Idle Words > Talks > The Internet With A Human Face This is the text version of a talk I gave on May 20, 2014, at Beyond Tellerrand in Düsseldorf, Germany. Marc [Thiele] emailed me a few weeks ago to
On July 1, Seth Bannon appeared before several hundred techies and investors at the New York Tech Meetup, the industry gathering where Tumblr and Foursquare made their debut. Even among this pedigreed
Ron Carlson’s short story “What We Wanted To Do” takes the form of an apology from a villager who failed to protect his comrades from marauding Visigoths. It begins: What we wanted to do was spill boi
Obviously, the site isn't journalism — it's documenting nothing more than Stanton's own viewpoint and, now, how much he evidently enjoys being a known quantity. And art thrives on the unexpected, so it's not that. Humans of New York is, as Stanton pushes his book and finds fans on the street,…
In his unstinting Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy: A Memoir , out August 26th, author Andrew Lohse goes mercilessly deep on his debaucherous experiences as a brother in Dartmouth’s Sigma Alpha E
"Hello, Dave." The immortal words of Hal, the rogue computer in "2001: A Space Odyssey," showed up on the display of a Google Nest appliance control system. That’s not supposed to happen.
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“The Gods have died!”, the villagers cried. “What should we do? Mourn? Grieve? Plead?”, the Chief asked the Priest, desperate. “No”, said the Priest, looking at the sky, afraid. ** Here’s a tiny quest
ey understand how to use “the system” to their advantage, they understand why “the system” exists, but they think “the system” is a bit of a joke.
You can ask a Wolf to become a manager, but they’ll resist it. If you happen to convince them to do it, they will do a fine job, but they won’t stay in…
Content products are tough. For every new twitter client, photo app, or news site that pops up, there’s always a doubtful throng of consumers waiting in the wings to ask why they should use this one w
Breakout Labs shines a spotlight on a contrarian contention Thiel has been advancing in essays, talks, and debates since about 2008, which has come to be known as the “tech stagnation thesis.” Thiel c
Andreesen Horowitz hq, Sand Hill Road (credit: Andreessen Horowitz) Published in Silicon Guild · 19 min read · Sep 5, 2014 -- Just over the crest of the highest point on Sand Hill Road, amid a cluster
Photo: Shutterstock Ugh, networking . It’s something we know we should do for the betterment of our careers, but for many of us, it just feels so … gross. Apparently, that feeling can be real and tang
Life After Brooklyn Even long-time Brooklynites are finding themselves priced out of the hippest neighborhoods. Do they look elsewhere, move further into Brooklyn or swallow the rising costs? Credit..
You’re a young Israeli man named Meir Bryskman. It’s a cool October night in 2010, and you’ve just stepped off a bus in downtown Lakewood, New Jersey. Pulling your dark overcoat across your chest, you
Teens are the best at Twitter. No matter what I tweet, I know that they will always be so much better at it than I am. When I was a teen 100 years ago, I would do the cool things teens do now (hilario
Construction by Stephen Doyle I n the 92 years since Henry Luce co-founded Time Inc., there have been just seven journalists to hold the title of editor-in-chief. More people have walked on the moon t
It was a gift, the way he could get bad guys to open up. "Really good detectives," he said once, "are born with this sixth sense, that crystal ball in their stomach. It’s having the ability to get ins
A New Take on Editorial & Discovery One of the original inspirations for starting Oyster was to reimagine bookstore browsing for a digital device. Paraphrased from my notes, shortly after starting Oys
MG Siegler Contributor More posts by this contributor Twitter’s Small Chance To Maim Email Nintendo: It’s Dangerous To Go Alone! Take This. In the 2013 film, World War Z , Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) is ri
You’re greeted at the pearly gates to heaven by St. Peter who asks where you’d like to spend eternity. “Well, heaven of course!” you say. Peter replies: “You have to check out hell just to see what yo
That’s how it looked back in 1859, according to Scientific American. Published in The Message · 6 min read · May 22, 2014 -- Let’s take a trip back to 1859, when our mental environment faced a dire ne
Back in July, Brent Simmons asked “ Who at the Table is an Indie iOS Developer? ” I’d like to put my hand up. I am an indie iOS developer… … and I’m not making nearly enough money for myself or my fam
An Apple wearable nears, it seems . So that leads to the inevitable next question: how much will it cost? Naturally, whispers of would-be price-points have appeared as well. And perhaps unsurprisingly
It was late afternoon in Dallas, Texas, I was walking down the loading bridge to the plane… and frankly, I had a bit of pep in my step. I was here by way of Minneapolis, on a connecting flight to Port
That’s where venture capital—ever evolving—is headed. As Mark Suster pointed out last week , the venture capital landscape has become increasingly bifurcated. Seed funds are springing up everywhere, r
I consider "tourist" to be the filthiest of words. It's the curse I grumble when caught behind pedestrians walking without purpose on big-city sidewalks. But I differentiate between explorer and touri
Published in Matter · 4 min read · Aug 24, 2014 -- $2,000,000,000 in the bank —thanks to military victories in the past few months. ISIS has become the most well-funded terrorist group in the world IS
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Photo illustration by Shiva Kilaru/IFTTT One ambitious start-up wants to reroute the plumbing of the consumer Internet. Now it has the money to try to make it happen. The start-up, called IFTTT (prono
Citymapper is what happens when you actually understand user experience. Published in Zachary Hamed · 5 min read · Aug 28, 2014 -- Every so often, an app comes along that just completely understands t
The third major release of Quotebook is called Quotebook 3. Not Quotebook 3.0. Not Quotebook 3.0.0.0.0. Not Quotebook 17.43.0. Quotebook 3. Why? Because the details matter. Now, you may have already r
Yesterday we released Hyperlapse from Instagram—a new app that lets you capture and share moving time lapse videos. Time lapse photography is a technique in which frames are played back at a much fast
Engineering 7 min read Four steps to building engaged engineering teams Engaged teams are the backbone of a healthy organization. Here are four lessons I’ve learned the hard way on about how to build
Uber is arming teams of independent contractors with burner phones and credit cards as part of its sophisticated effort to undermine Lyft and other competitors. Interviews with current and former cont
The recent tensions in Ferguson, Missouri has left the country deeply disturbed. Many of us have strong opinions about what went wrong. For others, the root grievance is more about misguided policies
When Google went public in August of 2004 one of the first things I did with my employee grants was sell enough to pay off my student loans. In retrospect I lost a lot of future gains by cashing out t
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