Werd I/O

I really like Lou Plummer’s list of 15 books which made the most impact on him, which I discovered via Tracy Durnell’s own list:

I think you can figure out a lot about a person if you know what books have had the most impact on them. At one point or another, each of these books was my current favorite. They all had a lasting impact on me. I'd love to see your list.

Tracy has smartly split hers up into categories. I’ll do the same here. And just as Lou said, I’d love to see your list!

Formative Books

These books disproportionately influenced me when I was a much younger adult, and helped contribute to the way I saw the world in a hundred ways, from my sense of what was possible to my sense of humor.

1. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams — I don’t quote it, but the clever irreverence still sweeps me off my feet. A large part of me wishes I was Douglas Adams and always will.
2. Constellations: Stories of the Future — a mind-blowing collection of science fiction short stories, some of which became episodes of The Twilight Zone and so on. Jerome Bixby’s It’s a Good Lifeand Fritz Leiber’s A Pail of Air are standouts for me.
3. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury — There’s a warm, beating heart at the center of this story, and that’s what draws me in every time (and I’ve reread it countless times). There are better Bradbury books which have probably aged better — you’re probably thinking of them right now — but at the time, it resonated.
4. Maus, by Art Spiegelman — It was much later until I really understood how my own family was affected by WWII, but I connected to this hard. It was also the first graphic novel that made me really think about the possibilities of the form: something that was clearly far beyond superheroes and fantasy.
5. The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood — Practically a documentary at this point, but it’s always been a riveting work of speculative fiction that does what that genre does best: help us grasp with elements of our present. To most of us, it’s a warning. To the Heritage Foundation, I guess it’s a manual.
6. 1984, by George Orwell — It’s hard to imagine a more culturally influential science fiction novel. I love it: although it has a lot to say, I find it to be a page-turner. If you haven’t read Sandra Newman’s follow-up, Julia, run to get it: it’s an impressive work of fiction in its own right that reframes the story in brilliant ways.
7. Microserfs, by Douglas Coupland — Coupland sometimes reads like a funnier Bret Easton Ellis (which is to say zeitgeisty but hollow — Shampoo Planet and The Rules of Attraction are cousins), but at his best he captures something real. Microserfs gave me that first taste of the community and camaraderie around building software together: it’s set in an earlier version of the industry than I got to be a part of, but its depiction of those early years is recognizable. Even the outlandish characters don’t feel out of place. I don’t think it’s probably aged at all well, but it resonated with me hard in my early twenties.

Motivating External Change

These books helped me think about how we need to change, and what we might do.

1. The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World, by Vincent Bevins — I���m convinced that every American citizen should read this, in order to better understand how we show up in the world. (Spoiler alert: we don’t show up well.)
2. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond — Visceral, accessible, memorable reporting on poverty and housing. Again, it should probably be required reading for American citizens.
3. The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson — There’s a very silly passage in this book about the role of blockchain in solving climate change (come on), as well as quite a bit in favor of climate engineering, which I think is highly dubious bordering on terrifying. But at the same time, the novel succeeds at painting a visceral picture of what the effects of the climate crisis could be.
4. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson — A key to understanding America. There’s a lot spelled out here that I simply didn’t know, running the gamut from the details of peoples’ everyday lived experiences to the chilling fact that Hitler based his Nazi caste system on Jim Crow.

Books That Changed Me

These books either left me a different person somehow or touched something in me I didn’t know existed.

1. Kindred, by Octavia Butler — I wish I’d discovered Butler earlier. Her work is immediate and deeply human, and while it shouldn’t have had to change a whole genre, it absolutely did. Parable of the Sower is seismic, of course, and rightly famous. (It’s also getting to be a harder and harder read in the current climate.) But it was Kindred that opened the doors to a different kind of science fiction to me, and through it, all kinds of possibilities.
2. How High We Go in the Dark, by Sequoia Nagamatsu — I have never read a more effective metaphor for grief and change. I read it when I was in the depths of grief myself, and the way this book captures the nuance, the brutality, and the beauty is poetry. I still think about one chapter almost daily. (It’s the rollercoaster. If you know, you know.)
3. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker — A breathtaking example of a modern novel: a masterclass in form as well as content. Not a word is wasted in bringing the lived experiences of her characters to life (and through them, so many more). I’ve read this many times, and I’ve never made it through without absolutely weeping.
4. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott — So often recommended to writers for really good reasons, Bird by Bird is not just the best book I’ve ever read about writing but also about embarking upon any large project. It’s hopeful, nourishing, actionable, and lovely. Its lessons still motivate me.

