My piece on privacy and why we can still have some, if we choose. We will become stewards of our own information and will expect others – people, companies – to honor that role. Bank on it. Thanks to CIO for suggesting the topic, despite knowing its readers would rather not think on it.
My review of Julia Angwin’s Stealing MySpace, MySpace Odyssey My central theme, that the geeks are being supplanted by the twerps, was meant to be the geeks vs. the schmucks. A good chunk of the book revolves around a ’schmuck insurance’ clause in a deal the MySpace founders struck with their overlords at InterMix. Also, the first few chapters looking at MySpace’s founders before they founded the site basically made them look like schmucks.
But the Globe thought “schmuck” was too vulgar. So, twerps became my stand-in.
My piece Sylvania Builds for a Bulbless Future is in the new issue of Fast Company. My first reporting trip for this piece was almost a year ago.
I’ve recently published three different stories of human resilience.
The family that runs the James Hook & Co. lobster company decided to rebuild when their company burnt down at the end of May. I spent the summer checking on their progress, and wrote this report of their still-unfolding story for the Boston Globe magazine.
Steve Sarowitz, a passionate yet gracious entrepreneur, walked me through a painful failed software project and how he led his firm through that low point to its strong market position today.
Holyoke has suffered badly with the decline in its economy over the last 40 years. But Daniel Ross and Nuestras Raices have used community agriculture to help move the community forward. Now his work is spreading to other communities.
During vacation last week I mostly disconnected, but I came online long enough to do a stint on the New York Times Tech Talk podcast. I talked a bit about my most recent Prototype column, Predicting Where You’ll Go and What You’ll Like. That column examined what might come of the growing mounds of data on our whereabouts, thanks to GPS systems, cell phones and the like.
My appearance on Tech Talk is about a third of the way into the show.
My latest Prototype column in the New York Times is Home Brew for the Car, Not the Beer Cup.
It looks at a company that aims to sell home ethanol brewing systems.
A piece drawn from the project I did as a Templeton-Cambridge journalism fellow last year is in this week’s Economist: Where angels no longer fear to tread.
My piece on Iceland’s hydrogen economy is out in the new issue of Fast Company.
I went on CNBC to talk about Iceland’s Hydrogen Economy.
But as they say, the book is better. Here’ s a link to my H Hotbed story.
My profile of legendary innovator Jeff Hawkins, From palmtops to brain cells, ran recently in The Economist’s Technology Quarterly. Aptly, The Economist calls the profile it does in the Technology Quarterly “Brain Scan.”
Jeff is something of a humble genius. The combination is striking.
This post from Alexandre Linhares of the Human Intuition Project is the only one I found in a quick search of the blogosphere.
I have a piece, Software that makes software better , in a recent issue of “The Economist.” (subscription required)
Here’s a post on the story, Indeed! The Economist on Computer Science as a Social Science by Jonathan Pincus, who is cited in the piece, with some interesting comments, including a link to this summary post by a Sun developer named Mark Davidson.
I also talked the other day with an MIT computer scientist who said some nice things about the piece. I noted that my editor for the piece majored in computer science at Oxford, which doesn’t hurt when framing a piece like this.