Urban Honking

To scientists, “experimental” is a technical word, one with a precise meaning: that which relates to a procedure of methodical trial and error, to a systematic test for determining the nature of reality. I got in trouble on this blog once, with commenters, for using the word “experimental” too flippantly. But artists experiment too, of course.…

William Gibson, first in his novel Burning Chrome and then later in the seminal Neuromancer, both coined and defined “cyberspace” as “a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators.” His novels predate the universal adoption of  the World Wide Web as a communication matrix, and his psychedelic fantasy of cyberspace–a kind of semantic…

Big thanks to the Urban Honking Television team for turning my 38 things I’ve learned in 38 lecture into a lecture video. I turn 39 this week, so I’m in deep meditation on the 39th thing. I’ll let you know when I have it. Although technically I have the whole year, right? 38 Things from […]

About a year ago I started working for a publishing company. I was hired as part of a push towards creating quality digital products in house, doing them the right way (like the opposite of this). But things have turned out to be pretty mixed in that regard. Some projects have relied on outside vendors […]

When I was living in Los Angeles, a director mentoring my writing partner and me asked how old we were. Early 30s was our collective reply. He nodded his head. “So, you got the next 10 years to make your mark.” It made sense at the time. After all, this idea that you need to […]

Last week, I wrote a piece for Vice Magazine’s Motherboard about an android version of the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. The story of the android is truly surreal, stranger than even Dick’s flipped-out fiction, and I recommend you pop over to …

Last week, I wrote a piece for Motherboard about an android version of the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. The story of the android is truly surreal, stranger than even Dick’s flipped-out fiction, and I recommend you pop over to Motherboard and mainline it for yourselves. For the piece, I interviewed the lead programmer on…

Is poetry a driving force of Oceanography?
Read Rimbaud!

– Phillipe Diolé

I’ve written many times, although not recently, about the ocean.

When I first began Universe in 2005, it was practically a ship’s log: meandering pieces on narwhal tusks, …

Is poetry a driving force of Oceanography? Read Rimbaud! – Phillipe Diolé   I’ve written many times, although not recently, about the ocean. When I first began Universe in 2005, it was practically a ship’s log: meandering pieces on narwhal tusks, the accidental poetics of my hero, Rachel Carson, and adolescent screeds on the perils…

Failure has been a mantra where I work, at Wieden+Kennedy, for much longer than I’ve worked here. Dan Wieden has preached failure from the start. So much so that a few years back W+K 12 made a massive pushpin wall that reads “Fail Harder.” The current class, whom I teach, recently added an extra “er” […]