Recent Posts
Theobroma November 29, 2008
After reading last week's New Yorker profile of Sam Calagione, the Dogfish Head impresario who seems to be emerging as the craft beer industry's gonzo counterpart to Bonny Doon Vineyard's Randall Grahm, I found myself hankering for a taste of...
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Designing Universal Knowledge November 16, 2008
A few months ago, Amsterdam-based information designer Gerlinde Schuller approached me about writing an essay for a book about so-called universal knowledge systems. The result is "http://www.theworldasflatland.net/report1.htm">The World as Flatland: Designing Universal Knowledge, an unusual compendium that ranges across...
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Grant Park November 5, 2008
Under the terms of my employment, I'm precluded from making any public show of support for any political candidate or cause. So I made my best effort at feigning journalistic detachment as I waded into the crowd at Chicago's Grant...
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Teaching Innovation October 20, 2008
I spent this past weekend in Kansas City, taking part in a Foreign Policy Research Institute seminar on teaching the history of innovation. The organizers pulled together an impressive roster of speakers, including Professors Peter Watson, Dennis Shasha, David Hounshell...
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Now in paperback October 15, 2008
Thanks to the nice folks at Cornell University Press, my book is about to come out in a shiny new paperback edition (available for pre-order on Amazon.com). This new edition includes a few corrections and minor updates (thanks to all...
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Bluegrass Nation October 9, 2008
I was sorely disappointed to miss last weekend's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in San Francisco, but I'm taking consolation in two NYC shows on my calendar for the next couple of nights: Dobro maestro Jerry Douglas and my favorite alt-bluegrass...
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TimesPeople September 22, 2008
For the past few months, I've been working with a team of NYTimes developers on TimesPeople, a new social sharing service for NYTimes.com. We just launched the service today, after a trial balloon period as a Firefox plug-in. This is...
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Cheese holiday September 17, 2008
On my recent trip to Holland, we took a two-day bike ride out of Amsterdam and up through the Dutch countryside to the little town of Alkmaar, nestled up in a far corner of Noord Holland. The reward for two...
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Butterflies, semacodes and wireless cemeteries September 12, 2008
When he's not figuring out knotty IA problems for the Times, my colleague Elliott Malkin works as an artist exploring the intersections between memory, information and physical spaces. He'll be talking about his work at the upcoming IDEA conference in...
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Coney Island, RIP September 7, 2008
Although I've lived in New York off and on for something like seven years now, somehow I had never made it out to Coney Island before. So when I learned that Astroland was closing for good today - soon to...
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