Writing.
Essays since 2006, plus a few things first published at USV. Occasional by design. The podcast lives on its own page.
- Corruption: Make it your #2 Issue
Continuing my series of posts on this week’s Freedom to Connect conference, here is Larry Lessig‘s closing keynote. It was a big thrill for me to see Larry deliver one of his trademark presentations in person. I remember the first time I saw one online: his Free Culture introduction from OSCON 2002...
- Step Number One: Internet Access
In the spirit of posting highlights from this week’s Freedom to Connect conference, I’d like to next point to the talk given by former FCC chairman Michael Copps, entitled “Step Number One to Getting our Democracy Right”. Here’s the video: The full text is here, and it’s probably a quicker read tha...
- Innovation Under Austerity
Yesterday at the Freedom to Connect conference, Eben Moglen delivered a fantastic talk entitled “Innovation Under Austerity”. It’s about an hour long and is really worth the watch. Eben lays out, in clear, compelling terms, the case for open, decentralized, bottom-up innovation as the clearest way ...
- cibi.me
The Civic Works team at OpenPlans just launched another sweet micro-site: cibi.me — for NYC’s forthcoming bike share program. The site is notable for a few reasons: First, it’s beautiful and fun to use. The OpenPlans team has been putting out a ton of these small, beautifully designed and really fu...
- Netizen Effects
Last week, Twitter did something big: they introduced a new patent assignment agreement that binds them to use their patent arsenal only for defensive purposes. In an environment where things are getting ugly in software patent land, this is a bold move. The agreement (here on GitHub), which they’l...
- Connected Learning
Yesterday at the Center for Civic Media, our lunch guest was S. Craig Watkins, a professor at UT Austin working on a variety of projects under the heading of “Connected Learning”. In his blog post about the idea, Dr. Watkins defines this as: the increasingly complex ways in which young people’s lea...
- Hacking email: getting things done by bypassing the inbox
I’m not a hard core follower of GTD, but I do believe that working from the top of your inbox all day long is a recipe for disaster. However, accessing email is important and necessary. Problem is, with most email clients (I use gmail), you have to pass through the inbox (risking distraction) to…...
- Solving Problems the Internet Way
The Internet works differently than most other things we’re used to. 20th century humans are accustomed to hierarchy, control and scarcity. The Internet, by contrast, is distributed open, and abundant. That difference is fundamental — it not only empowers what’s possible on the Internet (which we...
- Loud power and quiet power
When the Internet erupted on January 18th to voice its discontent with SOPA and PIPA, it was a moment of loud power. Fight for the Future has a nice infographic describing everything that happened that day: 115,00 websites blacked out, 10mm signatures gathered, 8mm calls to congress; all in one day...
- What we mean when we talk about Networks
I’ve been spending a lot of time recently thinking about networks. By networks, I mean groups of people, connected to one another via the Internet, who are able to do things and solve problems together by way of their direct connections to one another. As seemingly obvious as that definition may be...
- Quick Compose w/ Gmail and Quicksilver
From the Yak Shaving department Working from the top of the inbox is a recipe for working on stuff that isn’t important. But, sometimes you need to write emails. The problem is, to write an email you need to first go to your email client, which usually means passing by your inbox. For me, this… Co...
- Cities that Work Like The Web
Here are slides from a talk I gave at the Living Cities Strategic Forum on Technology and Civic Change. Continue reading
- Something to aspire to
Today I spent some time with Brad Burnham from Union Square Ventures. Among other things, we were talking about what’s going on at Code for America and Civic Commons, as well as the latest in the fight to save the Internet. Separately, during the day today, the USV team was interviewing candidates ...
- Joining MIT
My paperwork went through today, so I can finally say it in public without fear of jinxing myself… I am proud and very excited to say that I’m officially joining the MIT Media Lab as a visiting scholar, through the Center for Civic Media. I’ve been coming here for the weekly lunches and research me...
- Next up at Civic Commons
We just posted this morning on the Civic Commons blog that our founding Executive Director Andrew McLaughlin is now moving on to take a totally awesome job atTumblr, and that I’ll be moving into the ED role at CC as of today. It has been great working with Andrew since Civic Commons launched in May ...
- Open, interoperable cities
The first CityCamp, in January 2010 was a memorable event for a bunch of reasons. It simultaneously marked the birth of several civic technology initiatives — the CityCamp unconference series itself, which has grown like gangbusters since then, Code for America, which has since just finished its fi...
- Prescient Markets
One of my favorite phenomena over the past few years — and one of the stories I like to tell most about why the internet is awesome — is something I call “Prescient Markets”. Marketplaces (or just producers in some cases) that take a large amount of the risk out of producing & selling products… Con...
- Simple, and fun to use.
Whenever you start a project (and I’m thinking about building websites and web applications), you are balancing two somewhat opposed goals: 1) get something working right away and 2) satisfy all your hopes and dreams. The first, I think, is a good instinct. The second is the real challenge — it’s y...
- Digital Power Tools
This past week, I spent some time cutting a hole in the wall in between our kitchen and our family room. It’s a project we’ve been talking about for a long time, and we considered lots of different ways of doing it before we actually got down to it. We were concerned about the cost,… Continue readin...
- Web 2.0 Expo: The Opportunity for Civic Startups
Last week at the Web 2.0 Expo, I gave a talk on The Opportunity for Civic Startups. I was filling in for Code for America‘s Jen Pahlka, and the presentation itself is an hybrid of a version I did at the t=0 Entrepreneurship Festival at MIT a few weeks ago, a version Jen did at… Continue reading