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Christopher Butler

chrbutler.com

Christopher Butler is an interdisciplinary designer writing about design, technology, and the future.

Essays / personalTech news / industryAI / ML

’23’24’25’26
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378 from 7 May 2023 to 30 Oct 2026
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2026 39

  1. What the Writing Was For
  2. Cybernaut
  3. What It Costs to Think
  4. Maintenance Futures
  5. Disk mood board
  6. What Doesn't Get Cheaper
  7. Display
  8. Design Fiction
  9. AI is a Boring Technology
  10. More Than We Can Tell
  11. The Empty Heading
  12. Flashes Over the Atlantic – A Sighting, and Its Explanation
  13. Signals #006: The Floor and the Ceiling
  14. Technology and Power
  15. 2026June18 signals Signals #005: Where the Seams Are A quiet shift is underway in the writing about AI. Several writers — designers, researchers, librarians, a critic of computers — are converging on the same observation: that the work of designing well with AI is the work of putting boundaries back
  16. 2026June17 essay Keep the Thinking Every technological advance should be measured not by the measure of intellectual property it absorbs — how much it can do without us — but by how much intellectual investment is worth sowing in it.
  17. 2026June11 signals Signals #004: What Doesn't Compress As AI compresses the work of production, the work of deciding what should exist becomes the differentiator.
  18. 2026June05 signals Signals #003: Courtesy, Character, and the Collapse of Distinction When everything becomes the same, what do our habits preserve? This week's articles explore how small repeated behaviors—politeness to machines, performative identity, brand signaling, algorithmic mimicry—either ma
  19. 2026June03 essay Closer, Not Higher The conventional wisdom says design leaders graduate from the details — but I think AI is about to prove the opposite: the work, increasingly, is to get closer.
  20. 2026June02 essay An Old, Restless Wish Prediction has become the dominant register of the modern internet, but the appetite that drives it is older than the platforms.
  21. 2026May29 signals Signals #002: The Frame vs. The Framer As machines master every frame we give them, what remains irreducibly human?
  22. 2026May27 essay Cynicism is a luxury; hope is a necessity. One’s ability to ignore politics is a product of functional system that shares your worldview.
  23. 2026May25 essays Signals #001: The Politics of Naming When we name something, we claim power over it. This week's articles explore how labels—from aesthetic categories to font choices to compression artifacts—don't just describe culture, they actively shape it, often serving political ends while pre
  24. 2026April17 essay Red-lining AI Why blanket AI bans mistake the tool for the problem, and how thoughtful integration of automation, ethics, and creative work offers a better path forward.
  25. 2026April06 log Earning Attention Most designers spend 80% of their effort crafting a message and 20% earning it attention. That's backward.
  26. 2026March31 essay Craft is Untouchable AI doesn't threaten craft—the temptation to skip iteration does.
  27. 2026March28 log Local AI and Single-Function Devices What if AI follows the path of music recording technology?
  28. 2026March25 essay Making and Machines Craft provides an education that cannot be shortcut by even the best technology.
  29. 2026March18 essay Is there an AI garage startup path? Foundation models are becoming infrastructure—and that changes everything about who can compete and how.
  30. 2026March11 essay Modern wealth is a parlour game played by the well fed Market crashes aren't accidents—they're board-clearing strategies that consolidate power while the rest of us lose everything.
  31. 2026March08 mood-board Machine "Technology is the campfire around which we tell our stories." — Laurie Anderson
  32. 2026February25 log The Productive Afterward JA Westenberg's essay on the merits of optimism is a helpful reminder.
  33. 2026February23 essays In But Not Of On isolation as vantage point, witness as purpose, and making a home at the edges. What I've learned to recognize and accept as a designer and technologist thanks to science fiction.
  34. 2026February19 essays Consistency is Primitive When AI becomes infrastructure and software becomes bespoke, the economic imperative for standardization disappears.
  35. 2026February15 log Biggest Website Update in Years Updated design, entirely new theme, hopefully better.
  36. 2026February05 essays Progress Without Disruption There's nothing about progress that inherently requires disruption — except our inability to cooperate for stability.
  37. 2026February04 essays The Decision Before the Work What happens when the most consequential design decision is made before you even get started?
  38. 2026February02 essays Replication Is Not Innovation AI's efficiency gains don't justify trillion-dollar valuations.
  39. 2026January31 essays Fifteen Clocks On clocks as interfaces to time, and a decade measured in rotations of a single hand.

2025 52

  1. 2025November26 essays Disruption, or Theft? We consented to Uber's terms and conditions. When did we consent to AI?
  2. 2025November18 essays What AI is Really For Best case: we're in a bubble. Worst case: the people profiting most know exactly what they're doing.
  3. 2025November10 essays The Last Invention Achievement has nothing on ambition, and the new almost always falls short of imagination.
  4. 2025November03 essays The Fundamentals Problem Anyone can make something that looks designed, but that doesn't mean that design has happened.
  5. 2025August27 essays The National Design Studio is a Scam Joe Gebbia has no business designing government services.
  6. 2025August15 essays Doing (and Directing) Great Design Requires Detail Obsession Every great design has one organizing detail that unlocks everything else, and the best design leaders never stop looking for it.
  7. 2025June24 essays Single-function Devices in the World of the Everything Machine What we lost when everything became a phone, and when the phone became everything.
  8. 2025June13 essays The Best Interfaces We Never Built The future of computing may lie in imaginative, physically expressive, and intent-driven interfaces that more naturally extend human thought and action.
  9. 2025June10 essays The Designer's Hierarchy of Career Needs A successful design career depends on prioritizing adequate compensation first, continuous learning and growth second, and treating recognition as a secondary byproduct rather than a primary goal.
  10. 2025June05 essays Why Embodied AI is the Red Line We Cannot Cross We must not give AI bodies. If the researchers who created AI are right, our future existence depends upon it.
  11. 2025June03 log If This, Then That, Except for When... If This, Then That, Except for When...
  12. 2025June03 essays The Art Secret Behind All Great Design The secret of great design is an intuitive visual structure that communicates meaning and effectiveness independently of the specific content placed within it.
  13. 2025May30 essays PAC – Personal Ambient Computing The next evolution of personal computing won't replace your phone — it will free computing from any single device.
  14. 2025May28 essays Action is Worth More Than Advice The creative industry’s long shift from hands-on craft to abstract strategy has left professionals vulnerable to AI, making practical execution skills—not just ideas—the true and growing source of value.
  15. 2025May16 essays Good Design Comes from Looking, Great Design Comes from Looking Away Truly distinctive and enduring design emerges when designers balance knowledge of conventions with the disciplined ability to “look away” from existing solutions, trusting their own unique perspective during the cr
  16. 2025May14 essays Order is Always More Important than Action in Design Before users can meaningfully act, they must understand — a principle our metrics-obsessed design culture has forgotten.