Do you have a list of your own that you would like to share? Let me know!

My availability has opened up for a handful of consulting engagements in addition to my regular work as Senior Director of Technology at ProPublica.

I’ve founded two startups (both based on open-source technology communities that I also founded). I’ve been a CTO, led product, and invested in early-stage startup ventures. I’ve also taught venture and product design to teams that include startups, top-tier educational institutions, and local newsrooms. My products have been used by social movements and Fortune 500 companies. I would love to help you to move faster and make stronger technology decisions.

Here are some ways I might be helpful to you:

A Sounding Board

I can be your technology and product sounding board for your products and how your product or engineering team is run. I offer regular check-ins, or I can be available on an ad hoc, as-needed basis.

I’ll help you solve problems and coach you through getting to enduring solutions and productive work cultures. In the process, you’ll avoid common pitfalls, take advantage of a new but experienced set of eyes on your problems, and have someone in your corner when you need.

Accelerated Technology Product Sprints

Do you need to quickly evaluate a product idea or a way to solve problems for a customer you’ve identified? Do you need to identify that customer or market?

I can lead you through a short design sprint, either remotely or in person. At the end of it, you’ll have a stronger idea of your user and customer, learned tools for quickly running experiments and making progress, and identified and evaluated the core hypotheses that your product rests upon.

You’ll iterate and get to market faster, increase your product’s chance of success, and build practices in your team to help you move faster long after we’ve finished working together.

Technical Evaluation and Advice

Are you wondering how a technology (perhaps AI or the fediverse) might be used in your business? Do you have an idea in mind that needs to be feasibility-tested?

I’ll learn about your product and business and report on how you can leverage available technology with the time, team, and resources you have.

You’ll more quickly understand what you can build, what’s technically possible, and where the technology opportunities are for your existing business.

Deck Review

Are you presenting a strategy to your board or managers? Are you a startup going out to raise money?

I can give you actionable feedback to help you build your deck and tell a more robust story that has a better chance of getting you to the outcome you’re looking for.

You’ll tell a stronger story, make a deeper emotional impact on your audience, and learn how to tell compelling stories in the future.

Courses

Any of the above can be provided as workshops for your larger course. They are available both in-person and remotely.

Get in Touch

If you’re interested in these — or if you think you could make use of my other skills and experiences — please email me directly at ben@werd.io to arrange an initial meeting. I’m excited to talk to you!

I’m a natural-born American citizen but never lived here until my early thirties. I have a complicated relationship with the country: I never thought I’d live here until I suddenly did. As it happened, my parents moved back to look after my grandmother, and ten years later, I came here to look after my mother. I was 21 when Bush became President, having been the state governor who had executed the most people; I marched against the Iraq War from Scotland. There was never a moment where I thought, “America is a place I want to live.” But I wound up here anywhere.

The America I had no intention of being a part of is still very much here. It’s the America where people love guns and the right own semi-automatic weapons is more important than the idea that we need to stop children from being slaughtered in their schools. It’s the America where the state murders prisoners by electrocuting them or injecting them with poison or by gassing them, and where the police can gun down a person of color and walk away. It’s the America that organizes coups in other countries to further its own interests and nobody sees anything wrong with it because it keeps gas prices down. It’s the America that won’t take the bus because that’s what poor people do (and the word “poor” is doing a lot of work here). It’s rugged individualism and wealth-hoarding over community inclusion and equity. It’s racial stereotypes and old-fashioned values. It’s flag-waving. It’s Bill O’Reilly and Pat Buchanan and George W Bush and Donald Trump.

I’m sorry, but I can’t bring myself to love that America. It’s a bad place to live. Objectively, even.

But that isn’t the only America. It turns out there are lots of them: not just in the sense that each state is its own mini-nation, although that’s true too, but also in terms of layers that spread from coast to coast.

