andrewander

manifesto

// formative meandering: chicago / canberra / rochester / papua new guinea
work
ux_research: bold insight — chicago / new york
fulbright: cusco → lima
peace_corps: panama
education
ba: anthropology + linguistics — uchicago
phd: linguistic anthropology — umich
// 1. the universe expands faster than you do
// the gap between what's done and what feels like enough is permanent
// 2. wander is the method
// maintain contact with many fragments of self at once
// 3. work must survive the circumstances
// while conditions are not ideal the work does not wait
// 4. forcing functions mitigate paralysis
// if paralyzed enact bias for action
// 5. flight from self is an open variable
// recognize both nourishment and avoidance at once

beats

artifacts

I got deep into Claude Code in Feb 2026. Suddenly I lived in the terminal; Visual Studio Code, Codex, and GitHub repos filled every spare moment. Creative ideas had wandered around with me for years. Suddenly I had the tools to bring them to life.

The whole thing stank of anti-human, but I got hooked. The fun is in learning to wield the tools. The outcomes matter less. The tinkering is the true payoff.

I've got a growing list of little projects spun up on the wings of coding agents. Check some out below.

    assemblages

    In grad school I got deep into face-to-face interaction, which eventually led me to work with athletes in extreme environments.

    I did ethnography with high-altitude long-distance runners in the Andes Mountains, huffing thin air thousands of meters above sea level.

    Then I did videographic analyses with youth Olympic weightlifters at sea-level, and even competed to understand the heat of competition myself.

    Now I do UX research across the world to see how people grapple with emerging technologies.

    Some papers and thought experiments from my past and current lives are below.

    Personal Records and Trans-individual Practice

    Body Scaffolding

    Performance Actual and Possible