blackout, leading to a rush to “newsjack” the moment on social media. What I like about both the Netf...

Happy MLK Day everyone. I just spent the last half hour reading MLK’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail.  To be totally honest, I don’t think I’ve ever read it in its entirety before.  It is incredibly powerful and moving.  I encourage anyone reading this to take some time with it today. I pulled a few ...