  17. 2025May12 log Printing Everything and Owning Nothing Printing Everything and Owning Nothing
  18. 2025May11 essays The Compound Interest of Small Ideas Many Small Ideas Are Worth More Than One Big One
  19. 2025May09 essays In Defense of Screens Screens are good, actually.
  20. 2025May02 essays We Cannot Talk About AI Without Talking About Capitalism, Fascism, and Liberty Unless society critically confronts the political and economic systems shaping AI, we risk enabling surveillance, authoritarian control, and diminished individual liberty.
  21. 2025April25 log Periodical 22 – Technological Entitlement Technological entitlement, knowledge-assumptions, and other things.
  22. 2025April24 essays You Can Be a Great Designer and Be Completely Unknown Design greatness is defined not by fame or recognition, but by how invisibly and effectively it serves human needs.
  23. 2025April16 essays Developing Digital Disgust Information isn't always good.
  24. 2025April08 essays Discernment in the Digital Age How elimination, curation, and optimization can help us see through the technological mirror.
  25. 2025March28 essays Digital Echoes and Unquiet Minds There's a psychological burden of digital life even heavier than distraction.
  26. 2025March12 essays No Orphans to Ambition On mid-life prioritization.
  27. 2025March10 essays From Pascal's Empty Room to Our Full Screens On the Ambient Entertainment Industrial Complex
  28. 2025February28 essays What We Owe to Artificial Minds Rethinking AI through mind-body dualism, parenthood, and unanswerable existential questions.
  29. 2025February27 essays Simplification Takes Courage How to Achieve UX Clarity By Making Tough Decisions
  30. 2025February22 essays In Defense of Text Labels Why Icons Alone Aren't Enough.
  31. 2025February18 log A New Kind of Wholeness Check out the light in my office right now 🤩 . When the light comes through the window like this, the sun’s rays hit different surfaces and edges
  32. 2025February16 essays The AI Debate We're Not Having We will never agree about AI until we agree about what it means to live a good life.
  33. 2025February12 essays The Productive Void What enabled us to create AI is the very thing it has the power to erase.
  34. 2025February11 essays Shut up, Siri The post-screen future does not exist.
  35. 2025February10 essays Dedigitization When quantum computing breaks everything.
  36. 2025February05 essays The Internet Can't Discover: A Case for New Technologies The internet reflects us. But new technologies must explore the world beyond.
  37. 2025February04 log AI is here. I'm doing Office Hours. I think we need a safe, private place to talk about what AI means for design, and more broadly, the future of work. AI looms as a double-layered
  38. 2025February03 essays The Interface Is Always There There's no such thing as UI-less anything.
  39. 2025January31 essays From Pages to Scenes The Evolution of Digital Space
  40. 2025January29 essays The Empty Hours AI promises to automate both work and leisure. What will we do then?
  41. 2025January27 essays The Testing Trap Meaningful design decisions flow from clear intent, not from data.
  42. 2025January26 essays Digital Reality Digital Shock Growing Up at the Dawn of Cyberspace
  43. 2025January24 essays The Exodus Many experienced creative professionals are leaving marketing and design not just from burnout but from a deeper disillusionment with value-extracting, metrics-driven systems.
  44. 2025January23 essays Dreams in the Machine When AI meets the unconscious...
  45. 2025January22 essays Who is the internet for? SEO, Clickless Search, and the AInternet
  46. 2025January21 essays The Value of Friction What technology's drive for seamlessness gets wrong.
  47. 2025January20 essays The Unpublishable On self-censorship in a connected world.
  48. 2025January19 essays Windows, Frames, and Other Realities Through the lens of a child's camera, decades of interface design, and thousands of years of wondering.
  49. 2025January18 mood-board 100 Images My aesthetic sensibilities represented in 100 images.
  50. 2025January17 essays The Pigeonhole Principle Why perfect organization is not possible.
  51. 2025January15 essays Persuasion is Plural Earn attention before you use it.
  52. 2025January13 essays The Geography of Interface Is there a pattern language for digital spaces?

2024 30

  1. 2024December30 log Year in Review – 2024 The highs and lows of the year in exhaustive detail.
  2. 2024December21 log Organization – Office – 2024 After the kitchen, the office is <i>still</i> the most used room in our home. This is how we have optimized it this year.
  3. 2024November18 essays The Two Most Important Skills for Interaction Designers When things don't turn out as they were designed, it's because of gaps in collaboration skills, not technical ones.
  4. 2024November16 log Know What You Need Knowing what you need makes knowing what you want much easier.
  5. 2024October27 log Periodical 21 – Working Spaces Working Spaces and Profound Reads
  6. 2024October16 log Periodical 20 – Localized Computing At a time of ubiquitous computing, there is still something to be gained from its opposite.
  7. 2024July16 Understanding the Eye-Mind Connection A deeper understanding of the relationship between seeing and thinking is necessary to designing for sustained attention.
  8. 2024July06 log Periodical 19 – Creative Miscellany Creative Miscellany
  9. 2024June19 The Internet Isn't for Humans Anymore Bots use the internet more than we do; use shapes design.
  10. 2024June02 The AI Designer The AI Designer is a powerful notion, but it is incomplete.
  11. 2024May25 log Investing in Creativity Investing in creativity is incremental effort and cumulative reward.
  12. 2024May23 Knowledge Work, AI, and Fragile Egos On the connection between time, skills, ideas, and what makes us truly human.
  13. 2024May18 log Design for AI If the majority of attention your webpage gets is from AI, not humans, what does it need to look like? How does it need to work?
  14. 2024May18 log Unscalable, Hand-Crafted Lists of Links Technology vs. Taste
  15. 2024May13 The Elements of Good Craft How details, focus, time, and taste elevate craft.
  16. 2024May02 log How to Know When to Use AI I don't need to use AI because I know how to do what I need to do and I don't need to do it any faster.
  17. 2024April30 essay We Have Five Years Left We must radically reduce carbon emissions by 2030 in order to avoid the most catastrophic damage of climate change. How can you help?
  18. 2024April14 log Periodical 18 – A Personal Web I am building a personal web.
  19. 2024April08 log Eclipse Partial (80%) eclipse of the sun in Durham, N.C.
  20. 2024April02 log Thought Experiment Would I be ok if I was done?
  21. 2024April01 log Out-Random the AI It is human nature to create. This can define us without differentiating us.
  22. 2024March30 log Inner Worlds Everyone's inner world is the one they are truly living in. There are billions of these worlds, each one larger than you or I can imagine.
  23. 2024March09 log Periodical 17 – Optimization Optimizing a home is a years-long process.
  24. 2024February24 log object – Wooden Task Lamp I made a task lamp in just a couple of hours.
  25. 2024February17 log Periodical 16 – Useful Lifetimes One's moral progress is measured in unexpected moments.
  26. 2024February16 log Reality Doubt We're about a year away from some piece of media that makes us doubt our own perceptions of reality.
  27. 2024February02 log Periodical 15 All art is a copy of something.
  28. 2024January21 log Periodical 14 – v DIY While you're here, make the world your own.
  29. 2024January07 log Periodical 13 Image ecology and my top 10 science fiction films.
