#00 CYBER GARUDA: NOW BOARDING

a cyberpunk-ish zine from @visakanv – in this house we surf all the channels at once

Hey, it’s Visa (@visakanv).

Thinking is easy, information architecture is hard.

I’ve written a lot over the years, but a good 95% of it is all in loose scraps.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to assemble those loose scraps into something coherent and pleasing.

I’ve pieced some of those scraps together into ebooks. I released v1.0 of my first ebook, FRIENDLY AMBITIOUS NERD, earlier in March 2020. I have several other ebooks planned, which you can check out on my Gumroad page. These will probably take me a couple of years to complete.

Despite having all of these ebooks in the pipeline, and a YouTube channel to run, I’ve found myself feeling like there’s an itch I’m not scratching. And I realize it’s this: I want to be thinking big picture thoughts about technology and culture! Twitter is a slightly-too-small space to do this the way I’d like to do it. And a newsletter format will challenge me to make each piece count. (I have a habit of turning my blogs into scrapbooks, which can be somewhat useful for me, and maybe a handful of other weirdo nerds, but it’s generally not a great reader experience.)

What can you expect from this newsletter? Here are some of the things I intend to think-out-loud about, with some structure and editing:

• What can maritime Southeast Asia teach us about navigating cultural collisions?

• Can Singapore achieve a golden age in the next 50 years?

• A casual research review of how the various religions in Southeast Asia arrived and spread

• The view of China and India from Southeast Asia

• … a bunch of other things that don’t fit within these emerging theme that I’ve unintentionally built up. Broad strokes about things like identity, privacy, community, alts, threading…

• some overview-summaries of other blogs in the space, maybe

I’m not looking to do deep dives into specific companies and businesses, and I’m not looking to do a professional historian’s work either. I’m basically going to expand my current Twitter nerdposting into a larger space. If you think of my Twitter threads as sushi platters (thanks @artpi for that very sticky metaphor), this Substack is going to be me preparing larger and more complex dishes.

Yeah, I’m mixing my metaphors all over the place, in this house we surf all the channels at once.

The first email will be an exploration + explanation of the CYBER GARUDA name, which itself will set the tone for the subsequent emails.

See you soon,

Visa

P.S: I’m also thinking out loud about this newsletter on my public Roam – you can check it out in real time here: [[CYBER GARUDA]]