Hello.
I’m a writer, editor, and digital storyteller based in Barcelona.
About
I’m the Editor at The Long Now Foundation, a nonprofit fostering long-term thinking and responsibility. (You might’ve heard about our 10,000 Year Clock). I’m currently working on a memoir about my time in San Francisco tech and counterculture.
My writing has appeared in OneZero, Gen, Level, Timeline, the Integral Review, Michael Pollan’s “Trips Worth Telling” essay collection, and The Museum of Old and New Art’s surrealist cookbook, Eat the Problem. My digital storytelling work has been shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and featured in storytelling innovation events at Harvard University, the Tribeca Film Institute, Mozilla Festival, SXSW Interactive, and more. I’ve made videos for NowThis News, Timeline, SAP, Snapchat Discover, the Out of Eden Walk, McSweeney’s, and The Psychedelic Society, among others.
I was previously founding Head of Video at Timeline, a media startup providing historical context to the news; co-creator of GoPop, an app for juxtaposing GIFs, photos and videos (acquired by BuzzFeed); Head of Community at Zeega, an interactive storytelling platform; and Editor/Producer at Sensate Journal. I was a member of the first cohort of entrepreneurs at the Matter Ventures accelerator program, and a 2012-13 Fellow at metaLAB (at) Harvard. I have spoken about multimedia storytelling, long-term thinking, and the history of technology and counterculture at universities, conferences, and makerspaces, including Harvard, MIT, UC-Berkeley, Tufts, Makers of Barcelona, and ZebraCon.
Latest…
Eat the Problem
You can find my essay on María Sabina and the history of magic mushrooms in The Museum of Old and New Art’s Eat the Problem, a surrealist cookbook with artwork, poetry, essays and interviews by the likes of James Turrell, Marina Abramović, Andoni Luis Aduriz of Mugaritz, Germaine Greer, Heston Blumenthal, Mike Parr, Pablo Picasso, Enrique Olvera of Pujol, Laurie Anderson, Tim Minchin and many more.
Writing
I write about the past and future of psychedelics, culture, and technology. You’ll find a few selections below. Wanna read more? Head here.
My Name is Ahmed. Am I White?
Published in GEN, February 2019.
For as long as I could remember, I wanted to be white. I wanted to be white because Luke Skywalker was white, because the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys was white, because the president of the United States was white…
Confessions of a Juul Junkie
Published in GEN, December 2018.
The nicotine is everywhere, and I am assailed on all sides. Hip Catalan separatists in jean cutoffs smoking their rollies, their tobacco laughter echoing up the cracked façades of this narrow Barcelona street and into my open window. The old lady in the apartment across the street from mine hanging up sopping clothes on the strung wires, a cigarette dangling from her lips, her morning routine occasionally interrupted when her body seizes and her rheumy coughs ring out. The construction workers grunting in my building’s hallway, the smoke from their cigarettes creeping under my door and rising in tantalizing curls…
Naming the Unspoken Thing
Published in GEN, October 2018.
“What the fuck is this,” asks Jeffrey, so high that he cannot see straight, his face a melting candle. By “this” I don’t think he means the chemicals he’s ingested, which he’s taken on prior occasions, albeit at lower doses. Nor do I take him to mean Nana’s Living Room, the interactive art piece where beautiful people in costume are draped over pillows and rugs and whispering to one another in soft Californian, as the older woman we call Nana rocks rhythmically in her chair, passing out candies…
What Happens When A Computer Runs Your Life
Published in OneZero, July 2018.
Max Hawkins will be getting his first tattoo in a few days, and the panic’s setting in. Not because it’s a permanent choice — although it certainly is. And not because of the pain — he thinks that’ll be manageable enough. Hawkins is panicking because until the moment he walks into the parlor, he won’t have any idea what tattoo he’s getting, or where on his body he’s getting it…
Digital Storytelling
I make videos using a unique visual style informed and enabled by the remix affordances of the web. I’ve also helped pioneer a number of digital storytelling formats. Some were dead ends. Others became a ubiquitous part of the social web. You’ll find a few selections below. Wanna watch more? Head here.
Featured
GoPop
Role: Co-creator
GoPop was an app for juxtaposing GIFs, photos, and videos acquired by BuzzFeed in 2015.
Zeega
Role: Editor/Producer + Head of Community
“Zeega is where it started: not only a software project, but a conjecture about the internet’s capacity to empower shared stories and meanings, the motivating spirit at metaLAB’s origins. From 2011 to 2014, a team of grad students, media artists, technologists, and scholars strove to create a platform to allow users to easily create immersive, participatory projects with media from across the web. The project’s core audience was media-makers—professionals and amateurs curious to explore new forms of producing and sharing media online, on mobile devices, and in physical spaces. The Zeega team was also motivated by an unusual challenge: to take a software project begun in the humanities, fueled by criticality and meaning, and powered by the reflectiveness and provocation of the liberal arts, and bring it to market. From the start, Zeega’s course was unpredictable. Its core elements powered the storytelling modes behind Sensate, our experimental multimedia journal platform; the team sought ways to bring its tools to bear for a variety of institutional partners at Harvard and beyond, from the DPLA to NYU Abu Dhabi. Zeega won a $500,000 grant from Knight Foundation’s Knight News Challenge in 2011. The generous funding gave the team a chance to set Zeega on its own course as a software product; at the end of this grant, the Zeega group joined Matter, a Bay-area accelerator program for mission-driven media startups. Ultimately, Zeega was bought and sold, integrated and remixed; elements of it have found their way into powerful, playful tech at BuzzFeed and other media giants. In metaLAB’s ongoing adventures, its spirit lives on.” - metaLAB (at) Harvard
Today in Zeega
Role: Editor/Producer
Today in Zeega was a mobile first, interactive vertical video news series I created that anticipated the next generation of social news video. A daily broadcast of the Internet, Today in Zeega told the news of the day through the latest trending GIFs, images, and music on the web. The Today in Zeega format was distributed by NowThis News and emulated by media organizations across the web.
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