I came to the Netherlands to gather material for a book on e-transport. The book is changing as I write this. One point has become clear. Dutch people want to go fast, just like Americans. They want to get from Point A to Point B, with all the stuff they’ll need at Point B, in […]

In America you buy an e-bike. In the Netherlands it makes sense to rent. But these are different products. My Edison can go 20 mph, about 30 kph, before the engine says you’re on your own. The e-bike speed limit in the Netherlands is 15 mph, or 25 kph. The Edison has fingertip controls for […]

This is the question Ray Liotta asks Kevin Costner’s character in the movie Field of Dreams. Costner’s response, “No, It’s Iowa” reflects the fact that while the cornfield may look like heaven to Liotta’s Shoeless Joe Jackson, Iowa is a real place with real problems. The look on his face says something different. The same […]

Arguments about Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) have become almost religious in nature. They shouldn’t be. It’s not a question of if but when, and exactly what AGI will look like when it’s here. To the Tech Bros, and their Amen Corner, AGI means workers can go to hell. Software engineers, writers, artists of all kinds, […]

This should be obvious to everyone. But for those car heads in the back, it needs to be said again and again and again. Bikes do not compete with cars. That’s not their function. They are complementary to cars. Fietsing, which is bicycling for transportation, is a city thing. Let Tadej and Jonas cover the […]

Just one day in the Netherlands and I can already see I was right about some things. E-Transport isn’t coming. It’s here. It started with e-bikes, but it will not end there. I’ve seen it in Maarssen, a suburb 6 miles from Utrecht. There are tons of fat-tired “e-bikes” that go 25 miles an hour, […]

Two men currently dominate American technology, Elon Musk and Sam Altman. They’re going down. Musk took his eye off the ball at Tesla years ago. He let Chinese competitors pass him by and did nothing. BYD now dominates in batteries, which means it dominates in Electric Vehicles. Tesla hasn’t refreshed its lineup in years. Altman […]

The biggest story of a very bad week for tech comes from John Gruber, who eviscerated Apple Intelligence. The “personalized Siri” Apple showed recently was a concept video, he writes. It’s the kind of thing the company did under John Sculley, when it was failing and flailing. This matters because Gruber knows his stuff and […]

The soul of my best friend, James T. (“T” or “Tommy”) Bass, departed his body at 2:28 this morning. Tommy was many things in his life – soldier, hippie, businessman, handyman, webmaster, and my spiritual advisor. He helped run the Magnolia Warehouse, a health foods wholesaler, in the 1970s, and served on the board of […]

I took one last spin through my hometown this weekend, before my coming trip to the Netherlands. I learned a lot. None of it was good. First, about Atlanta’s roadways. They’re in horrible condition, because we insist on hauling everything we have, wherever we go. SUVs, each with a single driver heading to work. Giant […]