a public explorer of emerging futures

I build little pieces of the future to probe what they mean.

Experiments, speculative artifacts, and field notes from the seam where technology meets being human — shared out loud, while they’re still messy.

// Off My Bench · most weeks

Free, and a little weird. Or browse the breadboard ↓

Me and a friend at the Bench

The Breadboard

what’s a probe? →

The latest things I’ve made, broken, or figured out. Newest first.

broadcast

No Plan Survives the Puppy

A puppy came home a week early, so I built him an app with eight buttons. Also frigatebirds that sleep 40 minutes a day, a collar that can't tell when you pet the dog, and the X-ray AI that is good at saying nothing is wrong.

Oct 15 · 10 min read

"That's pretty much all there is to say." (YouTube / jawed, 2005)

broadcast

Me at the Zoo The first video on YouTube is 19 seconds of a guy noticing that elephants have long trunks. I have 141 hours of videos saved about how to make a video. One of these facts is embarrassing.

Oct 1

broadcast

But Can It Run Doom? Someone built a working screen out of rubber and vacuum, and its brain is also air. A short tour of computers with no electronics in them, including one made of pink water that flooded the London School of Economics.

Sep 24

broadcast

Outhorse Your Email Iceland trained three horses to answer your email. Google, Superhuman and 147 startups have been doing the same job without the hay, and the research on how that lands with the person reading it is not flattering.

Sep 17

broadcast

The One Star Is for the Auntie Anne's Three hikers who phoned the sheriff for directions, a tree, humans in the loop, and the worst airports in America.

Sep 10

broadcast

Sixty Years on One Hand A doctor cracked the knuckles of one hand for sixty years to test something his mother told him. Nobody else had bothered.

Sep 3

broadcast

Elaborate Ways to Not Start The green in every control room I have ever admired was a factory safety regulation, mandatory since 1948. I found that out while watching strangers give tours of their home offices, which is apparently how I do research now.

Aug 27

see the whole log →

Off My Bench

The good stuff from the Bench, plus the unfinished things I’m still chasing — in your inbox most weeks. One curious human, writing to other curious humans. No hype, no “in today’s fast-paced world.”

Free. Unsubscribe whenever the dot stops being interesting.

Work With Me

Pick something I don't understand. Build the smallest version that would tell me if I'm wrong. Put it where people can see it. Do it again.

Start a conversation