Since I write about education, technology, and media, I thought perhaps an extra disclosure of my affiliations, past and present, would be useful. I am a graduate of New York City public schools: PS 148 and JHS Joseph Pulitzer Junior HS (remember those?) Jackson Heights, Queens; Kakiat Junior HS and Spring Valley High School. Hebrew […]
Dead malls would make great tech incubators.
January 8, 2015 by
There have been a spate of articles lately about dead shopping malls. Here’s one from Green Acres. I’m a little too old to have been a teenage mall rat. For me, the Nanuet Mall will always be the monster that ate the cute little town of Spring Valley, New York, where teenage me admired the […]
Twitter makes me lazy. #TEDXCUNY
November 17, 2014 by
It’s so easy to post on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. I mean, they don’t make me lazy, really, I do that to myself, but they do enable the soundbite that defeats any attempt at nuance or a complex message. So I’m inspired by today’s FIRST TEDX@CUNY conference to post my opening remarks. I also do that […]
Five things I learned from Red Burns
November 3, 2013 by
1. Nobody Knows. As in, where is technology going? Since nobody knows, keep asking questions, keep experimenting, keep moving in the same step-by-step direction known to all good entrepreneurs. The solutions — rarely obvious — will emerge. 2. Technology doesn’t matter, people do. Technology is always in service of human needs, like services for the disabled. […]
A Father’s Day salute to Paul Soros: a remarkable man, brilliant and kind and compassionate.
June 16, 2013 by
Here’s the NYT obituary with the sad news that Paul died yesterday, and some details about his distinguished career. On top of his engineering genius, which transformed ports and shipping all over the world, he was an Olympic skier and tennis player? And a Hungarian refugee from the Nazis? Passport forger and entrepreneur? Hard to imagine […]
That Earp Curse! I hope it didn’t follow me to Santa Barbara.
May 31, 2013 by
Leaving beautiful Santa Barbara this morning. Never thought of it as setting for one of my favorite dystopia films, though Day One: Saw the wild fires as soon as we landed, those beautiful mountains wreathed in black smoke. By the time I arrived at the hotel, the staff was busily sweeping ash off the outdoor […]
A revelation of an exhibit: don’t miss Inventing Abstraction at MOMA.
December 23, 2012 by
I can’t remember the last time I was whiplashed (in a good way) by a brilliant museum show. Alas, I never studied art history. So I never gave much thought to the question of how we got from Vermeer to Mondrian. It is a revelation to think about how abstraction is rooted in the context […]