Werd I/O

I don’t want to call these the best books I read last year: I read plenty of other well-written, worthy contenders. But these six titles are the ones that stuck with me and left me thinking about them long after I was done; they were, in that sense, my favorites. Maybe you’ll enjoy them too.

Readme.Txt: A Memoir, by Chelsea Manning

This memoir is one of those historical documents that reveal so much about their era, both in its supertext and in small details that are in themselves revealing. As well as the story of her leaks and their aftermath, Chelsea discusses what it’s like to work in military intelligence in gut-wrenching detail.

Regardless of your opinion of her actions (she’s one of my heroes), this is an important and uncompromisingly personal record of our era.

How High We Go in the Dark, by Sequoia Nagamatsu

This ostensibly science fiction novel is not what I thought it was going to be. An early chapter was so heartbreaking that I thought I would have to abandon the book; it brought up feelings of loss I hadn’t felt since my mother died.

I still don’t know if I appreciate the catharsis, but that’s what this book is: the author conjures how deeply we feel in the face of the worst horrors. It’s poetry, in a way, using science fiction as a particular kind of lens. Artful and devastating.

Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World, by Naomi Klein

A riveting analysis of the late-stage internet era, using the parallel paths of Naomis Klein and Wolf as a device to examine the multiple realities we've constructed for ourselves.

I particularly agree with a conclusion that pulls no punches about how to correct our paths and potentially save ourselves.

Severance, by Ling Ma

I loved this story about loss, meaning, and what it means to be an immigrant, dressed up as a science fiction novel. As with ‌ How High We Go in the Dark, this is my favorite kind of science fiction: speculation as metaphor in order to talk about something far more human.

But the science fiction is good too, and alarmingly close to the real-life global pandemic that took place a few years after it was written. This is a book about disconnection; its resonance goes far beyond its original meaning.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin

I know, I know — it’s on just about everybody’s list.

But this beautiful novel about work, friendship, love, and identity deserves it. I suppose it's about video games too, but not really; it could just as easily be about any creative act.

I loved Zevin's writing, the melancholy through line, and the characterizations (although they've been maligned in some reviews). For me, the work is only diminished by the knowledge that she used concepts from some real-world games (e.g., Train) without credit. Ultimately it’s tangential to the meaning of the work, but it would have been so easy to fix.

Foundry, by Eliot Peper

A knockabout spy adventure that takes a few unexpected turns and sticks a landing that had me cheering.

It’s truly a lot of fun - I inhaled it in one sitting. It's also deeply researched, in a way where the detail only ever adds to the entertainment. (Without spoiling anything, I'm very familiar with some of the settings and cultural overtones, and they rang completely true.)

There are knowing callbacks to some of Eliot's earlier work (he’s clearly building a world across his novels), but this stands alone, and could be the start of a new series that I would gladly read the hell out of.

Let’s get this out of the way first: 2024 is going to be a hard year across the board. Mass layoffs, another hottest year on record, escalating conflicts with enormous human tolls and flagrant human rights violations in Gaza and Ukraine, not just a declining media but a declining democracy, an oligarchic class that appears to actively reject any policies that might help the vulnerable communities they profit from, and a US general election with wide ramifications that nobody is looking forward to. On a macro level, the time from 2016 to now has felt like hard year after hard year, and I don’t believe it’s going to let up.

I don’t think you can make personal resolutions (or talk about tech or anything else) without acknowledging that context. Sorry to be a downer: 2023 was a difficult year, and 2024 will be too.

I like to make strong resolutions, loosely held. Life comes at you fast, and it’s better to adapt and take care of yourself in the moment than to adhere to a rigid set of intentions. But even if they end up being ultimately unfulfilled (and I always hope they won’t be), they serve as a good North Star for venturing forth into the new year. I won’t be grading myself based on whether I succeed at the end of the year; the exercise of thinking about them is valuable enough.

This last year, I bit off a little more than I could chew, particularly with respect to time management. I really value having clear, unstructured, creative time, and I didn’t leave enough space for that. So I want to pare down my expectations while trying to get healthier and focusing on the things I really care about.

So, here’s how I’m thinking about getting through 2024.

Health

In 2024 I want to increase my fitness and reduce my overall body mass.

For the first half of 2021, I managed to get myself to a point where I was running a 5K almost every day. For some runners, that’s small potatoes; for me, it was enormous. Then my mother died and I stopped caring. (She stopped telling me to go and exercise, too, which is something she did frequently.)

