Blog posts http://hans.gerwitz.com/ 2017-01-26T01:00:00+01:00 Hans Gerwitz http://hans.gerwitz.com/2017/01/26/shea.html 2017-01-26T01:00:00+01:00 2017-01-28T19:02:39+01:00

<p>On Tuesday, we lost our cat, Shea.</p> <p><img src="/2017/01/26/shea/shea-planter.jpg.html" alt="Shea in Seattle" width="480px"></p> <p>As these things do, it happened slowly and then suddenly. Her health had been noticeably declining for a year, but still it was a complete surprise when the last day came.</p> <p>I’ve lived with seven cats, but Shea...</p>

http://hans.gerwitz.com/2016/12/05/cheap-futures.html 2016-12-05T01:00:00+01:00 2017-01-28T21:00:42+01:00

<p>At ThingsCon last week, Shannon and I participated in a <a href="https://2016.thingscon.nl/sessions/thingclash-chronicles-speculative-frictions-in-the-plausible-near-now/">speculative fiction workshop</a> that resulted in a number of short stories with design morals.</p> <p>This took less than 4 hours, and while the output was a bit rough and needed copyediting before being...</p>

http://hans.gerwitz.com/2016/10/05/compassionate-conservatives.html 2016-10-05T02:00:00+02:00 2017-01-28T20:55:39+01:00

<p>Please talk to me.</p> <p>I know we have our disagreements. But it seems we should agree about Trump.</p> <p>You likely believe that unregulated markets and small government lead to a more rich society that benefits us all. As a social scientist I’ve grown to...</p>

http://hans.gerwitz.com/2016/02/21/agency.html 2016-02-21T01:00:00+01:00 2017-01-28T20:20:14+01:00

<p>A very popular recent Ars Technica article was very well headlined <a href="http://arstechnica.co.uk/security/2016/02/the-nsas-skynet-program-may-be-killing-thousands-of-innocent-people/">The NSA’s SKYNET program may be killing thousands of innocent people</a>.</p> <p>Well headlined, that is, for sensationalist attention-getting. It also describes the tone of the article, which...</p>

http://hans.gerwitz.com/2016/01/29/client-student.html 2016-01-29T01:00:00+01:00 2017-01-28T19:44:36+01:00

<blockquote> <p>Your role in a company isn’t to just be the designer of products; Your role is to be a designer of that company, to help it become the company that has the ability to make the products you aspire to make. Mike Kruzeniski, <em><a href="https://medium.com/@mkruz/jony-s-patience-670d5a3dc128">Jony’s Patience</a></em>, 20 March...</p> </blockquote>

http://hans.gerwitz.com/2015/11/27/progress.html 2015-11-27T01:00:00+01:00 2015-11-30T22:03:28+01:00

<p><em>A reply to <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/has-progress-in-science-and-technology-come-to-a-halt">The golden quarter</a> by Michael Hanlon on Aeon</em></p> <p>Michael Hanlon asserts that we have become more risk-averse as a species, even pointing to social protests as an example of progress-seeking risk-taking that’s on waning.</p> <p>I think Ferguson, the...</p>

http://hans.gerwitz.com/2015/11/14/gray-zone.html 2015-11-14T01:00:00+01:00 2015-11-14T17:41:20+01:00

<p>Much has already been said and more will be said about the implications of yesterday’s attacks in Paris. I don’t have much of substance to add, but allow me to work though my thoughts.</p> <p>It would be nice if the world were black &amp; white, and we could...</p>

http://hans.gerwitz.com/2015/11/14/brains.html 2015-11-14T01:00:00+01:00 2015-11-14T17:41:21+01:00

<p>These are exciting times for neurons. IBM has <a href="http://www.research.ibm.com/articles/brain-chip.shtml">neuromorphic chip arrays</a>, Duke has <a href="http://www.nicolelislab.net/?p=683">functional networks of mammalian brains</a> while UW is <a href="http://www.washington.edu/news/2015/09/23/uw-team-links-two-human-brains-for-question-and-answer-experiment/">linking humans</a>, and Ohio State is <a href="https://news.osu.edu/news/2015/08/18/human-brain-model/">growing human brains</a> to 5-week structure.</p> <p>Before getting too excited about transhuman...</p>

http://hans.gerwitz.com/2015/06/07/sirikit.html 2015-06-07T02:00:00+02:00 2015-11-14T17:07:28+01:00

<p>Apple’s been creeping towards privacy and encryption as a differentiator for some time, but <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/02/apples-tim-cook-delivers-blistering-speech-on-encryption-privacy/">last week’s address to EPIC</a> was explicit. Tim Cook accused their neighbors of “lulling their customers into complacency about their personal information” and...</p>

http://hans.gerwitz.com/2015/06/04/welfare.html 2015-06-04T02:00:00+02:00 2015-11-14T17:44:50+01:00

<blockquote> <p>It is difficult to imagine the United States preserving its heritage of individualism, equal rights before the law, free people running their own lives, once it is accepted that a significant part of the population must be made permanent wards of...</p> </blockquote>

http://hans.gerwitz.com/2015/04/21/mad-tony.html 2015-04-21T02:00:00+02:00 2015-10-14T10:02:44+02:00

<p>My godfather <a href="http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/stltoday/obituary.aspx?pid=174669662">died on Saturday</a>.</p> <p>My family called him Mad Tony, in the “mad scientist” sense—picture Steve Wozniak. Very much like <a href="https://medium.com/message/networks-without-networks-7644933a3100">Paul Ford’s Tom</a>, Mad was a pivotal character in my life. He and my aunt had 7 children, so their house was a natural place...</p>