In a 1993 Wired article, writer Steve Silberman characterized autism
as the “geek syndrome.” Given that autism is partially hereditary,
Silberman asked if the concentrations (and eventual pairing, known as
assortative mating) of geeky folk in places like Silicon Valley meant
that the “genes responsible for bestowing certain special gifts …
Earlier I reviewed the literature on whether there is a distinct geek style of thinking?.
This question recently went mainstream as a consequence of James Damore’s “Google Bro” memo.
I was tempted to carefully parse though all the claims myself, but others did so for me.
I was recently interviewed by Luciana Lima for an story about FOMO in Brazil’s Você S/A (“Tudo ao mesmo tempo agora,” March 2017).
The story is print only, and in Portuguese, so I asked to include the original interview here; we are discussing my article “Following the Joneses …
A few months ago I submitted my dossier for tenure and it continues on its journey up the chain of command: external reviewers, department committee, chair, college committee, dean, university advisory committee and provost, president, and the board of trustees.
I might get good news around May or bad news …
I’ve been working on geek meritocracy and privilege for a while now and my original draft has now been split into two.
The meritocracy piece will be published early next year, and I’ve just finished the first draft of: Nerd vs. ‘bro’: Geek privilege, triumphalism, and idiosyncrasy
I recently noted that
datafication has a
Wikipedia article. This is another term for a phenomenon I usually speak
of as
quantification,
following Ritzer and Rescher. I figured I should start keeping a list of
related terms and uses; if you’ve encounter a similar term, please leave
it in …
In my twenty years of using speeching recognition I’ve had a number of setups.
I began at MIT’s Accessibility Lab with discrete speech—articulating … every … single … word … discretely.
IBM’s ViaVoice was the first that allowed me to dictate in phrases—much less of a strain—and ran …
In the past year or so I’ve fully transitioned to editing my prose like code.
I’ve been using markdown for a while now, but my transition to semantic linefeeds, using one sentence per line, has been great.
It makes editing paragraphs and viewing changes so much easier.
I …
A recent TEDx Talk by Will Stephen is the new “Dr. Fox Lecture.”
In the 1970s researchers designed an experiment to see how a group would rate a short lecture by an actor, trained only the day before, who charismatically presented bunk (Naftulin, Ware, and Donnelly, 1973). The audience was …