Around a year ago (January 27, 2025) I got an email out of the blue from Raaghav Pandya, introducing himself as a scholar working at intersections of STEM, creativity, makerspaces, South Asian pedagogical traditions, and youth wellbeing, and seeking to connect. I was intrigued and replied and thus began a conversation that has continued for the past year, over zoom, a couple of times in person. And, in short, it has been great fun. It became clear right from the start that there were many overlaps in our interests and yet we brought somewhat different sensibilities to these shared interests. Moreover, our conversations never stick to the agenda (not that we ever really had one). We would start with a question about teaching or creativity and end up somewhere entirely unexpected: a Bollywood film, a Borges short story, a scene from The Wire, Euler’s identity.

It also became clear that we needed to find a way of taking these conversations to the next level—to maybe write them down, and share these thoughts with the wider world. And now we have.

Welcome to hyperlinked.us

hyperlinked.us is a collection of essays that explores the unexpected connections between culture, technology, and learning. Each chapter begins with a thread (a film, a philosopher, a mathematical idea) but follow it far enough and you end up somewhere you did not expect, like clicking through hyperlinks on the web. We are both academics trained to stay in our lanes, but what drew us together was a shared refusal to do so. Science and philosophy. Mathematics and film. The rigor of research and the messiness of wonder.

This is the beginning and we hope to have regular pieces to share in the weeks and months to come. We have no idea where this is going to end up, but for now, give yourself a moment to go down the rabbit hole that is hyperlinked.us

A few words about the design of the site, which is inspired by the tradition of fine book typography. We wanted the site to focus on the reading experience, hence the palette is strictly black and white, letting the words do the work. The flourishes are all typographic: a bold serif drop cap opens each chapter, with the first line set in small caps, easing the reader into the text the way a printed book would. Fleurons and ornamental marks (the ? on section breaks, the ? endmark, the quiet ? above each chapter title) are borrowed from centuries of print design, where printers used these dingbats to signal transitions without interrupting the reading experience. Even the Table of Contents is styled more like the front matter of a book than a blog index. The goal was restraint: every embellishment earns its place, and nothing competes with the writing itself. Incidentally, creating that particular design, that mood was was our first exploration of using Claude Code to design a wordpress site. We hope you will enjoy the design as much as the essays.