NEIL YOUNG wants fuel-efficient cars, and as a politically active rock star, he wants everyone else to have them, too. But Mr. Young is not ready to give up his love of big cars, and he doesn’t think many other drivers are, either. So Mr. Young, the iconoclastic godfather of grunge, has assembled a team […]
Category: My Writing
The Plenty 20: Plenty, October 2008
A123 Systems The dawn of the hybrid car—not to mention $4-per-gallon gasoline—shows the importance of fuel-saving batteries. At the head of the class is A123. This Watertown, Massachusetts, start-up has a $148 million venture capital war chest that fueled a nanotech breakthrough: a battery that charges faster, holds more power, and is safer than anything […]
Likes Taking Risks, Profitable Returns: The New York Times, September 2008
EVAN SHEFTEL of New York knew he could grow his business of buying and refining old jewelry. All he needed was capital, and quickly. But he had exhausted his credit with conventional lenders. Across the country, in Los Angeles, Jay Turo and his company, Growthink, were looking for profitable investments.
Ozone Technology May Keep Foods Fresher, Longer: Plenty, August 2008
Each year, $7.5 trillion worth of food is moved around the planet, and 30 percent of it spoils before it ever gets to market. But more than edibles is wasted along the way—all the water and energy used to grow and transport the food also goes down the drain. If goods could be kept fresh […]
Vanuatu: An Essay
Dan Fost’s literary narrative about a brother and sister’s journey to learn about their father’s World War II experience in the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, complete with a trip to the top of an active volcano, appeared in the 2007 edition of Practice: New Writing + Art, a literary journal. Click here to […]
Where Old And New Media Collide: San Francisco Chronicle, March 2007
Two worlds collided at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival this week. Online media of all sorts is coming of age, and the festival was one of its biggest defining moments. The event aims to bring together new technologies and their practitioners to spur innovation. While the mainstream press was barely present, the conference-cum-weeklong-party was […]
WHERE NEO-NOMADS’ IDEAS PERCOLATE / New ‘bedouins’ transform a laptop, cell phone and coffeehouse into their office: San Francisco Chronicle,
A new breed of worker, fueled by caffeine and using the tools of modern technology, is flourishing in the coffeehouses of San Francisco. Roaming from cafe to cafe and borrowing a name from the nomadic Arabs who wandered freely in the desert, they’ve come to be known as “bedouins.” San Francisco’s modern-day bedouins are typically […]
Steve Jobs: Live blogging from the Macworld floor: San Francisco Chronicle, January 2007
9:14 a.m. James Brown’s “I feel good” wraps up and Jobs takes the stage, to huge applause, declaring, “We’re gonna make history today.” He’s talking now about the “heart transplant” with Intel processors. 9:18 a.m. He’s almost uncharacteristically spreading credit around for the seven-month turnaround to Intel, thanking Intel, third party developers “and our users.” […]
Valley’s ‘Mr. Web 2.0’ seeks next big thing / TechCrunch blog ruffles feathers on the Internet beat, December 2006
Michael Arrington’s influential blog TechCrunch — where startups get pimped and big news sometimes breaks first — has vaulted him into the post of “Mr. Web 2.0,” a kingmaker among Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and a figure of controversy in the media world he is disrupting. Arrington, 36, is a lawyer, an adviser to companies, an […]
DIGITAL UTOPIA / A new breed of technologists envisions a democratic world improved by the Internet: San Francisco Chronicle, November 2006
Behind the random silliness of YouTube videos and the juvenile frivolity of MySpace Web sites lies a powerful idea: Everyday people are using technology to gain control of the media and change the world. At least that’s what a new breed of Internet technologists and entrepreneurs want us to believe. The new Internet boom commonly […]