A memetic virus gripped the world of popular music in late 1984 and 1985: the superstar benefit single. The phenomenon of superstar benefits can be… Read More »From protest to collaboration: Paul Simon’s “Graceland” and lessons for xenophiles
My colleagues rock. When you give a talk at the Berkman Center these days, one of your rewards is a Berkman lunch apron. I like… Read More »My talk at Berkman: Mapping a connected world
I get my best thinking done by speaking. Not just randomly shooting my mouth off… though I certainly do that often enough. No, I like… Read More »More map lust: global populations in 1890
For the past several months, the Berkman Center has been involved with an ambitious project, called Publius. On its surface, Publius is a collection of… Read More »My Publius essay on the polyglot internet
While a great deal of what I write here is underinformed speculation, this piece is unusually speculative and underinformed. It’s possible that I’m flat out… Read More »Is ad-supported journalism viable in a pay-for-performance age?
I’m in love. I’ve been blogging these past few weeks about infrastructure and how we understand and misunderstand it. My motives are a bit oblique… Read More »Seduced by BBC’s maps of British infrastructure