Apr 7, 2022Media Slide — How Media Bias Negatively Impacts SocietyEveryone complains (rightly) about the news media. Criticism is easy, but drawing a straight line to how poor quality reporting harms society is key: the line I’d like to draw is not a new idea, but I’m calling it media slide as a memorable shorthand to make the point. It’s…News5 min readNews5 min read
Mar 23, 2022Truly Social MediaEnvisioning a better social media may be the most important technical challenge of our time, because the promise of getting it right connects people in the right ways which in turn can revolutionize politics and spark innovation in literally any field of human endeavor. This is a hard design problem…Social Media5 min readSocial Media5 min read
Mar 14, 2022Quality > QuantitySoon after publishing a short tale of digital disappointment, I’m thinking about better paths forward. While I would never argue that it’s simple, I have a hunch that the answer is to build better quality software — and the way to do this is to build much less of it. …Interoperability6 min readInteroperability6 min read
Mar 13, 2022Digital DisappointmentRecently a friend reached out to chat and thanks to the state of our digital ecosystem, and as a digital curmudgeon the whole thing struck me as such a needless shame. Massive corporate platforms are battling for market share seeking leverage to grow their networks, and the effects are decidedly…Interoperability4 min readInteroperability4 min read
Feb 3, 2022Social Media Freedom of Choice“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” — Abraham Maslow [source] The EU is drafting social media legislation that seeks to overhaul the systems that connect people in the digital space that has already…Social Media3 min readSocial Media3 min read
Jan 5, 2022Fixing Facebook“Our moral responsibility is not to stop the future, but to shape it…to channel our destiny in humane directions and to ease the trauma of transition.” ― Alvin Toffler Social media is a defining phenomenon of our times that powerfully connects people using media, and it has achieved a remarkable…Facebook9 min readFacebook9 min read
Oct 14, 2019Remembering Steve JobsI met Steve Jobs a few times in the early 1990s, when he was running NeXT Computer. This was during a rebuilding phase in his long career, well before his unlikely return to Apple. I was working for Canon, who had a partnership to sell NeXT computers exclusively in Japan…Apple5 min readApple5 min read
Aug 9, 2019“Going dark” encryption needs clarityRecently the US Attorney General has prominently reraised the demand from law enforcement against “going dark” as they portray the impact of end-to-end encryption security — a vague request that all digital communications be subject to a legal “wiretap”. …Brexit4 min readBrexit4 min read
Jul 23, 2019The disingenuity of “Going dark”-ismAttorney General Barr is repeating the tired argument against end-to-end encryption, that it potentially frustrates law enforcement and is thus unacceptable. …Encryption3 min readEncryption3 min read
May 15, 2019On the Replaceability of Social MediaThere is a notoriously congested stretch of road on the other side of the island that people have been complaining about for years: “It took almost an hour just to get through [name of town].” Everyone has a brilliant but simple idea for how to remedy the situation (with an…Social Media3 min readSocial Media3 min read
