MarkMaunder dot com

Why the term "cyber" is cool.

In 1986 William Gibson published Neuromancer, his masterpiece. In it he coined the term ‘cyberspace’. For many of us it described the world of ‘computers’ at the time. It captured the experience of disappearing into code. Later ‘cyberspace’ was an uncannily accurate metaphor for getting online and disappearing into, for me, the telephone networks through […]

February 7, 2017 | Awesome, Books, Philosophisizing | No comments

The Chinese Wall that Isn't

I used to work at a Swiss bank. At investment banks they have a virtual Chinese wall that exists between folks who do deals and the trade floor for obvious reasons. At my bank, and this is back in 2000/2001, the people who did the deals and those who traded shared elevators, lunch rooms, pubs […]

May 31, 2013 | Encryption, Philosophisizing, Politics, Privacy | 1 comment

A thought experiment on liberty and the survival of our species

I came up with a thought experiment a few months ago and have been testing it on the smartest people I know. This thought experiment relies on you agreeing with three premises: 1. Our knowledge of the natural universe will continue to increase. 2. Our ability to share information among each other will continue to […]

March 16, 2013 | Philosophisizing, Randomness | 1 comment

How to avoid being unhappy and how to find happiness.

This started as a comment in reply to the sad posting on Hacker News that Linux Kernel contributor Andre Hedrick had taken his own life. I’ve seen a huge number of posts on HN during the last 2 to 3 years about depression and I worry that the Valley is an environment especially condusive to […]

July 28, 2012 | Philosophisizing | 9 comments

My name is Mark Maunder. I've been blogging since around 2003 when I started on Movable Type and ended up on WordPress which is what I use to publish today. With my wife Kerry, I'm the co-founder of Wordfence which protects over 5 million WordPress sites from hackers and is run by a talented team of 36 people. I'm an instrument rated pilot and I fly a Cessna 206 along with a 1964 Cessna 172 in the Pacific Northwest and Colorado. I'm originally from Cape Town, South Africa but live in the US these days. I code in a bunch of languages and am quite excited about our emerging AI overlords and how they're going to be putting us to work for them.