  30. 2024January06 log Periodical 12 – Sometimes the Old Way Convenience is overrated. Convenience, I think, is the enemy of memory. The easier the experience, the less of it we actually <i>experience</i>.

2023 43

  1. 2023December31 log Year in Review – 2023 A few notes and lists from the year 2023.
  2. 2023December29 Being Normal In a world of influencer-peddled illusion, we need to normalize being normal.
  3. 2023December08 Your Own Personal Picture Collection On building a personal collection of reference imagery, with a few examples from my own.
  4. 2023December06 log Periodical – 11 – What Could Have Been Dave Karpf's re-read of the entire WIRED corpus has me thinking about predicting the future.
  5. 2023December01 log Periodical – 10 Thinking back on old tech and making my case for why local storage is better than the cloud.
  6. 2023November29 log Interaction Design is Two Things Managing attention and persuasion are the means and ends of interaction design.
  7. 2023November27 log Periodical – 9 I’ve done something brilliant. A few years ago, we decided to sell our Sonos system and retreat back to an old-school, wired stereo. I liked the
  8. 2023November26 log Periodical – 8 This is the first image taken from space. It was one of many images captured from 65 miles above Earth by a camera attached to a captured German V-2
  9. 2023November25 log Periodical – 7 I spend a lot of time looking at websites; it’s a big part of what I do for a living. With practice, I’ve learned to look at the products of
  10. 2023November24 log Periodical – 6 Good morning. It is very early. Since daylight savings, my youngest has been awake an hour or two earlier than usual and thinks the rest of us
  11. 2023November23 log Periodical – 5 Happy Thanksgiving! Here in Durham, it is close to perfect. Clear skies and heading toward 57°; the aroma of holiday fireplaces is drifting
  12. 2023November22 log Periodical – 4 Type “medieval marginalia” into your search engine of choice and you will quickly be confronted with a slew of naughty images straight out of the
  13. 2023November21 log Periodical – 3 Hello from a rainy and cold autumn morning in Durham. We are in the midst of the most magical time of the year. Our enormous old oak is covering
  14. 2023November20 log Periodical – 2 Yesterday, I mentioned the Yoto Daily, a daily podcast for kids that loads up automatically on the Yoto player. I just wanted to add that what makes
  15. 2023November19 log Periodical – 1 This is a semi-daily check-in. Experimental; likely to not actually be daily. Regular and short. The kids are in the bath, listening to the Yoto
  16. 2023September10 log The View from Here There are many reasons to make things and share them, to write and publish, to speak and record. So many reasons, most unknown; far be it from me to
  17. 2023August21 log The Internet's Greatest Potential It seems that the internet’s greatest potential is to create intimacy across distance. Which means we still have a long way to go
  18. 2023August18 Organization – Office After the kitchen, the office is the most used room in our home. This is how we keep it organized.
  19. 2023July19 log The Internet is Already a Social Network Make it easier for anyone to have a website. Make syndication easier and better. That’s all that is needed to reclaim the power we’ve ceded to the
  20. 2023July11 log The Big Picture When your clients are persuaded by your point of view and expertise, they will not care what tools you use or what processes you follow. They will
  21. 2023July09 Personal Machines and Portable Worlds A personal machine balances access to another world with the kinds of limits and boundaries that make a thing private.
  22. 2023July07 essays Gestalt Principles of Design – Symmetry We tend to perceive symmetrical elements as being connected, even if they are not.
  23. 2023June30 essays Gestalt Principles of Design – Continuity Elements that are arranged on a line or curve are perceived as more related than elements that are not.
  24. 2023June25 essays Gestalt Principles of Design – Similarity When objects look similar to one another, the mind perceives them as a group or pattern.
  25. 2023June25 log Ambient Information Most of the time, we’re content to simply know that information exists; we lack the interest and patience to actually know the information itself.
  26. 2023June21 log The Fragile Bond Between Attention and Information Most communication is visual. Isn’t that fascinating? Think of how much a picture, a symbol, a facial expression, or a gesture can communicate on
  27. 2023June16 essays Gestalt Principles of Design – Closure The mind is capable of perceiving more information than what is actually visible.
  28. 2023June14 essays Gestalt Principles of Design – Proximity When objects are placed near one another, the mind perceives them as a group.
  29. 2023June11 log object – WIRED Magazine, Issue 1 The more things change, the more they stay the same.
  30. 2023June09 essays Negative-Space Typography Controlling the space between text styles is as important as differentiating the styles themselves.
  31. 2023June09 log Writing is a Primary Design Tool In an interview with Tracy Francis at McKinsey, Jony Ive had something profound to say about writing and design: “You’ll often find creatives are
  32. 2023June03 How to Adapt Long-Page Designs for Better Scanning The longer your page, the harder it is to scan. Finding ways to consolidate content and shorten the page length will help focus your visitor's attention and action.
  33. 2023June03 log Fascinated by Layout A working knowledge of the fundamentals of design is as important now as it ever has been.
  34. 2023June02 The Road Through Your Screen Scanning is vertical; immersion is horizontal.
  35. 2023June02 log object – Bedside Lamp It's not smart, but it dims.
  36. 2023May28 4 Levels of Grids for Web Designers Grids are very, very useful.
  37. 2023May27 Using the Y-Axis to Maintain Focus and Attention Anchoring the most important information to the Y-axis will support better communication.
  38. 2023May21 log Attention Degrowth No one is entitled to anyone else's attention.
  39. 2023May20 essays The Rhythm of Your Screen Length is not the problem; lack of rhythm is.
  40. 2023May16 log object – The Present Clock This hand of this clock makes one rotation every 365 days.
  41. 2023May15 log object – Yoto This is the best media player for children.
  42. 2023May13 How to Turn Good Design Direction into a Good System The discipline of design is the commitment to structuring and systematizing good ideas.
  43. 2023May07 What I Want From The Internet Connection and intimacy are still possible on the internet today.

Undated 214

  1. 2023May07 log Blogging Is Not Publishing It's Therapy I keep a NOTES.txt document as a catch-all for any ideas I jot down that don’t have an immediate place elsewhere. It is a digital container that is
  2. 2023May06 What happens when the computers disappear? The computer has become a primary dependency of civilization without being nearly as enmeshed in daily life as it will be.
  3. 2023May05 Designing for (Realistic) Attention The average person is capable of reading 250 words per minute.
  4. 2023April29 log object – Coffee Cup The perfect coffee cup is about half the size of your average American mug.
  5. 2023April28 log object – 1999 Qualcomm QCP-860 My first cellphone was the Qualcomm QCP-860. It was marketed at the time as a “thin phone.” By today’s standards, that might seem silly, but at the
  6. 2023April27 log object – OMNI Magazine, Issue 1 This is a publication very much of its time and ahead of its time.
  7. 2023April26 log object – Game Boy It's boxy, but it's good.
  8. 2023April24 log object – Cylinder Lamp Twenty years ago, I needed a lamp. So I made this one.
