The Year of Our Lord 2025 is my De Morgan year. Famed logician Augustus De Morgan was studying to become a lawyer when an opportunity to go into academia arose. He took it, and good thing–“De Morgan’s laws” are an important tool for developing (among other things) the device on which you are reading this (unless, for some reason, someone printed it onto paper for you, I guess). He also tutored Ada Lovelace, the woman…
The New York Times Company’s lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI is just one battle in a larger conflict–if potentially a pivotal one. Thanks in part to America’s “adversarial” approach to legal disputes, however, for most of us the outcome could scarcely matter less. Copyright advocates are assembling cognizable arguments for why rich, powerful media companies like the Times deserve to profit from the technological innovations of others. Tech companies are employing armies of lawyers to…
This essay was originally published in Areo Magazine, which has since closed its doors. In 1964, US President Lyndon B. Johnson made a historic request: he wanted a large-scale, nuclear-powered desalination programme to address the growing need for potable water in the American Southwest. Members of the federal government were dispatched to Israel for conversations with the world’s leading experts on desalination technology. Four years later, the Secretary of the Interior and the Chairman of…
On the morning of September 11th, 2001, footage of the second plane struck me as palpably as a punch to the gut. In those early hours, the unknowable death toll played second fiddle to the more immediate question of whether the attacks would stop. Was this another Pearl Harbor? The start of World War III? I was a long way from New York, but as a twenty-something engaged to be married that fall, I spent…
It is improbable that my grandmother was the first woman over 50 to forward every joke, comic, rumor, chain letter, and political screed that hit her email inbox to literally everyone in her address book–but there can be no question that she was among the first. As someone who made much of her living by typing, Grandma was an early adopter of computer technology, and I first accessed a computer network (Prodigy, a pioneer in…
This domain has, over the years, been used mostly as a hobbyist’s sandbox. That hasn’t especially changed. It’s not my intention to blog. However in an effort to extricate myself from various social media platforms I think it will be helpful to have a minimally-functioning site where people can find me if they feel so inclined. So here it is.