I occupy Study 30 at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. I requested it based on the recommendation of my friend Fred Turner, who had enjoyed it a couple years back and who said it doesn’t get too hot. Which it doesn’t. Then I looked at the list of previous residents of …
Category Archives: Text
California Crazy
Shortly after our arrival in our new neighborhood, we went out to the car to find this envelope affixed to the windshield: Clearly someone had noticed the Quebec license plates. Inside was the following letter: Welcome to Silicon Valley, where everyone has a startup company and is an entrepreneurial genius.* Which means, of course, that …
And on the sabbath, he rested
My first semester as a professor was the fall of 1999. What I remember the most was the intensity. It was like a constant sprint except I didn’t always know where or why I was running. Then, sometime in October a Friday afternoon arrived when there wasn’t something I urgently had to do. I had …
Me in California, The Audible Past in Korean, and “The MP3 as Cultural Artifact” in Portuguese
As you read this, we (that’s Carrie, me and the cat) are airborne over North America, destined for our new temporary digs in Mountain View (and at Stanford). The last few weeks have been as “full time” as I can remember between work and socializing. It’s good to be back in “normal” but I’m definitely …
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I am now officially at the “I am sick of this shit and ready for it to be done” point. This is the feeling I remember vividly from February: an absolute surplus of will and energy, all driving at getting me out. Of course, my confinement is only temporal now, with a 2.5 hour hole …
For Synth Nerds Only (a small but significant portion of my readership)
My friend and colleague, Trevor Pinch (coauthor of Analog Days: The History and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer and tons of other Science and Technology books) finally got his old analog synth up and running. He gives Inverse Room a tour:
Look Who’s Glowing Now
…and I don’t mean to announce that I’m pregnant. I’ve timed this post to appear at approximately the moment that I receive a rather large dose of radioactive iodine at the Jewish General Hospital. I have hatched a scheme so that I may be able to blog from inside my isolation room, but we will …