Misha Lepetic is a consultant and entrepreneur working at the intersection of technology, energy and social venture, with current interests in urban design and food policy. A BA in Music from Swarthmore College led to several years of professional DJing in South America, whereas an MS in Technology Management from Columbia University has resulted in less exciting but perhaps more productive pursuits. Lately, his idea of an exciting Friday night has been parsing complex compounds in classical Sanskrit. Email: [email protected]
by Misha Lepetic “What would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall?”~ Thoreau, Walking The inimitable Liam Heneghan, fellow 3QD-ista, recently posted the following idea for a sit-com: It is true that Thoreau had great misgivings about the railroad coming to Concord, and he correctly surmised that the train…
by Misha Lepetic “I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.” ~ Arthur C. Clarke Artificial intelligence has been a discomforting presence in popular consciousness since at least HAL 9000, the menacing, homicidal and eventually pathetic computer in Kubrick's adaptation…
by Misha Lepetic “And if you can't bear the thought of messing up your nice, clean soul, you'd better give up the whole idea of life, and become a saint.” ~ John Osborne, “Look Back in Anger” As the paeans for Nelson Mandela rolled in last week, observers might have been forgiven for thinking that…
by Misha Lepetic “A sphinx in search of a riddle.” ~ Truman Capote, on Andy Warhol About a month ago, following a rather dissatisfying evening, I found myself scurrying to the subway. I was crossing Astor Place in downtown Manhattan when I came across a strange scene. It was about midnight, and parked by the…
by Misha Lepetic When all is finished, the people say, “We did it ourselves.” ~ Tao Te Ching, Verse 17 What does philosophy in action look like? Casual thoughts about the discipline may be united by the cliché of the philosopher as a loner. From Archimedes berating a Roman soldier to not “disturb my circles”…
by Misha Lepetic “The whole arrangement is as cozy and comfortable as the front basement dining room of a first-class city residence.” ~ Scientific American, 1870 Is there anything that is not deserving of disruption by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs? Last week the world came to understand that in addition to pretty much everything else, high-speed…
by Misha Lepetic “Not philosophers but fret-sawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.” ~ Aldous Huxley, Brave New World As the Outlaw Edward Snowden continues to languish in the transit lounge of the Sheremetyovo International Airport, I am struck by the overall nonchalance with which the revelations of comprehensive NSA-sponsored surveillance have been…
by Misha Lepetic “People say New Yorkers can't get along. Not true. I saw two New Yorkers, complete strangers, sharing a cab. One guy took the tires and the radio; the other guy took the engine.” ~ David Letterman A few months ago, friends of mine moved to the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. The three…
by Misha Lepetic “At the end of the day, someone is going to be right.” ~Brian Williams, NBC Anchor Because terrorism in the United States is an (astonishingly) infrequent phenomenon, the April 15 bombing of the Boston Marathon demands of us to make “sense” of it. But at the same time, it is this infrequency…
by Misha Lepetic “Fish is as natural in Fulton Market as they are in their own briny element.” ~Harper's Magazine, 1867 Followers of the New York City food scene have recently been galvanized by yet another all-too-predictable brawl between, on the one hand, real estate developers and the city and, on the other, scrappy entrepreneurs…
by Misha Lepetic “Look, I am not a philosopher, I am a strategist.” ~Guy Debord What happens when a vision is so compelling that it becomes a nightmare? Is there ever a way out, let alone on the terms that the nightmare itself has set? These are oftentimes the questions that accompany any lengthier reading…
by Misha Lepetic “I never knew I had an inventive talent until phrenology told me so. I was a stranger to myself until then.” ~Thomas Edison The question of expertise is a fascinating and vexatious one. Who gets to be an expert? More accurately, who is allowed to be an expert? And what happens when…
by Misha Lepetic No subject has hitherto been so much neglected by the profession to which the author has the honour to belong. ~Higgins, The House Painter, 1841 When we move into a new home or apartment, oftentimes the first thing we do (except for setting up the stereo) is to give most every surface…
by Misha Lepetic We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.~William James I recently went to a food security panel held by Columbia University’s Earth Institute. There was, as is customary with the Earth Institute, both much to celebrate…
by Misha Lepetic All the strange things they come and go, as early warnings Stranded starfish have no place to hide ~Peter Gabriel, “Here Comes The Flood” It is entirely unsurprising that much of the post-Sandy talk around New York City has coagulated around the ideology of the technological fix. The optimism that is encoded…
by Misha Lepetic “This is what a million people looks like” ~Blood Diamond The visual and journalistic rhetoric of refugee camps, as produced and consumed by the West, follows a well-known script. Following some armed conflict and/or natural catastrophe, tens of thousands star-crossed innocents cross into a foreign land with whatever they can carry, and…
by Misha Lepetic “No one is so stubborn and dangerous as the beneficiaries of a fallen idea – they defend not the idea, but their bare life and the loot.” ~Sándor Márai One of the decided advantages enjoyed by central planning is the ability to, in the words of Captain Picard, “make it so,” and…
by Misha Lepetic Detroit turned out to be heaven, but it also turned out to be hell. ~Marvin Gaye Is Detroit alive or dead? It depends, I suppose, on your viewpoint, or what kind of attention you might be paying in the first place. In January, the New York Times previewed a brief little docu…
by Misha Lepetic Success comprises in itself the seeds of its own decline and sport is not spared by this law. ~Pierre de Coubertin As we helplessly hurtle towards the next inflammation of the Olympic Games, some notes on the effects of the Games on the built environment might be in order. The Olympics may…
by Misha Lepetic “Look – you're my best friend, so don't take this the wrong way. In twenty years, if you're still livin' here, comin' over to my house to watch the Patriots games, still workin' construction, I'll fuckin' kill you. That's not a threat; now, that's a fact.”~Good Will Hunting Culture warriors from the…