(Re)creating a techno-nationalist elite

The technologists who would rule The much-heralded AI revolution is but the latest in a series of technological revolutions originating from Silicon Valley: the integrated circuit and the personal computer, the Internet and the World Wide Web, smartphones and streaming video, search engines, online commerce, and social networks. These revolutions have made many of their creators immensely wealthy and (as has often been the case with the newly wealthy) eager to flex their muscles and acquire social and political power to match their economic power. ...

2026-01-03 · 25 min · Frank Hecker

What makes an American an American?

I push back on Joshua Treviño’s attempt to dismiss the propositions that made America America, and Americans Americans.

2024-08-07 · 14 min · Frank Hecker

Life imitates art in Taiwan

A real-life scandal for the DPP echoes a fictional one.

2023-06-18 · 1 min · Frank Hecker

Democracy with Taiwanese characteristics

A review of the Taiwanese TV series Wave Makers.

2023-05-28 · 8 min · Frank Hecker

(Almost) all politics is local

If you want to effect political change, try working in your own backyard..

2023-03-11 · 7 min · Frank Hecker

A better way to elect the Howard County Board of Education

Howard County parents and other voters deserve a way to vote for the Board of Education that truly reflects their preferences.

2023-01-28 · 15 min · Frank Hecker

Harvard considered as a long-lived biological organism

What the survival of Harvard tells us about Harvard.

2022-11-19 · 9 min · Frank Hecker

Jorie Graham is on Twitter

I find a favorite poet in an unexpected place.

2022-11-13 · 1 min · Frank Hecker

Taiwan and the geopolitical uses of lesbian romcoms

Why is the Taiwanese government funding LGBTQ films and TV series?

2022-11-05 · 7 min · Frank Hecker

Expanding the five-district Howard County Council to three members per district

Another approach to expanding the Howard County Council, still using five districts but now with three members per district.

2021-10-02 · 8 min · Frank Hecker