I am pretty sure I first read whatever it was that implanted the myth of the star grid in my head when I was eight or nine, and I was at an apartment building playground near where my friend Devlin grew up. My mom was friends with a woman named Chichi (or something like that). … Continue reading Traversing the star grid
When I was ten years old I read an astronomy book which claimed that from a particular point in our galaxy one could look out into the night sky and see all the stars arranged in a perfect grid. The idea of the Star Grid impressed me so deeply it became one of my dominant … Continue reading The Star Grid
If I were inventing a mythology, it would definitely feature the Cosmic Grid Point, the one place in the universe where a being can stand and look out into space in any direction and see all stars arranged in a perfect grid.
One of the points in the universe from which all the stars appear arranged in a grid, happens to be an inhabited planet. So far it has not occurred to the astronomers of this planet to ask why the stars are arranged in a grid, because how else would a grid be arranged?
I feel that The New Math: a Political History might hold the keys to the mystery of my own bizarrely qualitative and intense relationship with mathematics. It is a weird thing, and I do not understand it, but it matters. It is inscribed in my codeset. I have always been appallingly bad at doing math. … Continue reading Math weirdness
A couple of weeks ago my brother sent me a video about what makes some people cool. It is so densely true and intenely relevant, I have to post the transcript here. Have you ever wondered why certain people just feel cool even when they’re just doing nothing? It’s not the clothes or the music … Continue reading The truth about taste
Lately I’ve been reflecting on what strikes me as the most difficult and interesting challenge I’ve faced adjusting to service design after decades of practicing other flavors of human-centered design: the problem of altitude and granularity appropriate to solving service design problems. In design, thinking about altitudes and zoom levels is common to the point … Continue reading 10,000 foot view
The assumptions about human life at the heart of our design practices which shape our products and our daily experience of the world are exactly the same assumptions that shape our political life. Design, however, moves faster, which means we can sense where our politics are headed by observing where design has arrived. When I … Continue reading Design augury