Square Peg for a Square Hole Inside of a Square

Every couple of weeks or so, Ben Thompson from Stratechery and James Allworth from Harvard Business Review sit down to talk tech and society. On their most recent episode, I couldn’t help but think of some of the parallel applications to the public service. At around the 30-minute mark of the podcast, the two start …

What is “Artificial Intelligence,” Anyway?

Sometimes, I wish I could go back to 1955 and prevent John McCarthy from calling it “artificial intelligence.” It’s a term that, depending upon where you work, you can’t go 5 minutes without hearing once or twice — which is great. It’s great that people are looking to the ‘future.’ It’s great that society is …

Would You Go to the Gym, If It Would Save a Life?

That’s what Jen-Hsien Chiu thinks. Chiu, a graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, developed Phabit – a “smart pot” that will nurture a plant, depending on whether or not you stick to your habit. There’s actually some nuance to it. Users of the app complete a personality quiz that puts them into …

Innovation Hiding in Plain Sight

A few weeks ago, Tim Harford wrote an excellent article in the Financial Times – what we get wrong about technology. It’s chock-full of things worth considering. For instance, in the opening paragraph, Harford reminds us of a scene from the sci-fi movie Blade Runner. In particular, he draws our attention to the disparateness of …

What is Data Science?

There’s no question that “data science” is becoming more and more popular. In fact, Booz Allen Hamilton (a consultancy) found: The term Data Science appeared in the computer science literature throughout the 1960s-1980s. It was not until the late 1990s, however, that the field as we describe it here, began to emerge from the statistics …

Where on the Internet is Jeremiah Stanghini – June 2016

One of the first few posts I wrote when I first started writing was a collection of the different places I could be found on the internet. That post was more than five (!) years ago. The other day, I happened to come across that post almost by accident and actually, even though I wrote …

What’s in an American City: Historically, Cars

Last fall, I came across a post on Vox about high-speed rail. If you’ve read some of the things I published when I first started writing, you’ll know that I’m a big proponent of it. This post on Vox was meant to talk about some of the things that Americans can learn from Europeans when it …

Convert PDF to DOC with a Mac — for FREE!

I like to think of myself as relatively computer literate. When I was in elementary school, I taught myself how to use HTML and created/designed my own website. I don’t know if I’ve linked to it on here, but it’s still functioning. Of course, I don’t remember the login or password for it, so there’s no way …

Quick Thoughts on “Obama’s Stealth Startup”

A couple of weeks ago, there was a great article in Fast Company about President Obama’s initiative to bring the the technology used in the US bureaucracy into the 21st century. After reading it, there were a few things that came to mind, so I thought I’d write a post with some “Quick Thoughts” as …

All Rivers Lead to the Ocean

All rivers lead to the ocean. All roads lead to Rome. One tree, many branches. There are a number of phrases and idioms with a message that “we’re all connected” in some way. Last summer, I posted a paper (in a series of posts) I wrote that included guidance from many of the world’s religions by way …