A Library of Pebbles
It’s funny how we adapt. I always think of the extreme—how people deal with life during a war. You’ve seen the survivors: a child with flies drinking her tears, a woman walks through a bombed market, men sip espresso in shattered cafes, shopkeepers sweep up the broken glass. Let’s face it, people need to eat, […]
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 #10: The local planet.
I’m writing this blog on the first day of spring, Friday, March 20, 2015. It’s snowing. A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees…, well, they are shivering and shaking in the ground. The fluttering and dancing in the breeze will come later. The farm stands are still shuttered for the winter. While we eat California […]
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 #7: Why done is better than not.
Hello again. This week I’ve been thinking about how, during the creative process, the elements of a project meld into a single unit, but only in the finishing stage. For years I have managed projects, from large multi-million dollar IT projects with diverse teams, to novels and small movies. My wife and I are in the […]
Geoffrey Wells’ Weekly Letter #6: Podcast, grassroots and an openness in local gov’t
Music: This week, I had the pleasure of talking to Sophocles Papavasilopoulos on a podcast of Composers at Play. On a previous post I mentioned this interesting series about composers who also perform. At my suggestion, Sophocles kindly agreed to create an episode about how writers describe music. I’ll be posting that podcast in this blog, (date […]
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 […]
Angelina
What a great portrait. Why is it that I like to write strong female characters? Growing up around three headstrong sisters and a mother who is still a tower of strength must have inspired me. Anyway thanks for his post.
Geoffrey Wells’ Weekly Letter: #4 – Solar, Trance and stolen PII
It’s been an ugly week. The ISIS barbarians who defile Islam and all human decency succeed only to make us more determined to annihilate them. And one of the weapons in our arsenal is making information transparent and accessible. Africa: So, some good news: Electric Power is coming to Africa, and it is sustainable. The irony […]
Geoffrey Wells’ Weekly Letter #3: Music, Containers and a bad Super Bowl app
Writing about music… This week I explain why I write about music, musicians and musical instruments. It’s a strange fascination, because I’m not a musician. But I did discover that I was musical. As a young teenager, I took piano lessons which, to the casual listener was an irrefutable disaster. Whether it was Moon River […]
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. […]
Trending in 2015: Jingling our bell patterns
The impact that 2015 will have on us, depending on how and where we stand in our lives, is on my mind as I prepare to launch my new thriller, THE FACES IN THE RAIN. Having written a thriller (not yet published) where Allison, my guileless heroine faces questions of identity and privacy, while being […]
Biography Part II ~ Filmmaking, Business and Politics
This blog is a continuation of my biography. Please click here for my Early Years. Telling stories: In 1973 Geoffrey Wells and his friend drove to Mozambique, and while there took a river tour to see the hippos on the Limpopo River. This was the year before Salazar’s totalitarian regime fell in Portugal. The Carnation […]
The ivory, cybercrime, terrorism trail
At a point in time, after the deaths of the thirty thousand elephants killed in 2013 has sunk in, the inevitable question surfaces: Why should the international community care about elephants? It’s not just because they are beautiful, social, caring animals. It’s because by mining the ivory from their carcasses, a vortex of violence and […]
