‘Start with why’, they said

This is either a set of guiding principles for the next few months of writing, or documentation of my failure to follow-through with this project.

I want to have informed fights with my friends.

Every week I find myself arguing with my friends about something or the other. If nothing else, I’d like to have the last word by saying “I covered this in my blog last week, please check it out”

I’d like to do something with my non-zero amount of domain knowledge.

I’ve spent the last 6 years working at a tech company, in a well-connected role that’s taught me about the different parts of a SaaS company – support, partnerships, software development, sales, etc. I did economics in college and am still a bit of a nerd about it. I write code regularly.

I’d like to open this knowledge up to folks who are interested in it.

I’m practicing my research and writing skills.

I’ve always wanted to be a researcher; my summers were spent doing research & I wanted to do a PhD after college. But got distracted by the ladder of finding a job, keeping the job, getting my visa etc. I want to get back to a practice of studying and processing the world through writing!

I want to give people some info to understand the world we live in.

There’s a lot of concepts – about the economy, about the environment, about technology – that are pretty straightforward but not easy to get information about unless you happened to study them in school.

I want to try and clarify the ones I understand and others may not!

I need to process this hellscape of short-term profits + weak democracy + “tech saves the day” mindset + climate disaster

Dude I am STRESSED. Stressed about the world.

We live in a moment where we’re seeing multiple disasters unfurl in parallel:

• broadening inequality both locally, nationally, and globally;
• most people don’t have democratic institutions that they can trust;
• we have companies peddling imaginary or overhyped technology products;
• and a climate disaster that’s already wiped out large populations in the global south – and has the global north in its sights.

We usually think of these disasters as separate entities but there’s a few running threads connecting them all.

I haven’t got a fully informed take on this, but best believe I am building that out 😉

So let’s begin!