This week I’ve been thinking about what it’s like for a new generation to make things with computers. When we were talking in Berlin, Luce made a point that...
Feeling of Computing — Conversations
Berlin Biennale | All Problems Can Be Illuminated; Not All Problems Can Be Solved
We can all tell this story: The rails of human advancement stretching from the Enlightenment to a Bitcoin start-up; innovation measured by increased reach, increased uniformity, increased predictability and size and quickness. The telegraph to the landline to the mobile phone to the Bluetooth wearable; the abacus to Pascal’s mechanical calculator to the room-sized computer to the palm-sized device a million times more powerful than equipment a thousand times its size from only ten years ago; the stone tablet to the book to the internet offering everything, no excuses. We are all connected. We’re at the bright tip of a comet hurtling forward. We can place ourselves, with mild satisfaction. Thank god it’s not then. What kind of person uses a BlackBerry? (Old people!)
Berlin Biennale | All Problems Can Be Illuminated; Not All Problems Can Be Solved
We can all tell this story: The rails of human advancement stretching from the Enlightenment to a Bitcoin start-up; innovation measured by increased reach, increased uniformity, increased predictability and size and quickness. The telegraph to the landline to the mobile phone to the Bluetooth wearable; the abacus to Pascal’s mechanical calculator to the room-sized computer to the palm-sized device a million times more powerful than equipment a thousand times its size from only ten years ago; the stone tablet to the book to the internet offering everything, no excuses. We are all connected. We’re at the bright tip of a comet hurtling forward. We can place ourselves, with mild satisfaction. Thank god it’s not then. What kind of person uses a BlackBerry? (Old people!)
C*Space - Creative Space Berlin - Start
Creative Space Berlin - Beyond Coworking - Purpose-driven creative hub for co-working, projects, and events
Alexander Obenauer
Exploring new and renewed ideas for how personal computing and the interfaces we think with can better serve people’s lives – expanding opportunity, agency, curiosity, and creativity.
Telepath: building a new kind of computer
So, we made a thing: Let’s back up: for as long as I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with computers, fascinated not just by what they can do but what they could become. Like many, I took my early inspiration from science fiction. I dreamed of someday having something like the Enterprise’s computer. And why not? Science fiction has always driven scientists, engineers, and inventors to create real things that change the world.
About Us
Around the world, building the internet’s operating system—and a better way to work. In a world of tech companies fighting for growth at any cost, imagine one that gives away its most successful pr…
We Build On Hope @ PublicSpaces Conference 2026
Keynote by Robin Berjon The current state of tech can feel disheartening. Years of critical analysis and reform efforts have left us with a digital sphere that seems worse than ever. In Europe, our...
triumph of the nerds
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
A mere fifteen years ago, computer nerds were seen as m…
Building resilient social media
Next week I’ll be in Berlin, speaking at a Franco-German “Summit on European Digital Sovereignty” satellite event to help launch…
The Social Meaning of the Personal Computer: Or, Why the Personal Computer Revolution Was No Revolution
This essay presents a processual model of the personal computing movement that depicts the PC's birth within the context of complex and often contradictory social strategies, each of which used the meaning of computer technology in a distinctive way. It suggests that innovators are constrained by such processes to depict new artifacts in culturally meaningful ways, so that it is difficult for them to conceive of their technologies in radical terms. The rhetoric of "revolution" aside, innovators found it expedient to draw from the stock of meanings at hand as they created new meaning-frameworks for their artifacts. The result is that the new artifacts did not express a coherent or effective political vision and failed to have the intended social effects. This study implies that new technologies frequently reproduce existing social and meaning systems; if they do bring about social change, the changes may differ from those intended by the innovators.
The Social Meaning of the Personal Computer: Or, Why the Personal Computer Revolution Was No Revolution
This essay presents a processual model of the personal computing movement that depicts the PC's birth within the context of complex and often contradictory social strategies, each of which used the meaning of computer technology in a distinctive way. It suggests that innovators are constrained by such processes to depict new artifacts in culturally meaningful ways, so that it is difficult for them to conceive of their technologies in radical terms. The rhetoric of "revolution" aside, innovators found it expedient to draw from the stock of meanings at hand as they created new meaning-frameworks for their artifacts. The result is that the new artifacts did not express a coherent or effective political vision and failed to have the intended social effects. This study implies that new technologies frequently reproduce existing social and meaning systems; if they do bring about social change, the changes may differ from those intended by the innovators.
A small matter of programming: perspectives on end user computing
A Small Matter of Programming asks why it has been so d…
The Computer for the 21st Century
Specialized elements of hardware and software, connected by wires, radio waves and infrared, will be so ubiquitous that no one will notice their presence
