Ryan O’Shea runs the business side of Grindhouse Wetware, a Pittsburgh collective of programmers, engineers, and enthusiasts working towards body augmentation using safe, affordable, and open-source technologies. Started in 2012 by a group of colleagues through the biohack.me forums, Grindhouse has rapidly grown into a key figure in the biohacking movement and gained a great…
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Everything I Know, I Learned from My Nintendo
Lessons learned from a generation raised with one finger on the reset button. If you’re like me (read: grew up in the 80s, kind of nerdy, liked technology, found friends exhausting), then odds are you had one or more of a Nintendo, Sega, Atari, ColecoVision, or PC around the house as a kid. For many…
I remember…
I remember not being connected. I remember not hearing a ping every 30 seconds, conversations without distractions and paying attention to those in my physical presence. I remember silence. I remember getting lost and being found, making plans to have friends around. I remember trivial arguments that lasted hours and learning – not through Google,…
Artificial Speculation
Introduction Scanning is a tool used in the foresight practice to uncover weak signals that herald shifts within different industries, behavioural changes, and other emerging movements that will shape the future. While this tool nets fruitful inspiration for organizations around the world, typically these exercises are limited to a few years out and within fairly…
Be Yourselves: Balancing Your Business Style
I’ve never been much of a salesman. Raised on a farm, my father instilled me with fairly humble values and a penchant for letting my work speak for itself. But my father never raised a boy intent on operating in an office environment and whether I’m pitching to a prospective client or trying to persuade…
Technology’s Shadow
How exactly does one “balance” technology? What is there to balance? More importantly, what would one even balance against? As a man of rigor, I performed an exhaustive, five minute scouring of the internet and as far as I can tell, there is no antonym for the word “technology”…and that’s just weird. If we trust…
Building a Better Man: The Corporate Redesign
I recently completed a series of articles analyzing how we structure and operate businesses. In these four articles, I analyzed corporations at various stages of life – infancy, youth, adulthood and old age – by taking the corporate personhood metaphor far more literal than it should ever be taken. In doing so, I wanted to…
Death to the Corporation
This is the fourth in a series (see the first, second and third) of articles analysing corporate personhood and the standards to which we hold corporations. Since Dartmouth v. Woodward in 1819, private corporations have been viewed as having many of the same rights as you or I, prompting one to look at the state…
Death and Rebirth of the Music Industry
The old-crown of the music industry are currently on their knees and may I be one of many to say, it’s about bloody well time. These relics of a bygone era have held back the industry for decades from both a creative standpoint and in terms of technological innovation. Struggling to cling onto outdated business…
Too Far Ahead of the Curve
One would need an ungodly number of fingers and toes to count the times that a ground-breaking new technology has been brought to life as an inferior product and rightly, has catastrophically failed in-market. It never ceases to amaze me how many brilliant technologies are so terribly fumbled by organizations, only to be picked up…
Printing Life
Article co-written with Maryam Nabavi. While Maker culture continues to emerge as a dominant force in manufacturing and consumer interests, far bigger implications of the movement are on the horizon. What happens when we begin to apply the same DIY, hacker mentality to a field as sensitive as health? How much can we accomplish? Can 3D…
Designed to Evolve
Everyone loves a good come back, right? Well not me. I was the guy who rooted for the overlord, not the underdog. Drago should have beat Rockie. Apple should have been crushed by Microsoft in the 90s. Michael Vick should have stayed incarcerated. Zombies should just stay dead. See, I’m not that impressed by comebacks…
Leading the Leaderless
Traditional business structures are shifting (albeit at a snail’s pace… but I digress, that’s another article entirely). Organizations are becoming increasingly flat, chains of command blurred, and reporting, collaboration and operational structures more dynamic and ad-hoc. As organizations strive to develop more open and creative working environments, the traditional shackles of hierarchical management are being…
Paging Doctor R2
Co-Authored by Paul Hartley It is undeniable that technology-enabled devices have had a great impact upon our ability to diagnose, treat and care for the sick and infirm. However, we must be cautious to not get caught up in the flashing lights, bells, whistles and web-integrated gadgetry of it all. Many people have a dangerous penchant…
Traveling Without Moving
At the tender age of 30 (the new 20?), I’ve had the opportunity to travel more than generations prior could have ever dreamed (I’m two continents short of the full set). My parent’s generation, while definitively embracing the ability to travel, still lacked the speed, ease and affordability of travel options that exist today. Increasing…
Failure is Always an Option
“I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.” -Thomas Edison It takes a lot of internal strength to fail, or as Edison…
Forget Your Passion, Find Your Challenge!
“Be passionate about your job and you’ll never work another day in your life.” I call bullshit. Sure, this quote gives us that Hallmark warm and fuzzy feeling way down in the sub-cockles of our heart (which by the way, the word “cockles” is nothing more than an incorrect latin translation of the word chocleae,…
Mirror Mirror on the Wall
I’ve often been accused in life of being one of those do-as-I-say-no- as-I-do people, likely because I am. For the longest time, I preached to others about the importance of introspection, self-evaluation and taking time to think about your own life and the things that have happened to you. That said, I don’t think I…
Why Bother?
Why do we get out of bed in the morning? Other than the obvious typical answers – to pay rent, to stock up on vitamin D, to allow bedsores to subside – I, and many others like me, seldom take the time to really think this question through. If I’m being completely honest, I don’t…
Why is Everyone Afraid of Dating?
Here’s a crazy thought. Imagine you met someone through an online dating site. You read their profile and liked what you saw; they had all the makings of a good partner on paper, they seemed interesting, attractive and to have a lot in common with you. So, what the hell… you decide you’re going to…
Do I Have to Go to Work Today?
The frightening thing is that increasingly, the answer is becoming ‘no.’ With more and more people working from home each year, taking flex hours and even basing out of a home office… there may very soon be a day when the answer to this question is no. I recently read an article through CNN that…
Why Can’t Jobs Find Me?
Job hunting is an area very near and dear to my heart since, after an unfortunate economic climate and a revoked job offer upon my return from Thailand, I find myself back on the market. I, like so many others, find the job seeking process to be one that is painfully outdated and if I’m…