Interplace

Hello Interactors, All the talk and evidence of AI, chips in the brain, and robotic overlords has created emotions ranging from hysteria to malaise to clinical depression. How much of this is caused or influenced by narratives spun by favored voices telling tall tales of proximal parables and are there other ways to think about our brain than just a processor? Let’s find out… THE MENTAL MYTHS OF S...

Hello Interactors, A Frankenstein announcement from Musk this week punctuated my recent fascination with the author of that popular novel, Mary Shelley. Her isolated lived experience in a time of intense technological discovery, social and geo-political unrest, AND a climate crisis rings true today more than ever. But she also was subtlety representing a scientific movement that is largely ignored...

Hello Interactors, It’s been a while since we’ve been together. I took some time over the holiday break. We often think of parents spoiling kids upon their return from college, but I’m the one who feels spoiled. We’re squarely in the winter season up north and that means I’ll be exploring human behavior. With all the talk of AI, I thought I’d start with its root inspiration — the neuron. How did t...

Hello Interactors, It’s been a great year hear at Interplace with subscriptions hitting (and hovering) around 1000 subscribers! Thank you! And thanks to Substack’s recommendation engine, the vast majority of those came from Steven Sinofsky’s Hardcore Software newsletter. Thank you! Sadly, the utility of this recommendation engine also means those Nazi newsletters Substack chooses to sponsor will a...

Hello Interactors, On the day before many around the world pull out ‘T’was the Night Before Christmas’ to read to their kids, maybe drop a little context to the origins of this tale. This is an excerpt from a longer post I did in 2021 on Black Friday . It touches on how the rising wealth in New York leading up to 1900 brought about shifts in attitudes around how the powerful elite should deal with...

Hello Interactors, This is the last post on economics for 2023. Next up for winter is human behavior. This post bridges where we left off with traditional colonial nation-states by talking about how similar philosophies are motivating the formation of neocolonial micro-states. What causes people to seek freedom in new places by limiting the freedom of those found in such places? Let’s dig in… THE...

Hello Interactors, Part 2 talks about the failures of borders, some recent alarming and revealing data about America’s ‘shared identity’, and some potential paths toward embracing the shaky state of states. Let’s get into it… NEWLY PROMISED LANDS Part 1 left us at the Paris Peace Conference and Western-style cartographic geo-political mandates. Amidst these mandates was an admission by one leader...

Hello Interactors, There’s a lot of talk of states these days. Palestine and Israel, one state or two? Ukraine and Russia. One state or two? The United States. E pluribus unum . Out of many, one…right? What about that one D.C. federal district, or those five territories, and a bunch of ‘minor’ islands? And don’t forget the many tribal nations within the nation-state of the United States which can...

Hello Interactors, A series of U.S. federal legislation under the Biden administration has spawned a manufacturing boom at a scale not seen in decades. Unfortunately, the country is repeating the same socio-economic, land use, and transportation policy mistakes that have lead to many of the ills we’re seeking to remedy. Are we missing an opportunity to build back better? A MANUFACTURING RENAISSANC...

Hello Interactors, Trick-or-treat! It’s that time of year for Americans, and a growing population worldwide, to dawn a favorite costume and consume copious amounts of candy. It’s also a time for kids to parade for treats and for adults to decorate with ghoulish goblins, ghosts, and other frightful festoons. And excuse to cosplay without criticism. Americans will spend an ungodly amount of money on...

Hello Interactors, This post brings new meaning to the phrase ‘reading the tea leaves’. Watching my tea diffuse recently, I got to thinking about how humans diffuse around the globe like tea particulates in a teacup. Some migrate intentionally, others are forced, and some are lured across borders — as if by osmosis, like tea through a strainer. It’s tea time somewhere in the world, so grab a cup a...

Hello Interactors, Cued by shifting hues comes a call for the leaves to fall. Which means Interplace, like the weather, turns to the tumultuous territory of economics. Economics, like fall weather, is not all that predictable — both systems morph in response to layers of interconnected webs of complex systems that adapt, respond, and influence social, environmental, and political interactions. I r...

Hello Interactors, After dropping our kids at college, my wife and I spent some time on Cape Cod. She had gone here as a kid for summer family vacations to enjoy the sand and salty air, and she wasn’t alone. Now people come from all over the world to visit this soggy, sandy, stretch of land surrounded by sea. But it’s capacity is being tested, cresting waves are gobbling the coast, as warming wate...

