Back in the summer of 2019, I wrote a draft on the ways tech companies were shaping life in our cities with something we tend to take for granted: maps.
Writing
Archive
Who watches the map makers?
Published:
The popular vote
A short reflection on the outcome of the 2024 Presidential election. I fear it has become ok to nibble at the margins of our ideals, “because it doesn’t affect me”.
The messy overlap
I stumbled into Design Engineering. I didn’t set out to become one, but in a way I suppose I have always been one… I just couldn’t help myself. Good software can be created in organizations siloed by discipline, but it’s in that messy overlap of design, engineering, and other disciplines truly collaborating where great software is made.
The web is important
The web was not designed for casual dopamine hits. It doesn’t try to keep you. Any single click may take you to an entirely different world with new possibilities.
Infrastructure is a class system
We create class systems in many of the ways in which we design our society, but, at least in America, we don’t like to acknowledge them for what they are: choices to privilege some over others.
Am I human?
On leaving Instagram—or, rather, Instagram leaving me. I’ve been spending time thinking about what it means to be “online”. We don’t really own anything we put online. There’s always an end-user license agreement between us and the person (or bot) on the other end of the screen.
Hello Interdiscipline. And goodbye?
A long-overdue update in my previous “/now” series. This update covers the launch of a standalone brand for my independent work—Interdiscipline—and the near-simultaneous loss of that independence. Awkward.
On Pride, doing it wrong, and maybe that’s ok?
I never really had a specific “coming out” moment—it happened incrementally, over time—but thankfully it has been years since I’ve felt afraid to be open about my sexuality in real life or online. I am not old, but I’m old enough to remember the idea of marriage feeling impossible. And even though I live in California, I am aware that those of us in the queer community still do not have the protections we need in most states…
The value of a name
Originally published to my now-defunct Ello account, this piece recounts a personal experience with the hack of my Instagram account. I learned some things… think?