Essays
- February 2026When the Pursuit of Knowledge Is Satisfied, What Is the Next Frontier?AI is about to give everyone access to all of human knowledge. The Greeks figured out 2,400 years ago that this was never the point.
- January 2025Beliefs on the Future and What I'm Doing About ItWhat I believe is coming — and what I believe we should fight for within that reality.
- October 2023Data Is LoveOn why the media industry's instinct to hoard data is the very thing holding it back — and why openness, transparency, and a level playing field are the path forward.
- July 2023An Ode to Coffee: The Unsung Brew That Helped Launch the Free WorldHow a humble Ethiopian bean displaced ale, sharpened minds, and quietly fueled the Enlightenment, the American Revolution, and the free exchange of ideas we still depend on today.
- November 2020The Light in Me and in YouOn duality, oneness, and the word that contains an entire philosophy — the light in me honors the light in you.
- June 2019The Value of Presence and the Eternal NowWhat bomb disposal experts and a Harvard happiness study teach us about the ancient art of being here now.
- July 2018Imaginary Time and The "No-Boundary Proposal"Stephen Hawking's final theory raises an ancient question: does consciousness exist outside of time and space?
- July 2017Kabaddi: A Lesson on the Power of Focus and RepetitionAn ancient Indian contact sport holds a lesson about focus, greed, and never getting comfortable in the middle of your mission.
- February 2015The Obstacle Is the Way: Lessons from Building Through UncertaintyEvery company that survives long enough faces a moment where the path forward disappears. What separates the ones that find a new path from the ones that don't?
- November 2012We Worship the Dead, Persecute the LivingWe build museums for artists we would have ignored. We canonize prophets we would have mocked. The pattern is so consistent across centuries and cultures that it might be the most reliable bias in human history.
- November 20112012: The End of Home Entertainment as We Know ItA prediction — made in 2011 — that physical media would reach its tipping point by 2012, and what that meant for the future of the big screen in your living room.
- March 2009BitTorrent: Legitimizing the Protocol and Fighting for the Open InternetHow we turned the most disruptive file-sharing technology on the internet into a legitimate business — and then fought Comcast and the FCC to defend net neutrality.
- October 2008Reconciling Net Neutrality and Free Market CapitalismCan Silicon Valley's libertarian instincts coexist with the demand for a fair and open Internet? A case for disclosure, self-regulation, and positive incentives over punitive legislation.
- June 2008The Indian Diaspora and the Escape from the License RajThe story of Indian emigration to America begins with economic suffocation at home. Indians had replaced foreign colonial rule with homegrown bureaucratic tyranny — and the most ambitious among them left.
- August 2007Be Water, My FriendLao Tzu's twenty-five-hundred-year-old observation about what separates the living from the dead — and what it means for how we build, fight, and endure.