Essays

At midnight, fewer than one car passes each minute—yet this is a busy city after all.

Search and recommendation have freed information from the tree, giving each of us a view of our own—and ushering in the Flat Age…

Falling rocks are waterfalls made solid; rumbling is the bravado of machines.

A look at the Safari extension I built to save and restore tab groups, organize browsing sessions, and make everyday shortcuts f…

A short lyric about rain, memory, and the people we keep trying to forget.

A ride through Chongqing, Shanghai, Lille and Paris—and a meditation on the people a city brings together underground.

In this cyberpunk age, memory had become traceable for the first time—and searching it had become a solitary game.

The train heads for the airport. Paris and I recede from one another.

A chattering McDonald’s, a golden field—and the real reason everyone at the outlet village seems so happy.

For a child who came out of the mountains, the boundless flatness of the plains can be profoundly disorienting.

There is no such thing as an obvious transition. That is something I have always found curious.