There’s an America I’m delighted to be a part of; one that I’ve come to truly love. It’s the America that understands the impact it’s had and has, both on its own communities and on the world, and genuinely wants to do much better. It’s an America that is anti-drone, anti-war, and against the military-industrial complex. It’s the America that wants to spread equity and uplift communities instead of individuals. It’s the one where nobody would ever think of banning a book or a news source, where public libraries are for everyone, where it’s commonly understood that education should be free and for all. It’s the one that loves art and literature, that provides platforms for diverse lived experiences, that believes in reparations. It loves people of all religions, and no religion, equally, and knows that the separation of church and state is a vital tenet for an inclusive democracy. It believes in democracy, come to that, and science, and data and experimentation. It believes in the common public good and in social contracts. It preserves nature and protects vulnerable communities and makes sure nobody falls through the cracks. It fights fascism of all kinds, from the loud politicians who seeks to turn the country into a theocracy to the small voices who shun difference in their local communities. It believes that immigration makes the country great, and it invites people to join as is without needing to assimilate or dissolve into a melting pot. It believes that everyone should have the right to marry whoever they choose, have the right to do what they will with their own bodies, and assert their identities however they need to. It doesn’t care how much money you make, where you come from, or what you believe: it asserts that you deserve to live well. It is inclusive, and welcoming, and beautiful. It’s Noam Chomsky and bell hooks and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Daniel Ellsberg and Chelsea Manning. It takes the damn bus.

I assure you that it exists, and it’s everywhere. I’ve traveled across this country many times now, and there are pockets of this America in the places you’d least expect, alongside the places where you would expect it. There are people trying to make a better country, a more progressive and inclusive country, everywhere you go.

It’s not the only America, and it’s not the loudest America. But it’s the best one, by far. I think it’s worth saying that I do love it; I want to support it; I want it to be the defining experience of being in and from this country. I don’t think that’s inevitable, but I think, if we all work at it, that it as every chance of happening. I would love that to be the case.

Last year I wrote a little about how I hope AI will be used, using the GPS navigation in my car as an analogy:

I like my GPS. I use it pretty much every time I drive. But it’s not going to make the final decision about which way I go.

Perhaps it seems obvious, but I’d like to extend that analogy to news, media, and influencers.

We all need journalism — and particularly investigative journalism — to inform us and help us make better decisions. We need to take in sources, form opinions based on them, and vote accordingly as a baseline. But democratic participation doesn’t start and end with voting: we also need to know how to use our voices, spend our money, organize our communities, and, in areas we feel particularly strongly about, protest.

I do think we all need to use our voices. I’m wary when people are silent: whether this is their intention or not, silence is acquiescence to the status quo. If our government is doing something harmful on our behalf and we don’t speak out about it, or an atrocity is taking place somewhere and we choose not to speak up, our lack of action is an endorsement. Change only happens when people speak up.

But this only makes sense when we make up our own mind. If our opinions that copy what’s popular, or what a particular news outlet has to say, then we’re not exercising our democratic rights at all. We’re handing over that power to someone else. When we let someone make our mind up for us, using our voice is just amplifying their voice.

When people complain that we’re not all watching the same newscasts anymore, that’s the world they want to create: one where we’re all getting the same narrow band of information and forming opinions in the same way. That’s not democracy; that’s homogeny. It’s worth considering whose voices could be heard in that world. How diverse was it? Who was really represented?

Similarly, while there is certainly disinformation put out in the world that’s designed to coerce people to exercise their democratic rights in a particular direction (often towards fascism), some people have also used the words “misinformation” and “disinformation” (or “fake news”) to describe reporting that they simply don’t like.

This is the playbook of Trumpworld. When all of journalism is painted as biased and “fake news” — as Trump has taken pains to do — supporters are left with the officially-endorsed channels like Fox News, OANN, and Newsmax. They receive a narrow band of information that becomes the basis of their opinion-making. For example, during Trump’s presidency and beyond, these channels frequently pushed narratives that undermined trust in mainstream media, labeled critical reports as conspiracies, and even presented alternative facts about significant events like the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 election results. This systematic discrediting of journalism fosters an echo chamber that isolates its audience from opposing viewpoints and critical analysis.

