Originally published at https://deepfriedlander.substack.com. Last week, famed venture capitalist Marc Andreeson published “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto.” In it, Andreesen boldly claims “there is no material problem -whether created by nature or by technology -that cannot be solved with more technology.” (More tech than what, who knows? Just more.) …

I first heard about coworking around 2006. At the time, there were a handful of grassroots outfits like The Hub in the UK, The Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto, and New Work City in its semi-eponymous city. My interest in coworking was connected to a thought leadership event series…

I rag on Florida a lot. I never developed a taste for the state’s hot, muggy weather, its flat, boggy topography, its crappy drivers, or its millions of acres of Ponzi-scheme-purchased housing developments, and the likelihood that most of the state will be underwater in the next 20 years fails…

In modern times, Pompeii is known as the ancient Roman city entombed by volcanic debris from the explosion of nearby Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. But in ancient times, Pompeii was the playground of Rome’s super rich. With its mountain views and location on the Bay of Naples, the 11,000…

It’s clear to me that deploying them [direct air capture hubs] to remove CO2 from the atmosphere is pointless until society has almost completely eliminated its polluting activities. David T. Ho, Professor of Oceanography, University of Hawaii in Nature Direct air capture hubs. Photovoltaic and wind turbine farms. Electric vehicles…

I had my last alcoholic drink on June 29th, 1999. I was in Munich, Germany, a stop on a European trip my grandparents gave me as a high school graduation gift. I had only been drinking hard for a couple years, but by that June, I was consuming around a…

Cancer overtook my dad’s body in July, 2012. The seizure did not happen quickly. For a couple years, there were a ton of ups and downs: reduced or plateaued tumor growth, cessation of coughing, promises of healing from alternative medicine, and other fleeting signs of hope. Yet for every up…

The separated ones have invented many ‘cures’ for what they believe to be the ‘ills of the world.’ But the one thing they do not do is to question the reality of the problem.Yet its effects cannot be cured because the problem is not real. -A Course in Miracles In…

Apparently, there’s an artificial intelligence (AI) revolution afoot — a revolution made possible by ChatGPT, a chatbot able to convincingly mimic human speech and writing. I became aware of ChatGPT after seeing a few articles about a trend of student papers being written by the bot. Though still buggy, the…