Journalism and Essays
Maisonneuve
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| I write a column about technology in the developing world for the wonderful (and wonderfully eclectic) quarterly Maisonneuve. |
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Behind the Firewall, Winter 2010. The revolution will not be Twittered. |
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What's wrong with Africa, Autumn 2009. The pros and cons of fatalism, and the cons of most aid and NGOs. |
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In praise of devastation, Summer 2009. In which I suggest that maybe clearcutting the Amazon isn't all bad. In a nuanced kind of way. |
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Dispatches from Far Far Away
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Free delivery: birth in the poorest country in the Americas, The Walrus. I travelled to Haiti to write about a Médecins Sans Frontières maternity hospital, and the complicated problems of doing good in a nation often wracked by violence. |
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In the Shadow of Doom, The Walrus. An article about a killer lake in Central Africa. Yes, I said "killer lake." Read it now or wait for the inevitable disaster movie. |
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Wiring the War Zone, Wired. In May 2005, I spent a week in Iraq researching two cipherpunks who travelled there after the war to reconnect the country to the Internet, and wrote this article. |
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Later, Blood, Bullets, Bombs and Bandwidth, a 4,000-word expansion of the Iraq piece, found a readership through Slashdot. |
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Ten Tips for Travel to Exotic Countries, CBC.ca. A quick guide to how to enjoy travel in developing nations. Also appeared on Yahoo! Travel, MSN.ca, and various other sites. |
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Genocide in L.A. isn't really about genocide in L.A. |
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Technology and Society
Blogs
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Wired.co.uk:
- From dragons to smartphones. On the information tsunami about to hit the developing world.
- Death to the unknown. Google as the new Rosetta Stone.
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World Fast Forward at The Walrus, Canada's answer to The New Yorker:
- Inaugural introduction.
- Colombia's Mobile Revolution - Banking with your phone is a bigger deal than you might think.
- Better Dying Through Chemistry - How to ruin entire nations and destroy untold millions of lives.
- The Donkey And The Ninja - No donkeys were harmed in the making of this post. But I cannot say the same about ninjas.
- A Man, A Plan, A Canal - How to run and ruin megaprojects.
- There's Gold In Them There Trees - How do you patent indigenous knowledge?
- Big Brother Is Watching Them. OK? - In which I reflect on having been mugged at gunpoint.
- One Laptop Per Child: What Went Wrong - Its fundamental problems are twofold: 1. It was a bad idea to begin with. 2. The XO laptop is a piece of crap.
- All Hail the Great Satan - Shooting down mosquitoes - with frikkin' lasers!
- How Google Unconquered the World - and how Apple squandered it, again.
- From Page To, Um, Page - a guest post in the Four-Colour Words comic-books blog.
- The Complaints Department - Twitter, the cephalopod of corruption, and the unquenchable human urge to complain.
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tor.com, the world's preeminent site for "science fiction, fantasy and related subjects":
- SF gems from the literary ghetto
- Magic realism: not fantasy. Sorry.
- Why Isn't Greg Egan A Superstar?
- Who Are These Fools, and Why Should You Care?
- Build A Better World, And The World Will Come To Your Door
- Neil Gaiman: I Don’t Get It
- Sitting Shiva For Sitka: Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
- Time Travel Times Two: Jack Finney’s Time and Again
- The Buffet Effect
- Mediating the Immediate: William Gibson’s Spook Country
- Xenophobia for Dummies: A District 9 Primer
- Kerouac wgah’nagl fhtagn: Nick Mamatas’s Move Under Ground
- A Hallowe’en Gift: Sarah Langan’s The Keeper
- Fury, absurdity, sorcery: Wizard of the Crow by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
- My aversion to versions
- Fantasy vs. science fiction: James Cameron's Avatar
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On Writing
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