Blog archive

I’ve written extensively over the years for various blogs and websites, some my own, and some professionally. I’ve spent some time migrating old blog posts, articles, and ebooks from other sites into this new home. This library is still incomplete, but growing as I identify old content I’d like to restore, and I’ve noted any cases where content has been modified since its original publication date.

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2025

An overhead view of Barack Obama’s state of the union address, with both houses of Congress gathered.
Representative democracy is worth fighting for, even if we’ve never had one
Since I’ve been alive, our government has felt static and immovable. The same parties, platforms, and personalities have dominated the national stage for decades and resisted younger voices…

2024

Erase your digital footprint
As more companies report data breaches, my personal credit card numbers are compromised, and especially as I become more familiar with cybersecurity, I’ve become increasingly preoccupied with where…
A black-and-white photograph of the Pioneer plaque affixed to the underside of the space probe.
Pioneer plaque
The Pioneer 10 and 11 probes launched by NASA in 1972 and 1973 were the first manmade objects with sufficient escape velocity to exit the solar system. While…
Image of Connor Mason wearing an Apple Vision Pro headset in an Apple Store, talking with his hands.
First impressions of Apple Vision Pro
There’s tech in this thing that doesn’t seem like it should be possible. The extended reality features are the biggest thing for me—app windows casting shadows onto nearby…

2023

2019

An image of a laptop in the dark, half closed, with the backlight from the screen illuminating its keyboard and the surrounding surface.
What if Apple replaced all its Mac apps with Catalyst?
Of course they shouldn’t do it. But what if they did? What features would they leave behind, or bring to iOS? Where does it make sense for them…
Visual effects from the Ender's Game film showing the zero-gravity battle room.
Ender’s Game and Twitter harassment
In the 1985 novel Ender’s Game, one of my favorite young adult sci-fi books, the “Nets” are the equivalent of the Internet, where characters can instantly communicate with…

2017

2016

A photograph of someone using a Microsoft Surface device with a stylus in tablet orientation.
Pixel and Surface are turning the electronics industry on its head
Even with the Cubs winning the World Series and national politics inspiring breathless headlines, perhaps one of the strangest things about 2016 has been the transformation of some…
An image of an iPhone 6s resting on a wooden table, running the Apple Music app in iOS 10. The home screen of Apple Music shows the new, bolder headers that are central to the new iOS 10 design aesthetic.
Apple’s new design style in iOS 10 is a statement on accessibility
When iOS 7 was first previewed to the public at WWDC 2013, it seemed Apple was obsessed with extending its devices’ thinness to its software. Fonts were ultralight,…

2015

Image of Apple Music running on various devices, including a MacBook, iPad, Apple Watch, and iPhone.
Apple Music’s design is broken
Apple’s new streaming service launched to massive hype this summer, bringing a new Beats Music–infused flavor to Apple’s iTunes-centric media ecosystem. Apple Music transforms how Apple approaches media…
Screenshot of typeface documentation for the San Francisco display font, showing sizes and alignment guides.
What’s in a font? Working with San Francisco
Because the Apple Watch display is so small, and because there are so few items that can be economically displayed within Watch apps, the elements that designers have…

2014

Image of a Nexus 6 device sitting on a table next to a pen, a notepad, and a bowl with kiwi, figs, and almonds.
More Android than Android
Android’s new poster child
An image of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg presenting at a conference, with a large visualization of the Facebook social graph behind him.
Facebook forever
Until as recently as last year, Mark Zuckerberg thought of Facebook as a web company. Now, he says, mobile is the company’s “big focus” moving forward. In this…
Illustration of Material Design components across a laptop, tablet, and phone form factor in neon green and purple colors.
Material design for consumer apps
In recent years, Google has put an increased emphasis on the design and consistency of its products’ web and mobile interfaces. At this year’s I/O developer conference, the…

2012

I’m afraid your god is dead, Dave
Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Nietzschean posthumanity

2011

The widening gyre
Yeats’s The Second Coming and cyclical Christian mythos
The impact of factory farming
Boxers and bullfighters
The Lost Generation, a term coined by author Gertrude Stein to refer to the loose community of expatriate writers and artists living in France after the First World…
The water’s clear and innocent: Radiohead’s King of Limbs
Radiohead devotees are an interesting bunch. Since—along with millions of other fanatics the world over—my fandom of the Oxford experimental band borders on religious devotion, I was obviously…
Photo of Steve Jobs holding up the first-generation iPad.
Tablet wars: how iPad is lapping the industry
How Apple won the everyman

2010

2009

Cropped image of the album cover for Hail to the Thief by Radiohead.
“Let me hear both sides”: Radiohead and political discourse
In recent years, political platforms endorsed by rock musicians been elevated to a prominent position in popular culture and in the psyches of mainstream Americans. Artists with uncompromising…

2008

2007

Before the launch of the iPhone, I made an advertisement in my driveway using sidewalk chalk.
First impressions of iPhone
Before the launch of the iPhone, I made an advertisement in my driveway using sidewalk chalk.