I'm working on/thinking about a bunch of things these days (too many, actually), one of which is a project I've been tentatively calling "The Negro Spreadsheet." I don't really know what it's supposed to be, really, but I'll be collecting and posting bits of my thinking here as needed, appropriate, thunk, et cetera. Comments, reactions and feedback, would, of course, be appreciated.

Basically, the Negro Spreadsheet is a nexus of (largely still random) thoughts about black people and the internet. I've had the privilege to do some interesting work entrepreneurially and editorially around how African Americans use digital media: I've managed a few relevant web properties, and have also been online pretty much my whole life, starting with a modem I got in early 80something for my first computer, the TI-99/4a. If anything, the Negro Spreadsheet is intended as a datadump for things I've collected over the years.

The TI goes on the list not because it was a nice machine (it was), but because of three peculiar things have always stayed in my mind about it. One, it has a kind of elegiac, romantic aura in my memories owing to the fact that it was the first of many stubborn bad bets I've made on platforms or ways of working online. (For example, I owned a Magnavox Odyssey gaming system; the favorite parts of the sites I've managed don't exist anymore.) Second, Bill Cosby was the pitchman, which even as a kid struck me as curious. In the clip above, Poundcake Coz clearly doesn't know a thing about the machine he is selling from any particularly technical or user based standpoint, instead making a pitch based on purely on his celebrity and on claims about the machine's low cost.

Lastly, the thing about the TI-99/4a was that it talked. I remember staying late up into the night making the thing curse, to the endless amusement of friends, family, the dog. It shocking that the thing could speak; It was articulate, not exactly