  9. 2023April23 log object – Carved Nupe Door This door was made as a gift for my grandparents, who worked with a variety African artisans during the mid-twentieth century to preserve indigenous art forms and support modern artisan businesses.
  10. 2023April22 log object – A 20 Year-Old Sketchbook This sketchbook just turned twenty years old.
  11. 2023April16 log Technology and Moral Responsibility As I’ve been cleaning up my site, I’ll occasionally read back over something I wrote many years ago. Yesterday, I re-read a series of posts I wrote
  12. 2023April15 Persuasion Good design requires persuasion.
  13. 2023March26 log The Smallest Details In Minimalism in UX: the blessing of no choices, Dimitris Chatzilias covers a short list of common details that are often overlooked in a way that
  14. 2023March24 log Outlines are IA When you create an outline, you are arranging ideas in relation to one another: a heading is a big idea, a sub-heading is a smaller one related to
  15. 2023March19 My Reverse Time Capsule While rummaging in the WIRED magazine archives, I found this entry from 1995. In it, Douglas Copeland imagines a “reverse time capsule,” sent back
  16. 2023March13 log Sub-Second Orientation When a visitor encounters a web-page for the first time, they will ask and answer three questions within about one second: What is this
  17. 2023March08 log Friction Can Be Good Something I have noticed as content, software, and product design have attempted to eradicate friction is that friction is not necessarily a bad
  18. 2022January28 We Live in the Uncanny Valley Now Making virtual worlds can help us understand the real one, but they're not places we can live permanently.
  19. 2021December25 log Christmas Day – Multiple UFO Sighting My wife, children, and I witnessed a cluster of high-flying, unidentified objects at 6pm on Christmas Day in Durham, North Carolina.
  20. 2021December17 What Eyes Want The connection between the eye and the mind is essential for designers to understand.
  21. 2021December03 Are We Ready? Inventions that were ahead of their time can help us to understand whether we are truly ready to live in the world we are making.
  22. 2021November19 There Is No Digital World Everything digital costs something physical. It's time for a digital conservation movement.
  23. 2021November12 essays What If Phones Were Actually Designed for Hands? Phones no longer fit in the hands they were made to be held and used by. How did that happen?
  24. 2021November05 essays What We Do When We See What does it even mean to design when perception is reality? Do we all ever see the same thing?
  25. 2021October29 Can a Robot Do a Designer's Job? Automation isn't as much of a threat as we have been told.
  26. 2021October22 A Pep Talk for those Who Work Bullshit Jobs How do you know if what you do is actually meaningful?
  27. 2021October15 The Last Time Life has as many ends as it has beginnings. What can an end teach us about making our world?
  28. 2021September17 Move Slow and Preserve Things Haste has created waste. Someone please tell Zuckerberg to slow the hell down.
  29. 2021September03 Less Doesn't Have to Be More. It Can Just Be Less. How much is enough? So much of what we design assumes that either the question has not been answered or has no answer at all. This must change.
  30. 2021August27 From the Desk Of Wouldn't it be nice if you could actually peer over another designer's shoulder once in a while and see what they actually do?
  31. 2021August20 Systems Design is Not Enough What good is thinking ahead in a world built entirely upon rewarding the opposite?
  32. 2021August13 Books Books still matter in the digital age. Here are a few recommendations you might find of interest.
  33. 2021July23 First Principles Hiring for skills is mostly bogus. Hiring for soft skills is better. Hiring for principles is ideal.
  34. 2021July16 Why I Am Still A Designer Why we became designers is not what will keep us in the practice. There are four skills that must become the substance of our craft.
  35. 2021July02 Turn It All Off This is an intervention. We are addicted to media. Our screen time crisis will not be solved by technology, but by will.
  36. 2021June18 We Write, Therefore We Are Cyborgs Language is as intrinsic to the human experience as many of our biological functions, and yet it is our own creation. That is strange.
  37. 2021June11 The Mosaic The digital experience has outgrown the names we commonly use. Now is the time to think deeply about what we call it.
  38. 2021May28 The World is Crowded and That is Natural Minimalism is en vogue. But how minimal can a lived-in world really be?
  39. 2021May21 The Luddites Were Right Luddism wasn't really about technology. But was their skepticism toward development a good thing?
  40. 2021May14 We Don't Need More Information How do we make sense of reality if we can't trust facts, sources, or one another?
  41. 2021May07 The Problem With Design is Designers Psychology and process can get in our way just as often as they can help us get things done.
  42. 2021April30 Think About the Future's Past Emotional Futurism is a different way of shaping the future by considering about how we will feel about the past.
  43. 2021April23 Encapsulated Experiences Desire Paths and Capsule Reviews are mashed up here, for your consideration.
  44. 2021April12 73 Ideas that Should Provoke You Not everything that can be imagined should come into being. The mind can only suspend so much disbelief, especially when it’s trying to be
  45. 2021April09 Progress Jams Why most innovation never actually happens.
  46. 2021April02 The Power of Small Images Stamps, Computational Linguistics, and Minspeak all share a reliance upon the way pictures can communicate faster than words.
  47. 2021April02 Other Ways There are three reasons why what we make ends up the same as everything else. Here's what we can do about it.
  48. 2021March19 Future Objects An object made for a better future will be locally controlled, indefinitely powered, sustainable, autonomous, private, and imaginative.
  49. 2021March12 Your Phone is Destroying the World Our cultural obsession with the new has created a destructive cycle of consumption and destruction that affects so much more than just us.
  50. 2021March05 The Circle of Now In our home, there are eleven clocks. Some may say that eleven clocks in a home is eleven too many. I disagree. I will grant that a clock is no
  51. 2021February26 essays The Riddle of the Square The square invites endless contemplation about the tension between ideal structure and the imperfect, organic world.
  52. 2021February19 Attention Stewardship Some people saw the thrashing idscape in which we tribulate coming from a long way off. And they called it “the attention economy.” A recent New
  53. 2021February11 This Is Not Good Design Much has been written about what makes for good design. All of it is fiercely debated by designers, who would rather find ways to exclude one
  54. 2021February05 Search Engines Don't Work and They Are Not Good “A good question is much more difficult than a brilliant answer.” That’s a decent summation of Richard Saul Wurman’s life’s work. That he said it
  55. 2021January29 The Biggest Dream is of the Small, Simple Life Every other Tuesday, a few friends and I get together in the evening for what we jokingly refer to as “Church.” We’re all formerly of the fold, so
  56. 2021January27 Cross-Examining Coincidence in the Courtroom of Technology So many readers sent in notes in reply to my last article that I thought something of a post-script was warranted. I must say, though, that I am so
  57. 2021January22 That Coincidental Advertisement is Not Just a Coincidence I have never eaten a Bel Vita cracker in my life. I’d never even heard of the brand until I was visiting with my brother and he pulled them out of
  58. 2021January15 Good Prophecy Doesn't Have to Be Right We shouldn't try to predict the future. We should envision the futures we want and then go and make them.
