The Cases We Don't Design For
Modern systems excel at handling ordinary cases. The challenge begins when a person arrives carrying circumstances that do not fit neatly into a category.
Technology
Technology is examined not for novelty, but for consequence. The essays explore how tools reshape institutions, relationships, and human judgment long after the excitement of invention fades.
220,000 Yottabytes
A speculative transporter calculation becomes a reflection on human complexity, institutional compression, and the distance between a person and the data used to represent them.
The Companies That Forgot
Modern institutions increasingly behave like systems suffering from identity crises while society depends on them for continuity, trust, and shared perception.
When the Air Became Infrastructure
Radio turned distance into presence, making information feel ambient before television, the internet, smartphones, and AI pushed the pattern closer to the mind.
Queer Infrastructure
Queer people once built connection from symbols, phone lines, bookstores, VHS tapes, and the fragile systems that made recognition possible.
When Messages Waited at Home
A reflection on voicemail lights, unreachable time, and the psychological cost of permanent accessibility.
Quiet Instruments
A physician’s gold calculator watch becomes a meditation on durable tools, emotional continuity, and the difference between technology that serves us and technology that consumes us.
The Future Still Needs Real Tomatoes
Kurtzman-era Star Trek may be messier than earlier Trek, but beneath it is a deeply contemporary question: what parts of being human are we willing to trade away for stability, optimization, and abundance?
When Manufacturing Became Software
A reflection on Autodesk, early 3D printing, and the quiet transition from industrial manufacturing to computational production.
The Systems We Live Inside
A public system reveals its values in where it places complexity, who absorbs the cost, and whether people retain a path through it.