Category Archives: Opinion

It was through the service of that same earth that modeling portraits from clay was first invented by Butades, a potter of Sicyon, at Corinth. He did this owing to his daughter, who was in love with a young man; … Continue reading →

Imagine a camera, loose in the city, mobile, controlled by the people and connected to the web. It’s in a battle-hardened case, protected from the elements and the various urban predators. It’s heavy, solid metal. But also somehow cutely human-scale: … Continue reading →

In introducing the second Physical Computing lab, Dan O’Sullivan demonstrated a variety of analog inputs: stretch sensors, photoresistors, flex sensors, force sensitive resistors, knobs of all kinds. An hour later, I found myself standing in front of the ITP shelf … Continue reading →

Place the point of your pencil on the paper. Imagine that your pencil point is touching the model instead of the paper. Without taking your eyes off the model, wait until you are convinced that the pencil is touching that … Continue reading →

Note: this is my first post documenting a project completed as part of my work at NYU ITP. Throughout my time in the program, I will use this blog to write-up my work for class as well as other observations … Continue reading →

In January 1975, Popular Electronics ran a cover story about a new computer for hobbyists. The Altair 8800 came as a kit and cost $439 (the equivalent of $1,778.58 in today’s dollars). It came with no on-board memory. You programmed … Continue reading →

Everyone who’s ever played with an Arduino has seen the following sketch: void setup(){ pinMode(13, OUTPUT); } void loop(){ digitalWrite(13, HIGH); delay(500); digitalWrite(13, LOW); delay(500); } It’s the classic physical computing ‘hello world’: blink the onboard LED on and off … Continue reading →

In the last few weeks, I’ve spoken at two different conferences in two very different cities. The first, GoGaRuCo, was an intimate, one-track affair down in beautiful San Francisco. The second, RailsConf, was a giant behemoth in hideously surreal Vegas. … Continue reading →

In a recent post, Twitter API Lead and frequent unwilling flamewar spark, Alex Payne, called for the “reintroduction [of] logical thought and civil society” to online technical debate. In addition to the usual lamentations over the substitution of Language Wars … Continue reading →