Ditch the elevator pitch

Technology and Ideology: The Case of the Telegraph

In one of the most famous paragraphs of our most famous autobiography, Henry Adams located the precise moment when “eighteenth century troglodytic Boston” joined industrial America: “the opening of the Boston and Albany Railroad; the appearance of the first Cunard Steamers in the bay; and the telegraphic messages which carried from Baltimore to Washington the news that Henry Clay and James K. Polk were nominated for the presidency. This was May, 1844.”

Why the Clock Broke: America in an Age of Crisis

My lecture at King's College London

The Birth of the Attention Economy

The rise of the cheap, daily newspaper in the 19th century remade how Americans engaged with the world.

An appreciation for (technical) architecture

Posted on Saturday 28 Mar 2026. 995 words, 14 links. By Matt Webb.

#784: The absurdity of the apocalypse

Plus: repayment avoidance, the death of “hello,” and a Cinderella story for the algorithmic era

Capitalism, Slavery, and the Industrial Revolution

The Williams Thesis, Part I

Quote Origin: The Optimist Invents the Airplane and the Pessimist the Parachute – Quote Investigator®

George Bernard Shaw? Gladys Bronwyn Stern? W. H. H. MacKellar? Gil Stern? Mack McGinnis?

A Feminist's Guide to Accelerationism

An introductory reading guide for the lost & curious.

Thomas Piketty’s “Capital”, summarised in four paragraphs

A very brief summary of "Capital in the Twenty-First Century"

Afternoon parallel: Baird Howland explores shifts in White House media in the Political Polarization and Discourse session: | IC2S2

Afternoon parallel: Baird Howland explores shifts in White House media in the Political Polarization and Discourse session:

Variations on ‘Plainness’: Quaker Dress in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia

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Matt Darling (@besttrousers)

“Darling’s thesis is the first compelling explanation I’ve seen for the vibecession…What surprises me, though, is how comparatively little attention this theory has gotten”. I am being silenced.

How we lost the living Now

Before 1840, noon in Bristol happened about ten minutes after noon in London, and nobody much cared. The railway needed a common minute or it couldn't run - and that common minute is now a common nanosecond, shipped in real time.

Walt McDonald: "Advice I Wish I'd Been Told"

Over the years, I've heard good advice from others; I wish they had told me sooner.  Probably they did, but I didn't listen.  What I'm about to say is what I constantly urge myself to do.  I offer these comments to save us time, to help us strip off some ankle weights of language.  The difference between second place and first place in the high jump, between the silver and the gold, is only about an inch.  Ah, but "How glorious that inch / And that split-second longer in the air before the fall" (Robert Francis, "Excellence").  

How buildings learn : what happens after they're built

Originally published: New York, NY : Viking, 1994; Includes bibliographical references (p. 224-229) and index; Flow -- Shearing layers -- "Nobody cares what you do in there": the low road --- Houseproud: the high road -- Magazine architecture: no road -- Unreal estate -- Preservation: a quiet, populist, conservative, victorious revolution -- The romance of maintenance -- Vernacular: how buildings learn from each other -- Function melts form: satisficing home and office -- The scenario-buffered building -- Built for change -- Appendix: The study of buildings in time