Running is tied up with some complicated feelings for me. I vividly remember running around my high school track on sports day, coming in near-last, my audience of fellow teenagers laughing at the “SPAM” t-shirt I’d chosen from the top of my to-wear pile. To this day, almost thirty years later, I’m scared of running outside. My 5Ks were all undertaken on a treadmill that we no longer own. (A rowing machine makes more sense for this space, so that’s what I have.)

For most of my life, I’ve been a walker: back in Oxford and Edinburgh, I would wander the city after dinner, sometimes for hours. It’s far harder, these days. Life is more complicated, and a baby at home means I can’t go out and wander with impunity. I’m not complaining — but life is different now, and does demand a different approach to exercise.

Finally, my food intake has been fairly poor for the last few years. In San Francisco, I ate out far too often. Here in Elkins Park, I tend to over-eat: having seconds, indulging in snacks, and so on. Let’s just say that the physical results have been unsurprising.

So in 2024, I want to do three things:

1. When I’m home and not sick, I want to spend at least 30 minutes on the rowing machine every day.
2. When it’s feasible, I want to spend at least 90 minutes walking every day (including the hour I spend walking to and from daycare every day).
3. I’ve had great results from the Whole30 diet in the past. I want to spend at least one 30-day period strictly following it. But then I also want to be more careful: no sweet or junk snacks, no seconds, only drinking alcohol rarely.

Stretch goal: I want to try and get comfortable running around the neighborhood (as an acceptable replacement for walking).

The overall intention is to optimize for feeling good in my body, and for improving my body’s longevity. I will not set a weight loss goal or a strict exercise target.

Reading and Learning

In 2024 I just want to keep reading and learning. Putting a number on it is utterly arbitrary but helps me remember that this is something I want to make time for.

In 2021 I read 43 books, mostly because I had a great book-or-two-a-week pace before my mother’s death. I read some books in 2022 but didn’t set a goal. Then, this year, I set a goal of 26 and read 19.

Next year I’m going to go for two books a month. 24 books. It’s a much lower goal than I might have set a few years ago, but, again: life is more complicated now. That’s totally fine and expected, but my goals should be attainable in that light.

As for learning: this last year I participated in Stanford’s Ethics, Technology + Public Policy for Practitioners course. It was transformational, and I can highly recommend it to everyone (it also comes with an enduring community of alumni). I also continued to subscribe to The Novelry, a private course for aspiring novelists that provides 1:1 feedback and coaching as well as a full audit of a completed manuscript on top of its curriculum. Again, I’ve found it to be useful and motivational.

I’ll keep up The Novelry (until I finish this book) but I’m probably not going to take another course, in the name of keeping my time sane.

Writing

I’m going to finish the damn book. And I’m going to do that by prioritizing it rather than leaving it as a thing that happens if I have enough time. It gets an hour a day until it’s done — end of story (until the story has ended).

Work

For the last few years the focus of my work has been to build empathetic, inclusive technology teams that can serve a well-defined mission. It’s been rewarding, but I’ve realized that I’m hungering for a little bit more, and for the impact of this work to be more outward-facing than inward-facing.

Building great team cultures is important, but it’s inward-looking by nature. The impact is on the happiness of the team, the way the team works, and how it relates to the rest of the organization it sits inside. I don’t want to give up doing that — I think it’s a prerequisite for doing good work, and I love supporting engineers. But I also want to renew my focus on being externally impactful.

Back in the Elgg days, I’d often discover that a non-profit was using the platform to share resources, or that someone had used it to create a site that allowed people with a social mission to accelerate what they were doing. We also got to push the web forward in important ways, for example by prototyping the first open format for data exchange between social networks. That was, frankly, exhilarating. Even now, I still learn from time to time about organizations or social movements that were able to use Elgg to become more efficient or help themselves organize or learn. Quite selfishly, I want to have that sort of impact again.

I don’t know what that looks like yet. I think it involves publishing more code, stories, and case studies at a bare minimum. But it’s enough for me to know that this is something I want to do.

Authenticity and Accountability

I haven’t always lived up to my own expectations or ideals. Sitting with that knowledge is uncomfortable. In particular, in a period of around a year after my mother’s death, I sometimes behaved in a way that makes me shudder today.