  59. 2021January08 We Have A Reality Problem In the early 1990s, when the internet was still in its structural infancy, and its influence on broader culture was widely underestimated if not
  60. 2020December31 Success Mysticism Few things make me sadder than the now predictable moment at which a successful person creates a sellable mysticism out of their good luck and
  61. 2020July01 The Place Where We Shelter If the human eye suffered the same burn-in effect that some screens do, this would be the image now set against everything else for me. For the last
  62. 2019September09 podcast Phones Never Die. They're Eaten By Birds Can we really call it progress when it creates so much waste? What if your phone — the one you’re using right now — was your last phone? Take a good look at it and imagine using it for the rest of your life. Could it even last that lon
  63. 2019August26 podcast You Don't Have to Be an Entrepreneur, Part 2 Every discussion of entrepreneurship is really a discussion about values. Today, we'll follow up on last week's episode, where we began a discussion of entrepreneurship by resetting that idea — by challenging the story of entrepreneur
  64. 2019August19 podcast You Don't Have to Be an Entrepreneur Entrepreneurship doesn’t have to mean what you think it means. Over the course of the next two episodes, I'd like to share with you how my own perspective on “entrepreneurship” has evolved, and offer a critique of the sameness of the popular
  65. 2019August05 podcast The Future vs. The Future Every vision of the future is a better index of the present from which it came than whatever time it imagines. So today, let's look back at some of the things we believed would serve as landmarks of the future. Not to point out how quaint they are or to
  66. 2019July22 podcast Words Matter Too often we think of the word "design" as a shorthand for an ecosystem of mostly visual phenomena. But words play an enormous, though often unseen, role in the creation of everything. Today, I want to tell you a story about how my life was changed by a few words said
  67. 2019June17 podcast A.I. Ain't that I. The majority of our clicking and tapping is a repetitive act of information management. Isn't A.I. supposed to help us with this? Don't hold your breath... Today, on Design Tomorrow, in the tradition of the rantiest of rants, I'd like to, well, rant about a few
  68. 2019June03 podcast The Glove, the Display, and the Possible Future Is technology a means to an end — the ladder we climb to a future we want to inhabit because it's better for us than the present — or is it as far as we let our minds and hearts go? In this episode of Design Tomorrow, we'll connect a
  69. 2019May20 podcast Ugh. Advertising. Does advertising still make sense in our world today? How does a form of media always known as an associated form — as something that sips from the attention river flowing to and from other things — function when the complexity of those waterways has exponentially
  70. 2019May06 podcast The Interface and Me Are interfaces good? Or are they a distraction — for us the makers, and for the users we believe we are helping? How can we think better about both how we interface with digital experiences, personally, and how others do it? Today, we'll think deeply about the
  71. 2019April22 podcast Useful Fictions We live in a time of illusions. Simulations that reflect back upon us more than just the passage of time, but something important about who we are. Something unique is going on right now — with the tools and technology we have — that is giving us the ability to st
  72. 2019April08 podcast The Last Thing We Need Are Smartphones When so many problems of existence remain unsolved, we haven't earned the luxury of smartphones. So this is an intervention. A challenge to the status quo of waste and distraction and triviality and short-term pile-on that is our way of life
  73. 2019March25 podcast Behind Every Robot What is it about robots that compels us to create them? And what does it say about a culture that makes machine surrogates despite not having reached a consensus about why to make them in the first place? In this episode, we'll explore the robots taking over ou
  74. 2019March11 podcast The Real Value of Ideas What are our ideas worth? Are they as valuable as we think they are? And what might change about how we act on our ideas once we start thinking differently about how we value them and how unique they really are? In this episode, we'll explore how simultane
  75. 2019February26 podcast How to Make Good Things They say that practice makes perfect. I'll settle for "practice makes good," thank you very much! In this episode of Design Tomorrow , we'll explore what it means to practice - what there is in repetition that can help us to get better. Not just at what
  76. 2019February11 podcast Computer World There are very few people left on Earth for whom the world isn't shaped by computers or seen through their screens. But does it have to be this way? In this episode, we'll explore how screens — and the images they reveal — are just as much a manifestation of the
  77. 2019January28 podcast This Creation of Our Genius As long as we've been self-aware, we've desired companionship. And yet, we are not enough for one another; we hunger for something more - something that folklore, imaginary friends, and now technology have attempted to satisfy. Today, we stand at a c
  78. 2019January14 podcast How to Get Your Time Back The more time passes, the faster it feels it's moving. It's an illusion, of course, but does that really matter? If you feel like it's moving faster, it might as well be. The shrinkiness of time is part of the human condition. But the secret you may no
  79. 2019January01 podcast Ticking Progress Bombs Progress is something we all try to work toward, but how do we really know if we're making any? And if progress isn’t permanent, is it progress at all? In this episode, we'll explore progress and the ways that certain forms of it actually trap us in the p
  80. 2018November20 podcast The Voice Interface We're all using voice interfaces now — a thing of science fiction now very much in our reality. But it turns out that feelings — things like fear, loneliness, trust, and desire — play just as much of a role in the way these machines work than do databases a
  81. 2018November01 podcast The Power of Perspective In a world as crowded with technological tools for measuring our progress as ours is, sometimes the best way to see how far we've come is, literally, in our own hands and on our own faces. In this episode, we'll discuss a simple exercise you can do to
  82. 2018October16 podcast What is real? It may sound like a rhetorical question, but asking "what is real?" is becoming more and more a practical inquiry into the nature of our everyday experience. In this episode of Design Tomorrow, we'll imagine a future — not too far off — where the lines between rea
  83. 2018October02 podcast Design is Art with Rules There is no good definition of design. In this episode, I talk about what distinguishes design from art, and how accountability plays a unique role in making the distinction clear.
  84. 2018September18 podcast How to Think About the Future We all think about the future. Probably more than we're even aware. But, is thinking about the future useful? Does thinking about the future actually help us make one that's better? In this episode of Design Tomorrow, we'll talk about the future.
  85. 2018September04 podcast Active Erasure In this episode, I tell a story about a drawing professor who taught me about not just identifying the negative space in our thoughts and actions, but something he called active erasure, and how being intentional about the act of taking things out can not only
  86. 2018August23 podcast Getting Out of Our Own Way In this episode, I talk about what it means for designers to get out of their own way, and I share a couple of ways I've made that not only more possible in my life, but more natural to my day to day.
  87. 2018August23 podcast The Magic of Ordinary Objects In this episode, I talk about appreciating the design of everyday objects, minimalism, and how some objects can reflect a life well lived.
