Me, where, what, huh?

“Sorry I haven’t been blogging” posts are the worst. But an absence of this duration does seem to call for some kind of acknowledgment. So here’s what’s been up with me!

• I’ve been freelancing. Most exciting: contributing writing to Steven Levy’s Backchannel on Medium. The chance to work with Steven, and the other great journalists he’s assembled for that effort, was irresistible. (If The Soul of a New Machine was the book-in-the-back-of-my-mind as I wrote Dreaming in Code, then Steven’s epochal Hackers served as the equivalent inspiration for Say Everything.)

  The pieces I’ve tackled so far have been ambitious and kinda time-consuming, but fascinating and absorbing. Today we posted There’s a Blockchain for That, a deep dive that lays out the dream of rewiring the Internet along decentralized lines using the technology that powers Bitcoin. If you missed it, last month I took a look at the rise of new programming languages like Google’s Go and Apple’s Swift, laying out the technological and cultural implications of creating our software with corporate-shaped tools. Also: I spent a weekend at a “Comedy Hackathon”; the resulting piece is Furby Does Python.

• I’m still putting in a decent number of hours each week editing stories for Grist. Working with the gang there is a steady pleasure. The stuff Grist is covering is as urgent as ever, and I’m proud to continue my association with it — even if I can’t say I miss the Seattle round trip.
• I’ve been toying with some ideas for a new writing project…but nothing has jelled to the point of being able to talk about yet. Stewing in progress.
• I woouldn’t think of abandoning this blog, but I’m definitely in “pause” mode with the Wordyard Project. You see, I started rethinking a couple of small things, and that steadily snowballed, as sometimes happens, until I was rethinking everything. And then I got distracted by all sorts of other demands. And before I knew it, three months had passed. So: The rethinking will continue, but the radio silence, having been broken, will cease.

In the meantime, happy new year! And thanks, as always, for reading.