It’s all complicated, but owning that I made those decisions, without pathologizing or diminishing their effects, is important and is work that is only partially done. I need to be able to move on from that part of my life, which means completing that work, and doing it based on my own sense of ethics and equity.

And with that: I’m a people-pleaser, sometimes to the point of codependency, and it’s only been recently that I’ve understood why that is harmful. So I need to work on that, too.

All of those things will allow me to share more freely, show up better in all of my communities as myself rather than the person I think people want me to be, and move forward with real purpose.

The World

As I mentioned, it’s going to be a difficult year. In this kind of context, I think one of the imperatives is to loudly advocate for the world you actually want to inhabit.

That means being clear and uncompromising about what my values and positions actually are, and living in a way that is true to those values.

I will not support platforms that financially support Nazis or white supremacy. I’ve already cleared my newsletter from Substack and discontinued my X/Twitter account; I will watch carefully to see if other platforms I use contravene this principle.

I will not support colonial or nationalist policies or the people who espouse them. For example, I am clear that I do not support Israel’s ongoing actions in Gaza (and that it is not anti-semitic for me to say so). I am clear that I am not interested in “American interests”; instead, I am interested in global well-being.

I will always support peace over war.

I will continue to advocate for social infrastructure like socialized healthcare, integrated public transit, and welfare, and speak out against libertarianism and conservatism that seeks to undermine those needs.

I will continue to support and amplify diversity, inclusion, and distributed equity.

I will continue to support the right to vote, and democracy itself, as a fundamental human right.

I will be mindful of the environment in the midst of what is not just climate change but a climate crisis.

I will always advocate for community over individualism and care for vulnerable people over a person’s selfish interests. But I will also always advocate for individual self-expression, the ability to be an entrepreneur, and the opportunity to financially (or otherwise) succeed, as long as community and care obligations are met, and as long as opportunities are equal and equitable.

And not only is there nothing wrong with loudly saying so, not loudly proclaiming what you believe is acquiescence to the status quo.

In summary

I want to:

1. Be physically and mentally healthier
2. Be more externally impactful in my work
3. Finish my book
4. Show up more authentically in my communities
5. Stand up for what I believe in

What are your goals for 2024?

2058 was many things: the hottest year in recorded history, a year when civil rights protests made national news in the face of deepening inequality, and where conflicts and the climate crisis turned millions of people into refugees around the globe.

But it was also a year marked by rapid technological change. While the traditional internet has long been split into siloed national networks divided by starkly different local legislation and restrictive private ownership of the underlying backbone, the decentralized airnet has grown from an illicit activist project designed to overcome these divisions as a way to organize for global peace into a legitimate network that’s beginning to be noticed by commercial interest. It helps that the network is designed to swiftly route around damage like surveillance: a truly peer-to-peer architecture rather than the hub-and-spoke “faux-deration” model of yore.

Some of these nascent services carry the names of their long-departed internet forebears: the likes of AirBay and, yes, AirBnb play on our nostalgia for the bygone internet era. It’s been argued that these services are a way to embrace, extend, and extinguish the airnet from a network designed for global peace into a neutered continuation of the status quo, but most users appreciate the new services. Even critics who believed the airnet was a way to undermine the cold civil war effort have found it harder to avoid the lure of airhubs by the likes of The New York Times and ESPN.

Illicit graphene printing is also rife. Of course, use of the printers without a license was banned globally some years ago, but because any graphene printer (with enough ink) can print the components for another whole printer, it’s been hard to regulate. The ink itself can be synthesized from kelp and ash, which has created a new black market industry around the eastern Pacific coast and in areas like northern Scotland. Recipes for equipment like window solar arrays and air-gen panels are becoming more common, particularly with in the light of the failure of many local electricity grids, and this decentralized approach to power generation has also led to the growth of more airnet hubs — which, of course, was the reason for the bans in the first place, because of the security threat that decentralized power and information presents. (Who is to say that the technology couldn’t be used to build a terrorist power plant?) Nonetheless, while there are no official figures for obvious reasons, anecdotal evidence suggests that growth shows no signs of stopping.

