The unbuilt Palace of the Soviets, Moscow

The Xanadu Effect

The perils of building really big.

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Why Engineers Don't Rule
WEBCAST: The Future of News, sponsored by the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy
PODCAST: Schmentoring: The Positive Results of Negative People
Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) presents interviews.
Why the Future Is Behind Schedule, from the London Review of Books
New York Times Op-Ed: Searching for Dummies
Scholarship and Libraries in Transition -- Session Webcast from the University of Michigan
How Books Bounced -- and Bit -- Back, originally published in the Boston Globe
NPR Interview: The Connection (WBUR), "The Grid That Binds"
"Unique Approach Opens Up Realm of Research," Princeton Weekly Bulletin
TechTV: The Screen Savers (video and book excerpt, "Evolution of the Keyboard")
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NPR Interview (audio): A discussion of invention with Ira Flatow
NPR Interview: Recliners
WBUR On Point interview (audio)
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Selected Works

Books
Humanity remaking itself through technology
The self-cancelling, self-frustrating side of human ingenuity, and what to do about it.
A spoof of jargon.
Magazine Articles
A review of James R. Chiles, Inviting Disaster: Lessons from the Edge of Technology in Harvard Magazine
How sitting customs have affected the human body
Are big structures harbingers of decline?
Harvard's debt to the shoe industry
The Harvard Society of Fellows, a history and personal appreciation
Books/Essays
The U.S. military-industrial complex's surprising debt to France.