I write to grab the world as it grows beneath my feet. It’s true that the world is shrinking as global communication technologies put people, places, and ideas within reach. But the world is also growing, in depth and breadth, thanks to these same technologies. If I follow the thread of any given search, I’m likely to uncover some new category of human activity. It may only be new to me: an ancient idea suddenly made discoverable by the internet. But a large chunk of the growing world consists of things that were impossible before Moore’s Law and the transformative power of global collaboration enabled them: from personalized medicine, to the Higgs Boson, to the emerging world of artificial intelligence. The speed at which ideas reproduce and proliferate poses a problem for those of us with infinite curiosity: the world keeps growing, but my arms stay the same size.

I have always found the world’s possibility space paralyzingly wide. It turns out there is no career path wherein one can play professional baseball, live with bonobos in the wild and on an international space station, invent the next big thing, and serve two terms as President. This is disappointing. But in writing a new play, I can grab a piece of the world and squeeze it for awhile. I’m in the way technology is changing the way we live, so in Foresight I wrote about a technologist fighting death with software. I’m interested in baseball and the economics of moral decision making, so in Value Over Replacement, I considered a ballplayer faced with taking performance enhancing drugs or giving up his sense of purpose. To write drama is to play dress-up for awhile, wearing a fictional character's triumphs and challenges, and listening for the way they resonate with your own. I try to grab the world one character at a time, to find some depth amidst the exponential breadth, and to remember that shiny new toys are never as interesting as the people who use them.