Trevor Burnham

It is a truth uni­ver­sally acknowl­edged that a blog in pos­ses­sion of no audience must be in want of a theme. The Internet is riddled with blogs that no one reads, often because of their lack of, for lack of a better word, the­mos­ity. When a blog has one or two inter­est­ing posts and no con­nec­tion between the two, its only readers will be nomadic Googlers, grazing briefly on its green pastures before wan­der­ing to the next lonely outpost of the blogosphere.

The last time I restarted my blog afresh, I was aspiring to be the next Milton Friedman. I’d scored a 1600 on the GRE and was thrilled about the prospect of becoming an expert in micro­eco­nom­ics and game theory. One of my proudest moments came earlier this year when personal hero Greg Mankiw gave me a shout-​​out of sorts for my rave review of his textbook; reading that book in high school made me decide, “Hey, I want to go into eco­nom­ics!” But that excite­ment has faded. Don’t get me wrong: Everyone should take Econ 101. Joel Spolsky even rec­om­mends it for CS students. Supply and demand, marginal analysis… this is impor­tant stuff! But after a year and a half at the Uni­ver­sity of Michigan School of Infor­ma­tion PhD program, where I get to study the inter­sec­tions of tech­nol­ogy and eco­nom­ics, I’m less excited about utility max­i­miza­tion and Nash equi­lib­ria and way more excited about the amazing new social apps folks are developing.

So, if there were a dry but apt subtitle for this blog, it would be: “Thoughts on tech­nol­ogy.” I say “thoughts” because if I want to link to some­thing new without comment, I can do that in 140 char­ac­ters or less. Also expect a lots of anec­dotes. When a good story goes head-​​to-​​head with con­tra­dic­tory facts, the facts don’t stand a chance.

Rest assured that this will be the greatest fran­chise reboot since Batman Begins. And, inci­den­tally: Merry Christmas!

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