I share my birthday with Trinity.
This is the best photograph we have of human civilization irrevocably crossing the most consequential threshold of the twentieth century.
Some call the time since this photograph was taken the Long Peace. Some call it Pax Atomica.
I suspect that the twenty-first century analog will be the emergence of superhuman machine intelligence, and that we’ll irrevocably cross that consequential threshold sometime in the next ten years.
From them on we’ll then share our capacity for total annihilation with an intelligence that we won’t really understand.
We have no idea how that’s going to go.
That probably would have broken the atom’s thrall over geopolitical entropy on its own, but the next twenty years will also see the start of the largest mass migration in human history as climates in heavily populated places around the world become intolerable.
In short, I think it’s going to keep getting weirder and that we’re all going to need each other more than ever. I’m grateful you’re here.
I’m a designer, technologist, adventurer, and mystic living up on the Olympic Peninsula, in the heart of Cascadia.
My work prioritizes curiosity over certainty, awareness over distraction, agency over convenience, and our natural world over virtual ones.
I lead communications and design for The Long Now Foundation, a nonprofit founded in 01996 by Stewart Brand, Brian Eno, and Danny Hillis to foster long-term thinking and responsibility. We encourage imagination at the timescale of civilization — the next and last 10,000 years — a timespan we call the long now.
I’m especially interested in understanding how civilization holds together in times of profound discontinuity without losing its hope or its humanity.
Also —
If we’ve got this or anything else to talk about, give me a shout!
As ever —
Port Townsend, Cascadia, July 02025
02022 – Today
Director of Communications & Design at The Long Now Foundation.
02017 – 02022
Captain of S/V Rejoice. After a year-long DIY refit, sailed our 40 foot sloop-rigged Hallberg-Rassy out the Golden Gate, down the coast, and explored the Gulf of California and Pacific Mexico. Learned that I don’t need much to be happy, that less comfort makes me feel more alive, and that the occasional real fear of death extinguishes most other anxieties.
02010 – 02017
Senior product designer at Google. Led major design efforts on operating systems and search. Learned how to organize large teams of phenomenally talented collaborators to create indispensable everyday tools for 1B people worldwide and how good intentions often go awry at scale.
02006 – 02010
Design director at Metaweb. Led design for Freebase, which structured and connected 18M people, places, and things and became the foundation for Google’s Knowledge Graph less than two years after acquisition. Learned that a couple dozen people with the right shared narrative can redefine a $30B business in a few years.
02009 – 02016
Co-founder and Minister of Propaganda for the SF Embassy, a collective of music-loving city explorers founded at SxSW in 02009. When we went to Reykjavík in 02013 for Iceland Airwaves, we were the second largest delegation of Americans to visit that year and were granted an audience with anarchist mayor Jon Gnarr. Learned how to put brand in service of community instead of capitalism and how music brings people together everywhere in the world.
02000 - 02018
Fixer at Richard Saul Wurman’s TED and Michael Hawley’s EG Conferences. Prevented staffing, communication, logistical, and security issues from compromising TED moments. Learned that the show must go on, the importance of the after party, that nothing builds community faster than vulnerability, and how quickly the right conversation can change your life.
01997 – 2006
Founding designer at several startups. Design consultant at several others. Clients included Applied Minds, Disney, and Mitsubishi Logistics. Learned the strange equations of orchestration and chance that separate the projects you’ve heard of from the ones you haven’t.
01996 – 01997
Production manager at Electric Minds. Helped design and build Howard Rheingold’s pioneering social media startup. Learned design discipline, intellectual anarchy, and the profound joy of being in the right place at the right time with the right people.
01995 – 01996
Interface designer at Sega. Designed and engineered Sega’s first website. Learned that we’re all making it up as we go along and that nothing is any less a wonder for that.
01999 – Forever
Husband to Kristie Dahlia Home, priestess of the mystery. Our love is the work I’m proudest of.
