That Empowerment Thing
One of the really interesting things about the social-network-oriented website for the Obama campaign, my.barackobama.com, was the fact that it was essentially an online nexus that connected people who...
View ArticleA Letter to School Board Member Norton
One of the most interesting races for me this past election season was that of the four seats available for the San Francisco Board of Education. The voter’s guide put out by the city included profiles...
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You Are Not a Gadget
This is what a social network looks like. Each dot represents a human being. Each line represents a social connection between two people, such as acquaintanceship, financial exchange, friendship, or...
View ArticleOn The Webbyness of an Installable Web App
I’ve heard some talk lately, primarily from Henri Sivonen, regarding whether Google’s notion of an Installable Web App is “webby”. I am not sure exactly what webby means, but if I had to guess, it...
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Ethnography, Usability, and Community
Context offers fodder for innovation. Hidden in the physical work space, in the users’ words, and in the tools they use are the beautiful gems of knowledge that can create revolutionary, breakthrough...
View ArticleMy First CrisisCamp
On Friday I attended CrisisCamp Silicon Valley. I didn’t really know what to expect, since I was unfamiliar with the nascent field of internet-facilitated crisis response and was unable to find a...
View ArticleGood Customers
Here’s something I read in a blog post by Esther Dyson, where she describes a visit to Russia in which she was asked for advice on how to spur innovation in the country: In fact, I started my...
View ArticleMoving At Internet Speed
In his book Program or be Programmed, Douglas Rushkoff writes: For most of us, the announcement of the next great “iThing” provokes not eagerness but anxiety: Is this something else we will have to pay...
View ArticleCollusion
I’ve been reading Eli Pariser’s book The Filter Bubble and was fascinated by his description of how data collection companies operate. Independently of that, David Ascher suggested that I add a feature...
View ArticleThe Role of Performance in Online Life
In Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together, the author writes: Brad says, only half jokingly, that he worries about getting “confused” between what he “composes” for his online life and who he “really” is. Not...
View ArticleHow Colorblindness Blinds Us
When will we (finally) become a colorblind society? The pursuit of colorblindness makes people impatient. With courage, we should respond: Hopefully never. — Michelle Alexander In her excellent book...
View ArticleDoes Privacy Matter?
A few years ago, I made a tool called Collusion in an attempt to better understand how websites I’d never even heard of were tracking my adventures across the Internet. The results my tool showed me...
View ArticleOn Gaming And Media Narratives
On December 13, 2013, I sent the following email to several of my friends who play videogames: Hey, if you’re receiving this it’s because you’re on my Steam friends list. I don’t send spam out often...
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You Are Not a Gadget
This is what a social network looks like. Each dot represents a human being. Each line represents a social connection between two people, such as acquaintanceship, financial exchange, friendship, or...
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