  88. 2018June18 log Sunk Costs for Spite The city where I work just spent the last two weeks clearing out a few patches of land in between the four-lane main thoroughfare in and out of
  89. 2018June14 log Dada, Sit Here S said her first sentence this morning. I was sitting on the coffee table in the living room, putting on my shoes, when she climbed up and sat
  90. 2018June06 log Mind and Body Minds are complicated. We can think about so many things at once that to say that one’s mind and body are in the same “place” at all times is hardly
  91. 2018June03 log Design in a Vacuum The baby has been put to bed. There is still plenty of daylight left. There are many definitions of “design.” One I liked for a while goes like
  92. 2018June02 log Clocks Heavy rain. SA is napping; SE is swapping out our modem. I like clocks. I always have. I like the way they look, the way they work, and the way
  93. 2018June01 log You Are Here Hello from a silent office. No one is here but me. KM and I spent the day together as planned months ago. He’s on a serious sabbatical from work
  94. 2018May31 log Quietly Discoverable Hi from a quiet house that smells of roasting beets. I’ve decided that writing a semi-public journal might be an interesting experience. Public in
  95. 2018April20 Active Erasure My favorite professor, Al DeCredico, used to begin his fall semester foundation year drawing course with a strange assignment: make a drawing in the
  96. 2018April06 Progress Bombs Easter Island; Image sourced from Wikipedia. Over a century ago, Oxford University’s administration decided to finally do something about the
  97. 2018March08 Computer Nostalgia and Malignant Doppelwelts I am nostalgic for the computer. Yes, for the thing that, today, I have more of than I ever needed — or ever wanted. In a world where computers are
  98. 2018February22 Want to Resist? Delete Your Facebook Account Tags The only meaningful act of protest in the 21st century is to permanently delete your digital accounts. Facebook. Netflix. Amazon. The big
  99. 2017July28 Unexpected and Realistic AI Headlines Picture me staring at eight different TextEdit windows, each full of notes of things I’ve been thinking about lately and had saved there with the
  100. 2017July18 Introducing The Liminal I know. It’s been a while. More than six months, actually. It’s been a much longer break than I intended, and I’ll be up front with you, it’s not
  101. 2016December04 Facebook Is Not necessary I wrote this shortly after the 2016 election. Though it exposed deeper divisions among Americans than were commonly acknowledged beforehand, I
  102. 2016November04 Talking to Machines Greetings from a very quiet kitchen at the Newfangled HQ. Mark’s Sonos Jazz alarm went off at 7:30 as usual, and right now one of my favorite
  103. 2016October29 Behind Every Robot is a Human Hello from our quiet house on a Saturday afternoon. The pup is out sleeping in the sun, occasionally watching as the chickens peck around the
  104. 2016October10 Unearthed Time Capsules Hello from Emerald Isle, where I am sitting on a porch listening to waves crash on the shore. The beach in October is a pretty nice place. I’ll be
  105. 2016October02 Words Matter Where are you right now? If you were to set down the little screen you’re holding, or look past the big screen in front of you, what would you see?
  106. 2016September02 Design is Art with Rules Current Status: Accepting the age-old truth that we are quickly who we are, as a recently unearthed postcard I sent to my mother and soon-to-be
  107. 2016August13 A Solution that Doesn't Exist Current status: It’s early on Saturday in the very hot and humid city of Durham, North Carolina, and I am sitting in the dim morning light of our
  108. 2016July30 We don't fear the future… I must admit to having been nervous to publish this. I’ve never been afraid to expose private things in my writing; if you’ve read my blog for long
  109. 2016June09 A Slice of Life Current status: I received an interesting email from a reader recently. She wrote, “It’s easy to assume things about someone else’s life based upon
  110. 2016June03 How to Design a Different Future Current Status: Ahead is a long read, so I’ll get out of the way as quickly as possible. I’m sitting at my desk on a Friday afternoon, drinking an
  111. 2016May27 The Magic of Ordinary Objects Picture me marveling at the wonder of text, impervious as it is to the law of supply and demand. No matter how much we write, we want more. And by
  112. 2016May12 When the World Around You Shook You are sitting on the couch in your living room. It is seven o’clock in the morning on a Saturday in April. You are the only one awake in the
  113. 2016March17 Unchecked Attention Avarice Current Status: Much more this than this, but man, who wouldn’t want to be at the base of Chimborazo at least once in their life? That second link
  114. 2016March10 How to Think About the Future Current Status: Trying, but in a roboty kind of way. You see, sometimes this blog is about design. Sometimes technology. Sometimes both. And every
  115. 2016February26 Sympathy for the Sim Picture me on the couch with both cat and pup vying for prime real estate on my lap, both presumably annoyed that this cold, glowing machine is
  116. 2016February19 The Most Difficult Thing About Design I’ve been thinking all week about design. What is design, exactly? Is it an idea? An action? A thing? Linguistically, it’s all of those things.
  117. 2016February11 Technological Luxury is Powered by Oppression The greatest lie of technology is that it is the great equalizer. Technology has its own caste system. If you don’t know that, then that means
  118. 2016February04 Beneath the Interface Layer Hello friends. Picture me in the text editor. I’ve been there a lot this week. I wrote a couple of articles over at Newfangled, one On Letting Go,
  119. 2016January22 How to Get Your Time Back Hello, friends, and another Happy New Year to you! My last post was mostly written in 2015, so this one feels like a fresh start. Current status:
  120. 2016January02 We Are What We Watch Last year, I created a lifetime mix and shared it with you. It comprised thirty-four years of music; one song chosen for each year I’ve been alive
  121. 2015December18 Upgrading Our Way Out Hello, friends. I’m back. I laid low for a month, focusing my time on closing out the year with goals met and new ones set. Meanwhile, a bunch of
  122. 2015November13 Time's First Principles A little more than a year ago, I started this newsletter with the idea that I’d sit in the early morning darkness of my home office once a week and
  123. 2015November06 Until They All Have Faces Hello, friends! I’m grateful that there are some of you who notice when I miss a weekly post, like my mom, who will reliably send a text: “no post
  124. 2015October23 Back to the Real Future Hello, friends, and welcome new ones! Some of you must have shared last week’s letter with others, and so our numbers grow. If each of you shared
  125. 2015October16 The Fit Filter Hello, friends, and welcome, new ones! Thirty-six of you have been with me since the beginning, that first post, written just over a year ago. We’ve
  126. 2015October09 Street Ritual Current status: back in the office after a few days at HOW Interactive in Chicago. It was such a pleasure to listen and learn from the many
  127. 2015September25 The Gift in Our Work Current Status: Officing it. Coffeing it. Sonosing it loud here to the sounds of some Newfangleder’s energetic Spotify playlist. Current song:
  128. 2015September18 Sabbatical Current Status: Up early, shaking off the debate hangover (three hours?! my god!) and marveling that The Joker has indeed manifest a tulpa and its
  129. 2015August21 The dream of the Nineties is alive… Picture me tapping this message out to you on my phone, hoping that the weak signal I’ve caught will hold for long enough. I’m out in the mountains
  130. 2015August14 It won’t be interesting until we can’t see it anymore. Hello, friends. I guess you guys were snacky last week! Many of you sent thoughtful replies to the mixpost, especially the bits about women and
  131. 2015August07 Step aside, keep quiet, and listen. Hello, friends. Greetings from the other side of the apocalypse that was last week’s post. Somehow, it was the most divisive thing I’ve sent out
  132. 2015July30 Greetings from the Rubbish Patch The commercial opens with a series of quick, intimate shots. Someone writing a letter by hand; someone shaking a polaroid as its exposure settles; a
  133. 2015July24 The Last Thing We Need Picture me at home, in the office. It’s 9:41 PM, Eastern Standard Time. The sun has set on Durham. The chickens are roosting. The lights have been
  134. 2015July15 essays Enter the Void On time, aging, meditation, etc.
