Whew. I just published the third and final part of my “New Era of Media Development” series over at Idea Lab. I’m glad to have that out of the way. I know I’ve been whining quite a bit lately about the funding community, but that’s because that is where all the power lies, and hence [...]

Two questions echoed in my head during the three days it took me to read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (at 287 pages, it is an extremely quick read; in part because it is so difficult to put down). First, is there a difference between empathy and morality? Second, where does morality come from? And why [...]

As far as bridge blogs go, English Russia is a bit of a guilty pleasure. Founded in August 2006, the site describes itself as “the Eastern Entertainment Channel.” (The 300-plus comments on its about page offer a pretty good introduction to what seem to be the most recurrent discussions in the Russian-language blogosphere.) The blog [...]

Today a Ukrainian friend of mine had her first English class with an American Peace Corps volunteer. “He has very American eyes,” she told me. I let out a little chuckle, not quite sure what very American eyes are. “They are very big,” she explained, “and they are always staring at you. It makes me [...]

Despite the fact that I only agree with about 10% of what he has to say, Evgeny Morozov is still one of my favorite Twitterers. Dude cracks me up. If you need a 15-minute introduction to what will soon become Evgeny’s first book, his TED talk is a good place to start. Basically, Evgeny used [...]

I’m still playing catch up. The right words just aren’t coming to my head. I was, however, able to put up the second part of my “New Era of Media Development” series over at Idea Lab. I especially liked Ivan’s comment about ‘quality’ as a coded word. Reminded me of my homeboy Pierre Bourdieu. Also [...]

It has been a difficult few weeks for me – one of those times where I wish I could just skip ahead to the next chapter. But life doesn’t work that way. No skipping allowed. So while I’d like to be exploring the streets of Kyiv, taking photographs, reading books in its many fine cafes, [...]

All tourists cherish an illusion, of which no amount of experience can ever completely cure them: they imagine that they will find time, in the course of their travels, to do a lot of reading. They see themselves, at the end of a day’s sightseeing or motoring, or while they are sitting in the train, [...]

This week I’m trying to put some ending punctuation on all the fragments of projects I’ve left scattered over the past couple months before setting my sights toward new projects for November and December. I received a lot of kind and charitable feedback about my opening presentation at Ars Electronica. But, oddly, feedback about the [...]