About
Ribbonfarm.com is a blog about seeing things with different eyes (that’s the “refactored perception” bit), written by me, Venkatesh Rao. The topics range from philosophy, art and sociology to business, innovation and technology. I post about once a week, and pieces are usually at least a thousand words long. I started writing the blog on July 4th, 2007 (significance somewhat intended). I am also working on a book on the interplay of timing and decision-making, tentatively titled Tempo. I live in Arlington, VA, with my wife and two cats. All the views expressed on this site are mine alone and do not reflect the views of my employer (Xerox).
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Press
Ribbonfarm has been featured on Slashdot and the New York Times.
The Elevator Pitch
I work at the Xerox Innovation Group, where I lead technology projects that aim to invent the future of documents and information work. My primary project at the moment is trailmeme.com, a research beta technology platform that aims to reinvent publishing by allowing you to blaze and follow trails through Web content.
Before I came to Xerox, I spent 2.5 years as a postdoc at Cornell, in Raff D’Andrea’s robotics research group. My work at Cornell was on Air Force command and control models for future battlefields. Between 1997-2003, I was at the University of Michigan, working on my PhD, which was on aircraft and spacecraft formation dynamics, with Pierre Kabamba.
My home discipline is systems and control theory, but I tend to draw from all the decision sciences, including OR and AI, for inspiration and ideas.
I took a year off from graduate school, in 2000-2001, to work at a pioneering online community, Sulekha.com. I was among the first employees. There I worked on social media before the term was invented.
About the name…
The name ribbonfarm refers to the ribbon farms of 18th century Detroit — strips of lands 2-3 miles long, each with 2-300 yards along the Detroit river waterfront — that the then governor invented to resolve water disputes. I thought it was a great metaphor for a blog trying to get its thin slice of attention from the great river of eyeballs that is the Web. Here is a picture (courtesy, Detroit Public Library) of an 1818 map of Detroit that shows the ribbon farms.
About the tag-line
By experiments in refactored perceptions I mean changing how I see the world by trying to rewire the software in my head through writing. My little geek joke.