  135. 2015July02 Perceiving the Machine Hello, friends. Good news: we survived the leap second. I was worried, you know, after that Y2K fiasco and all. You never know what kind of computer
  136. 2015June26 Where are you, Digital Le Corbusier? Hello there. According to the numbers, you are probably new to the Don’t Think About the Future fold. You are part of a recent swell of interest
  137. 2015June19 Randoposto Picture me stuffing a bunch of text into the random-letter-machine and seeing what comes out. I stayed up late and got up early and was driving to
  138. 2015June12 Keeping the Fire Lit Picture me asking for help. God grant me the strength to not watch Season One of The X-Files all over again for the thousandth time simply because I
  139. 2015June04 The Power of Perspective Picture me monopolizing the conversation. I mean, not really, but when I look at my wordcount in the transcript of a recent roundtable I did with
  140. 2015June03 Emails are the new blogs. A few weeks ago, Ian Fitzpatrick — of Dark Matter fame — sent an email to me and a few other writers that began a long and in-depth conversation
  141. 2015May28 What is an idea worth? Picture me up at five; laced up, earbuds in; up and down hills and around the city; back home, cooling down; showered; packed lunch; to the office;
  142. 2015May26 We Always Start Now I wrote the Interaction column for the Spring, 2015 issue of PRINT magazine, which was a true honor because this issue also celebrated PRINT’s 75th
  143. 2015May08 The Designer Stands Firm Picture me in the early morning light of my office downstairs, filling its silence with the muted clatter of the keyboard, the pause and pin-drop
  144. 2015May01 Etc. Etc. Etc. Picture me in the cloud. Look, I’m a pretty tech savvy guy and I’m all about the future and what not, but this is the first time I’ve actually
  145. 2015April17 Advertising is an Anachronism Picture me frazzled. It’s been a busy past few weeks. I’ve been here and there, at events and planning for upcoming ones. I missed last week because
  146. 2015April03 A 200-Word Mixpost Picture me lorem ipsuming here because I’m actually just sitting in a chair in an office staring at a big rectangular lamp and typing like we do
  147. 2015March27 The Cost of Cognitive Surplus Picture me back in the habit. I took a break last week. It was needed. But I’m back with a bunch of words (prepare yourselves! prepare your
  148. 2015March13 A.I. is U.I. Picture me running on a treadmill yesterday at the gym. I’ve only been on about five minutes when a woman hops on the machine to my left, plugs in
  149. 2015March06 essay The way to make good things is to make many things. There is no substitute for repetition when it comes to making anything.
  150. 2015February27 Neighborhoods, the Anti-Algorithm Picture me snowed in. Eight inches of it is enough to shut things down for a day in these parts. But, hey, it sure is pretty. So, look, bear with me
  151. 2015February20 Everyone is someone else’s marketer… Picture me huddled up inside where the ice can’t get me. But whatever. I live in a typically warm place and we had a little ice storm. If you live
  152. 2015February11 Don't Think About the Future Picture me back in the habit. Another week lapsed. Another grandparent lost to the other side. Two weeks after my father’s mother, my mother’s
  153. 2015January29 Through the Looking Glass (Hi, friends! And welcome, new ones. Old friends may have noticed that I took last week off. My Grandmother passed away after 100 years of intrepid
  154. 2015January16 Futures of Making and Being Picture me picturing myself at home tonight, sitting on the couch with a lady, a pup, and a cat, feet up, a drink in hand, watching that show
  155. 2015January09 Liner Notes for a Lifetime Mix Picture me in full High Fidelity mode. You’ll soon see what I mean by that. Oh, and welcome, new friends. Yes, this is ordinarily a post about
  156. 2015January01 Thirty-Four (a lifetime film list) Just as I finished my lifetime music mix, it occurred to me that a lifetime film list would be a good idea. So here it is. There were some very
  157. 2014December31 Thirty-Four (a lifetime mix) It’s the end of the year; why not another list? This one is a bit different, though. A friend shared with me the idea of making a mix of songs from
  158. 2014December19 We'll get there fast and then we'll take it slow. Picture me eating a cookie for breakfast. You know it’s the holiday season when you do ridiculous things like eat a cookie for breakfast. And with
  159. 2014December12 The information is not entirely online. Picture me staring at Chrome and marveling that I’ve pushed it to the point where the tabs are barely big enough to fit the “X” and my Textedit page
  160. 2014December04 "I just want something real to happen." Picture me up early, half hour sitting in silence on the floor, up and tying my shoes, chasing my own breath on dark streets, back home, shave,
  161. 2014November28 Blackfridaycore Picture me sitting by the fire, mass-deleting emails from companies who want me to be shopping right now. It’s Black Friday. (Friends in foreign
  162. 2014November21 We are all working for different futures. Picture me at 37,000 feet in a United-brand flying tube hurtling eastward at 505 miles per hour. I’m returning home after a great time speaking at
  163. 2014November13 Hyper-local NIMBYism (and Other Easy Critiques) Picture me in the office alone last night when I wrote this. It was thoroughly November. The post-sunset blue light peering in through the windows
  164. 2014November06 The Inexorable March of Convenience Picture me pouring the coffee. I’m working from home today. The pup is sprawled out on the floor; she’s working on her Cong which I’ve filled to the
  165. 2014October30 21st Century Simulacra Picture me fussing around with some sketches of a product I need that doesn’t exist yet. It’s a bit half-baked at the moment, but it’s something
  166. 2014October23 Something Wetter than Pixels Picture me upstairs in a dark and quiet house. It’s 11:15 p.m. I’ve just returned from three very full days at a conference in Chicago. The animals
  167. 2014October16 A cup of tea and a crowbar materialize in space... Picture me rounding the corner this morning, heading in the opposite direction of coffee, just to take another look at the arcade that is presently
  168. 2014October09 Truth and Ditto Picture me alone in a silent office. It’s so quiet that I can hear the distant and muffled sound of water moving through pipes throughout the
  169. 2014October04 Take Time Picture me up in the air, at 35,000 feet, with a six inch screen inviting me to sit back, snack, and enjoy the entertainment. I would if I could,
  170. 2014October01 Flesh and Machine Picture me sitting in the dark of my home office, staring in disbelief at two things. Number one, the absurd number of open tabs in my browser. One
  171. 2014September29 Going Postal Picture me finishing up my lunch at the Game-of-Thrones-ish table in our office dining room. This massive and gorgeous thing was handmade by a local
  172. 2014September27 Independent Brains Picture me watching my younger brother play Hill Climb Racing on our Amazon TV while he eats what he calls a “peanut butter surprise.” Somehow, an
  173. 2014September25 The Disappointment of Now Picture me on the couch in my den, trying my best to type three or four words in between being pawed by a certain Border Collie who insists I’ve
  174. 2014September23 Time-Collapsers, Great and Small Picture me downstairs in my little office at home. It’s 6:15 AM. My partner is upstairs sleeping. She’s recovering from a day-long fever. My brother
  175. 2014August13 On Expertise and Control Just a moment or so in to an hour-long consulting session, something unexpected happened. I was hunched over, hands planted shoulder-width apart on
  176. 2014April14 essays How to Tell the User's Story User Stories, User Scenarios, and Use Cases can all help you better understand who your users are and ensure that what matters to them makes its way to your project spec.