Hello Interactors, Our family got sucked into watching the Amazon Prime show, Clarkson’s Farm. As a suburban Iowa boy who knew just enough farmers to know how hard it is, I found this show relatable. Apart from the entertaining allure of many staged reality shows, I realized it also highlights topics I investigate here on Interplace. Especially the interaction of the ‘rural’ and ‘urban’…or lack th...

Hello Interactors, Summer is waning and nature’s energy is draining. Meanwhile, record heat and fires in the northern hemisphere remind us the sun has yet to relent. But plants know what to do to prepare. They slow down and repair. They store and restore through the winter snore for when the sun comes back for more. Why can’t we humans, and our societies, learn this rhythm of life? Maybe we’re jus...

Hello Interactors, Our family took a trip to San Diego to visit friends. We got to spend some time in the warm Southern California water at a time when the news was filled with stories about sensational oceanic anomalies. Was the warm water we felt an anomaly? How certain could I be and how certain can anyone be about climatic statistical anomalies? Let’s unpack it. BOOGIE WOOGIE FREAK OUT I felt...

Hello Interactors, My last post on fractals led me to refamiliarized myself with the man who coined the term, Benoit Mandelbrot, and his influential work on the fractal-like wonders of nature. I didn’t realize he was following in the footsteps of 19th century mathematicians critical of the absolutist purity of Euclidean geometry – themes I recently explored here and here . My journey led me to a m...

Hello Interactors, We’re officially in the summer season here in the northern hemisphere, and that means we transition to physical geography. Much attention has been given to the staggering heat in the U.S. lately, so I thought I’d start there. Please give me like, if you like. And share if you dare! Now let’s go… On June 19, 1889, Vincent van Gogh wrote in a letter to his brother, "Finally, I hav...

Hello Interactors, We’re now into summer, but I wanted to sneak in one last cartography post. It’s a leap from last week’s post into the field of human dynamics. If you don’t want to read the whole thing (shame on you 😉), I asked ChatGPT to make a poem out it. In the realm of spatial analysis, behold the shift, From mere location's grasp to a deeper rift. No longer bound by cartographic tradition...

Hello Interactors, Who would've thought that R.E.M.'s hit tune "Stand" held the secrets to Western spatial thinking? This week I break it down for you. From Aristotle's "Stand in the place where you live" to Newton's "Carry a compass to help you along," it's like they were dropping knowledge bombs all along! So next time you get this '80s hit stuck in your head, remember, you're getting a crash co...

Hello Interactors, I’ll admit it, the early summer weather here in Seattle has been a distraction. So, I turned to a writing companion this week to help. I took my notes from a talk I saw at the AAG conference in March, and you know what comes next…I pasted it in ChatGPT. I then took some papers referenced in the talk, grabbed their abstracts, and pasted those in ChatGPT. After a few iterations of...

Hello Interactors, As I was preparing for my talk at Harvard last month, I was finishing a book called The Patterning Instinct by Jeremy Lent. He explores how culture shapes values, and those values shape history. Hat tip to Kasey Klimes over at rhizome r&d for the recommendation. Lent uncovers the history and evolution of dominant Western culture through the lens of evolutionary biology and neuro...

Hello Interactors, I recently returned from an extended trip back east for a talk at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (GSD). I also threw in quick visits to Boston and New York to visit my kids, and then stopped over in Kansas City to visit family on the way back to Seattle. I was invited to keynote a two-day symposium hosted by the Laboratory for Design Technologies on the role of t...

Hello Interactors, I’ve been absent the last few weeks. First our kids were back for spring break and then I was off to the American Association of Geographers (AAG) national conference in Denver, Colorado. Both were fun, exhilarating, and inspiring and I’m bursting with things to write about! We’re officially in spring here in the northern hemisphere. I now turn to cartography and the role mapmak...

Hello Interactors, I’ve been delayed getting this one out after being hit with a stomach bug. But I’m back in business and back to looking at urban behavior. This time, I dig into a power law that proves a Geographer right (again) while making the dizzying array of diversity in human urban mobility look shockingly similar. As  interactors , you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of...