Hi, I'm Dorian.
I'm an independent researcher and design theorist, and I've been at this internet thing for a while.
Here you'll find things I've written, things I've made or am making, and an index of my activity elsewhere on the Web.
I'm an independent researcher and design theorist, and I've been at this internet thing for a while.
Here you'll find things I've written, things I've made or am making, and an index of my activity elsewhere on the Web.
My major project is a portfolio of software, protocols, and media I'm calling The Wholeness Stack. The germ of the project is an application server I created called Intertwingler, which is an engine for dense hypermedia. Its aim is websites that are more durable, reusable, effective, and trustworthy, both to make and to use.
Part of the Wholeness Stack—and the reason for its name—is a book project called The Nature of Software. My aim with it is to reconcile The Nature of Order—the four-volume, 2500-page magnum opus of the architect Christopher Alexander—with the craft of software development. Alexander articulates a theory of building that preserves wholeness, based on a short, simple catalogue of fundamental transformations, applied step by step. It's a topic that's even more important now that people are getting AI agents to do their coding for them. I'm writing it serialized, chapter by chapter. You're welcome to read the introduction for free.
Since Twitter is no longer recognizable, I now spout most of my banalities on BlueSky. I also have a Mastodon account which I've had since it was new, but I don't use it as much.
I have a newsletter—erstwhile on Substack, now on Buttondown—that I send out every few weeks in which I try to engage a little more thoughtfully with what's happening on and around the internet.
On this website you will find longer-form essays that consider slower-moving topics.
I have also plotted the entire thing on a timeline, all the way back to 2008.
A side effect of taking my clients' confidentiality very seriously is that I can only show off a narrow sliver of my work. Surfacing more material is an ongoing project. In the meantime:
I keep my writing for programmers separate from the main feed, to spare the rest of my audience. I also wrote about how I did that.
I sometimes talk at conferences, which I am collecting on YouTube. Here's one I like, from 2017:
I sporadically live-stream work sessions. The process is surly, sweary, and occasionally drinky. No warranties. You can find me here:
Most of the work I do involves displaying private information, so I can't really show it off. That said, the stuff you can see, by volume, is mostly boring stuff like software libraries, tools, and specifications. I'm also in the process of curating a list of selected artifacts with notes on the problem I was trying to solve and how I solved it. In the meantime, you can check out my work on GitHub.