Category: Big Picture

  • Stop. Reboot. A New Beginning.

    I almost closed this blog today, January 1, 2017. Upon2020.com had been intended as an optimistic outlook into a beautiful, technology-enabled future. Instead, 7 years after I started this blog, we are sliding further and further into a scary, technology-enabled dystopia. How could I continue? Civil liberties are under assault everywhere. Constitutional rights have come […]

  • About Values and this Election

    My friend Ben Werdmuller wrote a piece about the values that drive his vote in this election. I don’t get to vote (because I’m an alien, a legal one, but just an alien). However, he inspired me to write down my own values. They are quite short: We got to take care of our kids. […]

  • USA: The Next Steps (after the election)

    2017 is not going to be pretty, regardless who wins this election. Let’s reason it out. There are four basic electoral outcomes (all of which are possible IMHO): Clinton wins in a landslide. Clinton wins narrowly. Trump wins narrowly. Trump wins in a landslide. In the two narrow cases, the next steps are likely litigation […]

  • Let’s Build Indie IoT Systems for our Homes instead!

    Join me at the “IoT Tech Expo” at the Santa Clara Convention Center next Thursday, October 20th, at 6:30pm, where I will give the following talk. Registration is free and gives you access to other IoT talks as well. Abstract: According to conventional wisdom, installing an IoT system inevitably means to invite the vendor and […]

  • The political cage fight drug

    If you had to design a political system where big, urgent problems can remain unresolved and connected criminals can stay out of jail, without (much) protest or repression, how would you go about it? I think I’d invent a supposedly all-powerful “grand prize” position called the Presidency, and make sure everybody believes it is a […]