Hello. My name is Finn Brunton and I’m an assistant professor at NYU Steinhardt’s Department of Media, Culture, and Communication (CV). I work on the history and theory of digital media technologies, with a focus on adoption: how computing and networking machinery gets adapted, abused, modified, hacked, and transformed. I want to understand how we can use digital technologies to build a more equitable, just, decentralized, experimental and interesting society.

Everything I’ve written // Talks, workshops, presentations // Teaching and syllabi

You can contact me at f at finnb dot net, using my public key to encrypt (or join me at keybase.io/finnb).

Right now I’m wrapping up a book with Helen Nissenbaum about obfuscation, privacy protection, and activism (MIT Press, fall 2015), and researching a book about cryptocurrencies and digital money. I’m working on articles about blockchain institutions and crypto anarchism, Dwarf Fortress, a marvelous forgotten user interface experiment from the ’80s, and the history of extropy.

Aside from work: My sister Tess makes brilliant comics. A selfie with Sofía Bohtlingk’s amazing sculpture Dos personas. I love camping and running in mountains, forests, and deserts; the red-tailed hawks that live in my neighborhood; listening to weird daydream music people post on Soundcloud; and many other things. ☀