Which brings us to the cold war itself. From an admittedly-privileged position in the Democratic States, it’s been fascinating to watch the Free States continue to iterate their underlying models. Each state, of course, continues to have a CEO and Board of Directors drawn from investors and highly-prized advisors. While the investors are known — firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Elon Musk’s Capital Punishment — the Limited Partners remain private. It’s not clear who, exactly, is backing the firms that put money into Free States like TenSC, but each one is experimenting with a different model of governance that you could imagine other nations picking up and learning from. In particular, Bama’s reliance on Proof of Effort blockchains that pay wired-up migrant farmworkers based on a combination of exertion and produce has been drawing some attention from elsewhere, particularly for its use of children.

Without visiting, it’s hard to know which stories about these states are true, and which have been embellished in order to create a desired impression. Still, based on the first-hand accounts that have been published to onion airhubs, the culture has been one of enforced techno-optimism, which is to say, rigid, ruthless discrimination conducted with a bleach-white smile. Disappointing but not surprising.

Because governance and religion are both conducted almost universally through AI agents, warfare has been relatively straightforward: the Democratic States have seeded training data that benefits our interests; a fact wrong here, a piece of advice wrong there. Algorithmic propaganda has grown an entire industry of malware prompt engineering, but even without Democratic interference, the Free States have been trending towards decline, with food lines growing longer and fuel getting scarcer. Lifestyles depend on goods long-since frowned upon in the Democratic States — tobacco, alcohol, meat — which are becoming scarcer in the face of diminishing resources. The consensus is that it’s only a matter of time before they implode and rejoin the Union. (I wonder if we’ll keep Proof of Effort and all the rest of it?)

Entertainment this year was an improvement, largely due to the Certified Human movement. I enjoyed watching TV shows that had been written by real people; although the linear storytelling took a little getting used to, the imperfections reminded me of watching the grain dance on real film, before algorithmic upscaling made every image lifelessly flawless. Doctor Who — still the best show ever made — is wonderful in its 95th year, and I enjoyed the Barbie remake. I could have done without the all-synthetic Expendables remake, but what can you do. Some people still love watching mindless action, even if every single star is dead.

What should we look forward to in 2059? Hopefully some reclamation of the abandoned nations now that climate tech is beginning to make them relivable, and perhaps a new treaty with President Thunberg that will make travel possible again. We can hope. Some people say that Mark Zuckerberg will return from exile, but we’ll see.

In the meantime, onwards. Happy New Year! I’ll raise a glass of gr8 juice to you all.

Image by ChatGPT.

Newsletter subscribers might be surprised to see a slightly new design. I’ve moved away from Substack and back to Buttondown, an indie mailing list service. Every email will be free from now on; paid subscribers will be refunded in full.

Why? Here’s the New York Times with the story:

Under pressure from critics who say Substack is profiting from newsletters that promote hate speech and racism, the company’s founders said Thursday that they would not ban Nazi symbols and extremist rhetoric from the platform.

[…] “We believe that supporting individual rights and civil liberties while subjecting ideas to open discourse is the best way to strip bad ideas of their power,” he said.

I take a slightly different view.

My take is this: if a Nazi is removed from a service, their right to free speech has not been infringed. They have the ability to publish on the web or to join a service where their content is tolerated. That kind of speech is simply not allowed in that particular place.

Think of the web as a series of living rooms. If you’re in my living room, I have the right to kick you out if you start being abusive to me or other people in the room. I get to set the rules in my space so that other people can feel safe to be there. Different people have different values, so their living rooms might have different rules. But I get to set mine.

I also get to decide which rooms I want to be in, and which rooms I want to invite other people into. I don’t have any interest in hanging out in a room with Nazis, and I certainly don’t have any interest in inviting my friends to hang out there with me. If I find that the owner of the living room allows people who make me or my friends feel unsafe — or, as is true in this case, pays them to hang out there, and makes money from their presence — I can use the law of two feet to leave.

Which is what I’ve done. And if you’re still on Substack, I encourage you to do the same.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Michael B Tager’s Nazi bar story, which I’ll copy and paste in full below (now that he’s left X/Twitter and the original source is lost to time):

I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you.

So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, “no. get out.”

And the dude next to me says, “hey i’m not doing anything, i’m a paying customer.”

and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, “out. now.” and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed

Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, “you didn’t see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them.”

And i was like, ohok and he continues. “you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it’s always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don’t want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.

And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it’s too late because they’re entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.”

And i was like, “oh damn.”

and he said “yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people.”

And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven’t forgotten that at all.

Let’s avoid frequenting Nazi bars.

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