Selected Essays
Standards Make the World [Summer of Protocols]
Amateur Technology Series [Substack] ➟
Unleash the Amateurs: Lessons from the Early Days of Radio [Make: Magazine]
Equipment Supply Shocks [science better]
Institutes Ad Infinitum [science better]
The Hollywood Analogy [science better]
Here’s How to Accelerate Discoveries to Help Our Planet (w/ Robert Downey Jr) [Fast Company]
Making a Scene [science better]
Science in the Making [science better]
Open Grant Proposals [Common Place — Knowledge Futures Group]
Consider the Experiment [science better]
Science Angels [science better]
True Believers [science better]
Fixing the Back Burner [science better]
The Science Preface [science better]
This is an Experiment [Medium]
Platform Philanthropy (Part 1) [Medium]
Tech Is Finally Learning How to Save the Planet [OneZero]
Planet-Saving Robots? Robert Downey Jr. Is on to Something? [WIRED}
A Case for Ocean Exploration [Testimony to House Subcommittee on Environment]
A New Golden Age for Exploration [National Geographic/Open Explorer Journal]
Creating a League of Citizen Scientists for the Ocean [Open Explorer Journal]
Towards an Internet of Living Things [Open Explorer Journal]
Science Wants to be Open [Open Explorer Journal]
We Only Conserve What We Love [Virgin]
Technology Gone Wild [WIRED]
How Regular People Can Help Shape Science [TED]
When Bad Things Happen to Good Robots [Backchannel]
Funding Curiosity - [Medium]
The Weird, Wild World of Citizen Science is Already Here [WIRED]
Makers are the New Explorers of the Universe [MAKE:]
Podcast Interviews
Talks/Videos
Let’s Protect the Oceans like National Parks [TED]
Exploration is Accessible to Anyone [National Geographic]
My Underwater Robot [TED]
Book
Zero to Maker — A few years ago, my friend Eric Stackpole and I started building an underwater robot in his garage. We were searching for treasure in an underwater cave. Zero to Maker is the story of how I went from unskilled beginner to creating a pioneering underwater drone company, and the lessons learned along the way. The references and stories are dated now (the tools and companies evolved), but the book serves as a good piece of history for the project and the adventure.