“Plight” is an interesting word. We are in a plight, meaning we’re in a tangle, a mess, a terrible fix, with “fix” itself an ironic noun in this context. Yet we also plight our troth, meaning “pledge our truth.” Plight-as-peril … Continue reading
There must be some kind of way out of here. I have been following John Naughton ever since I found his book A Brief History of the Future in a secondhand bookstore in South Philadelphia in the fall of 2011. … Continue reading
Late one night when sleep wouldn’t visit, I stumbled across a stirring and revelatory documentary called Joni Mitchell: Woman of Heart and Mind. I’ve long loved Joni’s music and the sensibility behind it. I once gave a talk in which “Amelia,” … Continue reading
This post concludes the series I started publishing last Monday. I hope to write an epilogue soon in which I reflect at somewhat greater length on what I wrote two years ago. (Contrary to widespread belief, reflection often disrupts more … Continue reading
I have been having some difficulty blogging lately. The reasons are numerous, though the biggest reasons are perhaps no more than four or five in number–but they’re been unusually intense. I say this by way of apology to my readers, … Continue reading
He doesn’t always make it easy. He’ll put things in BOLD FULL CAPS. He likes gnomic utterances, especially when they’re uttered by others: “‘The reason is, and by rights ought to be, slave to the emotions’–Bertrand Russell.” [EDIT: The real source … Continue reading
So I went to Bret Victor’s session, arriving about fifteen minutes after he’d begun. There was an animated fish on the screen, and a worm on a hook, and sometimes bubbles, and sometimes a little wheel (that I later learned … Continue reading
Preface: I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to get this post published. I won’t bore you with my ruminations and remorse … instead, on with the show. I still do analog. Case in point: A Brief History … Continue reading
Brain Rules is a fascinating and vastly entertaining precis of what neuroscience has so far revealed about the unique characteristics of this organ of organs, the brain, the fleshy fatty bit that definitively marks our species. In this book, John Medina identifies … Continue reading
I’ve always been haunted by the title Howard Rheingold used for his chapter on Doug Engelbart in his epochal Tools for Thought. Doug was still active in 1985, when the first edition of Rheingold’s book was published. He was traveling … Continue reading