But there’s a streak of this in Democrat-land, too: a subset of the community that’s sometimes been described as “blue MAGA” for its use of similar rhetoric. Here, any voice that criticizes Biden is also described as fake news, or even a Putin plot. For instance, when progressive commentators or journalists critique Biden’s policies on immigration or healthcare, they are sometimes met with accusations of undermining the Democratic agenda or aiding Republican narratives. This phenomenon isn't as pervasive as Trumpworld’s approach, but it highlights a discomfort with internal criticism within certain Democratic circles. While I’d clearly prefer a Democratic America to one run by Trump, this dismissal of uncomfortable sources as being fake because we don’t like them is no less undemocratic.

And, of course, the same goes for people who learn how to vote and what to think from their places of worship. In some religious communities, congregants are encouraged to vote in line with specific doctrinal beliefs, which can limit their exposure to broader societal issues and alternative viewpoints. It’s a hell of a waste of a free mind and a democratic bill of rights.

We need to consume information from a variety of sources, be critically aware of the biases and origins of those sources so that we can properly evaluate and contextualize them, and then make up our own minds, regardless of whether our conclusions are popular or not.

Making up our own minds has gotten a bad name lately through people who “do their own research” and end up promoting ivermectin for covid, believing that vaccines cause autism, or that climate change isn’t real. I’m not arguing for abandoning critical reasoning or scientific fact here; quite the opposite. The antidote to this kind of quackery is stronger critical thinking and source evaluation, not — as some have argued — restricting our information diet to a few approved sources.

New voices and sources matter. The world changes. Lots of things that were wildly unpopular and sneered at in the past are now part of ordinary life. For example:

• Abolition
• Women’s suffrage
• Access to birth control
• Interracial marriage
• Marriage equality
• The 40 hour work-week

Each of these things were hard-won by people who were very much outside the mainstream until they weren’t. Consider what it would have meant to be silent while each of those struggles for basic rights were underway, or what it might say about a person if they stayed silent because doing otherwise would affect their job prospects or earnings potential. These ideas weren’t popular to begin with, but they were right.

Even the internet was dismissed as a weird fad in the nineties. The mainstream press didn’t think it would catch on; people inside newsrooms had to fight to establish the first news websites. Memorably, one British magazine called it “the new name for ham radio” — just a few years before it took over the world.

What matters is not adherence to the values of a tribe. We aren’t better people if we demonstrate that our values are the same as an accepted set. The world isn’t like supporting a sports team, where you put on a red or a blue jersey and sing the same songs in the stands. It’s nuanced, and each of us can and should have our own nuanced perspectives that are informed by our lived experiences and those of the people around us, and a set of diverse, freely-reported information sources.

For the avoidance of doubt, my values are vehemently anti-war, pro-immigration, and fiercely on the side of diversity, equity, and inclusion. I believe in the right to choose. I believe that trans women are women and trans men are men. I believe that too-small government leads to big corporate power, and too-big government leads to authoritarianism, so a continual balance must be found. I believe that universal healthcare is a fundamental human right. I believe guns must be controlled. I roll my eyes when people complain about socialism in America, because usually what they mean when they use that word is what I’d consider to be basic infrastructure. I think there needs to be a ceasefire in Gaza and in Ukraine. I dislike patriotism because I think it encourages people to care more about people who are geographically close to them. I believe Ayn Rand’s “morality of self-interest” is an excuse to act without compassion. I like startups and believe in the right to start and run a business — and that they can be the vehicle for great change. I think climate change is not just real and behind many of the geopolitical decisions we’re seeing playing out today. I believe that the civil rights marches and movements of the 2020s are the signs of really exciting progressive change. I believe Trump must not become President. I believe a progressive world is a better world.

And I believe in talking about those things and why I believe them. Loudly. Even when it’s uncomfortable. There is no media outlet I’m aware of that publishes based on that exact set of values. You might nod your head in agreement with some of them and be angered by others.

The news I read and the information I gather is my GPS. I appreciate the signal, and it will certainly inform my actions and beliefs. I’m still going to find my own way.