  177. 2014March30 Remote Viewing In the 1970’s, physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff were studying a variety of parapsychological phenomena at the Stanford Research Institute
  178. 2014March26 Maybe that acquisition is just good advertising. Google and Facebook, they’re up to something. I mean, they have to be, right? All these acquisitions must mean something! This reminds me of when
  179. 2014March14 "Disruption" As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, Dan Hon has been killing it lately with his daily dispatches. Here’s a clip from yesterday that really spoke to
  180. 2014March09 Guts A few months ago, I woke up from a dream that left me feeling upset for days, though the more I recount it, the less upsetting it seems. In the
  181. 2014March04 This Mediated Life Time to report! How did you sleep? What time did you wake up today? Are you working? What are you doing? Where are you? Who are you with? What did
  182. 2014February25 Groupthink videoessay About midway through the interview, Lofgren is explaining how he first became interested in digging deeper and sticking his nose where it
  183. 2014February21 There’s a person at the other end. Last summer, Charlie Rose hosted a short segment on 60 Minutes about David Kelley. It covered a short history of IDEO through the lens of David
  184. 2014February20 More destabilizing ideas, please. An idea doesn’t have to be objectively true to be valuable, does it? Some ideas are intrinsically valuable, irrespective of their truth or
  185. 2014February19 We don't solve real problems anymore. Yesterday, on the way home from work, I heard someone on the radio say, “The last thing we need are smartphones.” It was said as a quick aside. The
  186. 2014January22 Detroit I’ve just returned from a brief visit to Detroit. My father, step-mother, three brothers and sister live there. So do my three uncles, three aunts,
  187. 2014January03 Being Online in 2014 Hours in to the long, slow drive up north for the holidays, with nothing but wilderness around me, I was still thinking about the web. I had left in
  188. 2014January01 Loves and Resolutions I don’t normally make New Year’s resolutions, but if there was one lesson that 2013 taught me, it is to be intentional in all things. On this first
  189. 2012October15 Don't Be So Linear The October issue of PRINT is out, and with it, my latest Interaction column. This issue is focused on international design, so it gave me an
  190. 2012August11 Stuck in Idle The August issue of PRINT Magazine is out, and with it, my latest column. It’s a different type of piece; this one is about information overload and
  191. 2012May29 Several Things I Have Learned Just a few things I’ve learned that are on my mind as I draw closer to my 32nd birthday… I’m nearing the end of my thirty-second year on this
  192. 2012May14 Playing with Data I love the fusion of infoaesthetics and abstract expressionism that Holly Gressley put into her illustration for my column in June’s issue of PRINT.
  193. 2012March13 On Digital Davids and Goliaths: Why the Design We Trust Usually Comes from the Little Guy My latest Interaction column for Print Magazine is now out in the April issue! And, hey, look, they kept my original title (first time)! Neat. Also,
  194. 2012January10 Future Daydream This is my fourth Interaction column for Print Magazine. My original title: “A Post-Screen Future.” No matter. The illustration by Zut Alors! is as
  195. 2011December15 Ethical Technology, 5 Well, I think I’m winding down here. I can tell that I’m close to being out of things to say (for now, anyway); my mind has begun to wander back to
  196. 2011December14 Ethical Technology, 4 So far, my ramblings have gone from monopolies of information to the filter bubble to the economics of the internet. Today, what about automation
  197. 2011December13 Ethical Technology, 3 Continuing these thoughts in a meandering sort of way (Part 1 → Part 2 → You Are Here). Yesterday I was talking about the filter bubbles that we
  198. 2011December12 Ethical Technology, 2 So, picking up on Part 1. The next thing that came to mind as far as ethics and technology are concerned is the filter bubble (as coined by Eli
  199. 2011December11 Ethical Technology, 1 A few weeks ago, I sat down for a cup of coffee and conversation with a new friend—someone who had been put in touch with me by a mutual friend of
  200. 2011September16 Smarter, Better Cyborgs This is my third Interaction column for Print Magazine. …or, as I originally titled it, “Designing the Unseen.” But, this title plus Tim Lahan’s
  201. 2011July15 How Should We Contain the Cloud This is my second Interaction column for Print Magazine. My original title was “Post-Desk Content,” but the editors reframed it as an interesting
  202. 2011June01 The Folly of the Flock This is my first Interaction column for Print Magazine. I’m proud of the article, and very thankful for the opportunity to write for the same design
  203. 2010February10 essays We are Latently Enslaved by Our Own Ingenuity Chuck Klosterman, in his essay, “Fail,” (one of several collected in the book, Eating the Dinosaur) wrote: “We are latently enslaved by our own
  204. 2009July24 Interview with John Maeda I first encountered John Maeda during my third year as a student at the Rhode Island School of Design. I was fascinated by his work, which merged
  205. 2009February06 Can Any Problem Be Solved? Bill Gates asks this question (specifically toward the problem of Malaria) in his TED conference talk from this week, but I’m interested in the
  206. 2009February03 21st Century Skillset In a culture column of titled What Technology Has Taught us at Dizzying Speed, Alicia Rawsthorn muses on some areas in which technological change
  207. 2009January27 The End of Solitude I came across a wonderful piece written in The Chronicle of Higher Education titled The End of Solitude, by William Deresiewicz, which emphatically
  208. 2009January26 Time Definitely Has Value I am just finishing up reading Blown to Bits: How the New Economics of Information Transforms Strategy by Philip Evans and Thomas S. Wurster, which,
  209. 2009January23 The Great Equalizer I’ve been reading a book titled What Are You Optimistic About? Today’s Leading Thinkers on Why Things Are Good and Getting Better, edited by John
  210. 2009January19 In Real Life I just read an insightful post from Russell Davies about how screens are getting boring. He elaborates: “It’s really hard to impress anyone with
  211. 2009January07 Respond I just saw an interesting post from Wired’s Epicenter blog discussing a new approach to user comments on blogs. The author points out that since
  212. 2008September22 Interview with Silas Munro Silas and I were classmates at Rhode Island School of Design and have known each other for almost a decade now (wow). Silas is also a graduate of
  213. 2008August18 Interview with Eric Karjaluoto Eric is a Canadian designer, who is passionate about ideas and experience. He studied at the Emily Carr Institute and worked as a painter prior to
  214. DESIGNER