Writing

Featured

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Fog, Friction, and the Dark Forest

Looking at the dark forest through the lens of Clausewitz, and exploring whether we can get ahead of the super predators that lurk in the dark of the internet.

11 min

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Mining Towns

Looking at the systems behind community identities, and how those identities are subverted and leveraged for profit. It's not great, folks.

9 min

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Legibility in Work and Fiction

My path to technology and design is rooted in fiction. I realized this by when I revisited the source material. Here's a little note about Cryptonomicon, being legible, and startups.

10 min

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The skills we develop aren’t permanent. They’re things that develop within a particular context — education, a workspace, a team, etc. — that accrete and slough off over time unless continuously reinforced. The now aged youth who studied…

5 min

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Designers in the Military

A first-hand account of working with military professionals and design

8 min

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Professional Warning People

A quick look at strategic warning intelligence and the professional Cassandra

6 min

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Craft, Catalyst, and Expertise

Considering craft-based disciplines and catalyzing expertise

6 min

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Covid Anxiety: A Foresight Game

A serious game about making serious decisions in a crisis

9 min

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The Decay of Digital Things

A book chapter I wrote on how internet connected objects decay

8 min

All writing

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No Such Journey

Self help and consumption communities sell us journeys to become something we aren't. This isn't the way. There are some cleaner ways to realize ambitions, starting with discarding the narrative.

7 min

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Parasites, Symbionts, and the Scabs

Parasitism, or a way of thinking about products that will hopefully prevent you from unleashing something evil.

6 min

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Building within an Ecosystem

A short (and evolving) writeup about building a rehype plugin in typescript

9 min

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Systems Decay When Shared

We're terrible at adopting the systems of others. A "defined" system should always be approached with skepticism and curiosity — and systems of the self most of all. Some of these might be in your life: Productivity has everything from GTD…

9 min

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Belief-based Planning

Project Planning with and against core beliefs, with an illustrated example

10 min

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Blocking the Entrance to the Rabbit Hole

A bit of a meandering path down the mechanical keyboard and alternative layout rabbit hole, and back out again.

8 min

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An Old Kind of New

For the past few years, I’ve been independent — as a consultant, as a contractor, as an indie developer, or in different kind of liminal states. It’s been overall awesome, though with its host of stressors. It’s also been uniquely…

5 min

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Renewing Spaces

Every few months, my wife and I change around our apartments configuration. The way this manifests is always a bit different. On the extreme end, we might move the bed into a different room, discard or donate a beloved piece of furniture,…

4 min

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Learning with Pressure, Time, and Surface Area

Since moving to Copenhagen, one of the things I’ve been experimenting with has been how to learn very new (or functionally new) things effectively — especially given all the constraints of the job, family, and existing commitments and…

8 min

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Being a Good Amateur

We’re amateurs continuously throughout our lives. For some skills — vital but sporadic skills — we remain that way. And that’s totally fine. Amateurism, over time, is its own skill to develop — and we should endeavour to leave amateur…

8 min

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Avoiding Kits

Reconsidering the language and tools of Getting Started

6 min

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Homeric Design Strategy

I was one course away from a minor in Classics when I graduated from the University of Toronto. It was a weird rabbit hole that I fell down — utterly engrossed by the overlapping systems of symbol and myth that had wrapped itself around…

6 min

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Kitbashing Experience

Putting our different experiences together to make something new

6 min

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Functional Immersion

I’ve fairly recently changed my mind about virtual reality. Much of my sensibility as an interaction designer has been tempered by the writings of authors like Neal Stephenson and William Gibson for whom VR was almost a foregone…

9 min

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Visceral Control

One of the pleasures and horrors of modernity is the control of something larger and more powerful for our ends. That you can do so much more, and then hold on for dear life. Motorcycles are like this. Flooring the accelerator on a Tesla…

7 min

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Peripherals

I’ve had a long term obsession with peripherals. Peripherals are objects (usually interaction mechanisms) that connect to computers to extend their capability. Today, a usable computer is now the size of our thumb (or smaller, if you want…

6 min

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Thinking through Research Automation

Automation and orchestration in research ops

7 min

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Migration and Circumstance

As a forewarning, this is one of those “I’m working through something” posts and trying to wrangle my own thinking. I might come back and add to it as my thinking evolves. About a decade go (oh man), I led a “walk shop” (a walking…

7 min

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Legibility in Design

Design is a weird drug, and at least in the software world, we’re collectively high. Since I got started in this world, there’s been a huge amount of work done to democratize design — and I’m an outcome of that. Educated in political…

4 min

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Hidden in the Shallows

The zombie genre is a compelling lens on the world despite its bleak premise. The dead rise and mindlessly go about adding to their numbers. Faced with what’s basically an environmental force, individuals and society proceed to break down,…

3 min

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Reconstructive Design Process

Consciously metabolizing past design work to create something new

4 min

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Wearing Technology

We adorn ourselves in technology. Whether it's the shrunken screens of today's smartwatches or the latest in lightweight, high resistance fabrics, the fact that we're wearing technology is indisputable. In the past decade though, two terms…

6 min

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The Problem with Validity

How much of what I just discovered is my own beliefs reflecting back on me — lightly but insignificantly embellished by the research completed? This is a concern with any research-driven discovery process — and one that I’ve constantly…

5 min

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Designing Participant Experiences

Thinking about research operations from a service design lens

6 min

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All Quiet on the Productivity Front

Constant progress without being certain you’re getting anywhere. Reflecting on the adrenal dropkick that was 1917, I realized this perpetually delayed sense of resolution was familiar in other aspects of my life too: the parts where plans…

8 min

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Sponge Cycles

Identify and define the cycles where you absorb and become

9 min

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Speculative Surplus

Whenever we see modern militaries, we’re witnessing industrialized production and movement of things on a scale that is difficult to comprehend. Whether it's the engineering that goes into feeding deployed troops or the rollout of new Army…

10 min

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Full Hamcus: Finding the Spark in Sci-fi Workwear

This essay was originally published on the TCHWR blog. Hamcus is not a techwear brand in the traditional sense. Rather, it is a science fiction workwear clothing brand based out of Guangzhou, China that has embarked on a particular type of…

7 min

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Reflecting on 2020

Well, that was a year. My family and I were more fortunate than most, but not as fortunate as some when it came to navigating the weirdness that was 2020. It felt a bit like we rounded a bend in an already turbulent river — only to…

12 min

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Diverge Weekly Issue 9 The Dependencies Issue

First, thank you and welcome to all the new subscribers, and to Hillary Predko for sharing Diverge in The Prepared. This is a weird newsletter that aspires to be about design and global affairs — but I take some latitudes. The pattern of…

6 min

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A More Intentional Wardrobe

I have an affinity for jackets and bags. The two central functions to protect and to carry somehow stand out in my mind as being what this whole clothing endeavour is about. In the quest for a more perfect bag and a more perfect jacket,…

9 min

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Reflecting on 2019

2019 has been a weird combination of my most exhausting, fulfilling, chaotic, and structured year to date. Midway through 2018, I decided that I wouldn’t share anything until it was “done”, or at least passed a significant milestone. So…

13 min

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Benadryl and Parachord

With some luck and a generous vacation policy at my work, I was finally able to do a Wilderness First Responder (WFR) course. WFR is certification and training aimed at those who might need to stabilize a patient and wait for definite care…

4 min

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Bureaucratic Mysteries

These tools were taught as a workshop to the first Code for Canada fellowship \team in November 2017. Article originally published in Medium\. Building the actual product or technology is rarely the coda on the work that is social…

13 min