It was late 2004. I had been asked to make the idea of a small business incubator in Beaverton, Oregon (Portland outskirts) a reality. The City of Beaverton put up the initial funding. The Software Association of Oregon (SAO), learning of this, decided to jump in with some gentle nudging to make sure the incubator [...]
Category: Through a new lens
What can I do?
It's a question almost everyone I know is asking. What does it really mean to be fully anti-racist? I am a white person living in a gloriously diverse community. We have these exchanges more now than ever before but in that context I mostly am in listening, learning, and supporting mode. This post offers preliminary [...]
Technology for good
Also sometimes called "public interest technology." If we're serious about re-imagining systems, one possible outcome of the great 2020 pandemic, then we have to examine the whole of technology. First thing it's important to understand: Technology is not neutral and technology that delivers services to those in need, even in the form of humanitarian aid, [...]
What’s in a word?
One of my favorite colleagues from the community of advocates for agency online, Doc Searls, posed this question today. What if we called the phenomenon of being tracked on almost every website and across the internet worm instead of cookie? Would it help if it did not suggest something that sounds comforting? Check it out [...]
About economic justice . . . again
I'm still self-isolating although I do have plans to meet some friends for distanced drinks in a few minutes. Much more seriously, of all the news and punditry about the pandemic grabbing my attention, the one that rankles most is the way it is exposing economic inequality. And that inequality shows up in unequal access [...]
Coming to our senses
Or how I taught ethical decision-making to road crew . . . . It's the middle of the great pandemic of 2020 and I am having a terrible time falling asleep. Not all that surprising given I live in New York City and we are being hit hard. I have tried all the standards, meditation, [...]
Filling in the gaps . . .
“Once the therapeutic process wears down these defences [sic] and while we work through the emotions they were defending against, we feel worse because we’re now feeling the original pain. But better out than in, as my grandmother would say.” Wendy Bristow, May 4, 2017, http://www.wellbeing.org. It’s the fall and I’m brimming with hope for [...]
Guild economy, not gig economy
I really hate the glib way media, pundits, and, well, investors, rush to embrace a hip term. Ultimately, depriving it of any real meaning. I love to hate unicorns, for example. Now even investors are acknowledging that the term unicorn as applied to $1B+ companies has become symbolic of a rather skewed way of going [...]
descant labs 