The elephant in the room is the ruin of the elephant.
Like it or not, elephants are politically incorrect. Like the proverbial elephant in the room, the killing of elephants is something we know about, but would rather deny that the problem exists. The elephant problem is largely ignored for three reasons: African elephants are not found in America. They’re African, so the American perception is: […]
The fishy thing about Scale
I recently posted a video I produced of The Peconic Land Trust’s local food series called “Long Island Grown”. I came away from editing these conversations with local farmers and producers feeling optimistic about the future. That future, it seems to me, hinges on families building their lives, and staying together here on Long Island’s […]
Swimming in fiction’s deep sea
You’ve been writing for years. Then, one gorgeous summer night, you decide to commit to a writing life. You have floated in the sea of fiction, but now you want to compete with the best. So you work out. You build your strength for novel swimming. You hone your legs, abs, arms, and shoulders; the […]
Sharing and the Privacy Trap.
You know how frustrating it is. You post an incomplete Tweet, or send a Facebook post without that photograph…or email someone with the attachment left off. It’s happened to everyone. We all need the freedom to check our drafts before pinning them to the public notice boards. We also have the right to NOT broadcast […]
A corrected trajectory.
At the beginning of the year I published my blog on what was trending in 2015. If you were following me then, you might recall that these were my predictions on music, social media, smartphones and cyber-security. (All linked in some way to my book, The Faces in the Rain.) I was thinking about how […]
That intuitive space
Letter #14: Managing space is something we all do. We exist in three dimensions, and, as sentient creatures we want to handle physical space in a way that suits us. While birds fly and build nests, we decorate homes, drive in traffic, and move in buildings where space has been well or poorly considered. […]
The power of watching: Shifting from me-watch to them-watch
Geoffrey Wells Letter #13: On Friday, the world’s largest company, Apple, released its new product–a watch. And well, it’s not only a watch. It’s well-connected, although the analog watch still has one advantage; it works without an iPhone. Samsung also released its new watch. No one is sure that these devices are going to take hold […]
Privacy: It’s personal. (Don’t read this!)
Geoffrey Wells Letter #12: I continue to explore the facets of privacy. It is a meme on the Internet today, and it is mutating from the embryo of the word private. The word is stealing DNA from the words, personal, confidential, secrets and identity. They are all closely related, though the distinction is important. There’s […]
Privacy: Precious and/or destructive choices
Geoffrey Wells letter #11: I start with a request: Listen to this Ethiopian jazz while reading the rest of this blog. Don’t ask me to explain why the music adds poignancy to the subject matter of privacy, except I will say that this subject seems to strike deep notes in the soul. (…and thanks to @worldisafrica […]
Geoffrey Wells Letter #9: Goals worth earning, owning and sharing
The relentless thing about achieving a goal is that once you get there, you have to hang on to it. Otherwise, what’s the point? Can you say that you have achieved a goal, if you haven’t figured out how to keep it? Yet, the skills and talent it takes to reach the milestone of just […]
Geoffrey Wells Letter #8: Nina, Nelson and never again.
Recently, I’ve been hearing the same song. Everywhere, sung by a wide array of different artists. Odd. Because it’s like someone has put a spell on me. More odd, or odder, because, “I put a spell on you” is the song I hear, and every time, I think about Nina Simone–though the song was written by Jay […]
Geoffrey Wells’ Weekly Letter #5: Trust and the paradox of sharing.
Happy Valentine’s Day. If we trust the sharing economy, and are creative beings, then our need for privacy is at odds with our need to share. The creative process is impossible without time to think, to try options, to fail, to try again, and only when we are completely satisfied–only then–should we be free to […]
Geoffrey Wells’ Weekly letter.
Writing about (in no particular order) Privacy, Music, Elephants & Cybersecurity Privacy: When people think about privacy on the Internet, they come to question the concept of TRUST. Although the number-crunchers and propeller-heads want to think that commerce is “just business”, in fact it only succeeds because there is an element of trust. Well, Ed Snowden changed that. […]
Biography ~ The early years
Geoffrey Wells was born in the gold mining town of Welkom, in South Africa. The Wells family moved to various mines in South Africa and Ghana as a result of his father’s consulting work as a mining engineer and contractor in the field of shaft sinking and tunneling. When he was a young teenager, […]
