Author: eliotpeper
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Writing is a tool for making new ideas
Over in Every, I wrote about how writing is more than a method for capturing ideas, it’s a way of exploring them:
By externalizing your thoughts, writing puts you into conversation with yourself. It’s always easier to diagnose other
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The beauty of playing the long game
Over in the Boston Globe, I wrote about the surprising power of playing long games:
I love projects with multi-decade timelines. They defy the limiting logic of quarterly earnings, KPIs, conversion rates, and all the other metrics that
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The Four Laws of Making a Website*
- If you hire the best person in the world to build you something custom, it might be expensive, but it’ll be perfect for you.
- If you use a proven off-the-shelf product, it might not do everything you want, but it’ll
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Concept Art
I love concept art because it isn’t the thing, it’s meant to inform the thing.
It’s not complete, it’s suggestive.
It doesn’t tell a story, it creates a vibe.
Instead of illustrating what happens next, it seeks maximally resonant images.…
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Wizards Meddling In the Source Code of Life
Fiction is a uniquely capable vehicle for exploring the power and consequences of new technologies, grounding thought experiments in human experience and playing out second and third order effects. In his new science-fiction thriller, Upgrade, Blake Crouch imagines a …
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Writing Reap3r
Big news: My new novel, Reap3r, comes out today.
How far would you go to achieve your greatest ambition?
Nothing is what it seems in this speculative thriller about a quantum computer scientist, virologist, podcaster, venture capitalist, and assassin …
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The most useful, beautiful, and dangerous of humanity’s inventions
Over in the Adjacent Possible, Rick Liebling interviewed me about writing Bandwidth:
…Planes are computers we fly in. Stoves are computers we cook on. Buildings are computers we inhabit. Nearly every manufactured object has a chip in it,
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What Writers Do
Imagine you’re holding a laser pointer.
You can point it at anything you want: a potted cactus, the Diophantine Equation scrawled across a whiteboard, the steaming cross section of a fresh baked croissant, a malfunctioning karaoke machine, a whorled knob …
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Refracting Reality Into Rainbows of Possibility
I interviewed Monica Byrne about writing The Actual Star, an epic tale of self-discovery that spans millennia and questions the very meaning of civilization. Born of extensive research into Maya history and culture, this wildly ambitious speculative adventure will …
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Narrative as Crowbar
Over in Future, I wrote about unlocking expertise through storytelling:
…People have wandered the intellectual garden of forking paths for thousands of generations, but the internet is a profound accelerant for such cultural exploration. It is a shadow city