People of Long Now

James has been helping people and organizations tell their stories with technology and design for over 25 years. He has been working with Long Now since 02000, beginning with The Rosetta Project and Long Bets. More recently, he designed and built the 02021 Long Now website, and in 02023 joined Long Now full time to lead communications and design.

Previously, he spent seven years at Google, where he led design projects on Search, Material, and the Fuchsia operating system. James joined Google when the company acquired Metaweb (co-founded by Long Now co-founder Danny Hillis), where he had led design on the enormous knowledge base of people, places, and things that ultimately became Google's Knowledge Graph. He has been responsible for strategy, design, engineering, and brand for a diverse roster of clients including Applied Minds, Cartesis, Chemdex, and Sega.

James believes technology at its best helps people come to a better understanding of each other and the world we inhabit together, and his work prioritizes curiosity over certainty, agency over convenience, awareness over distraction, and the natural world over virtual ones, a set of values that deeply resonate with those of Long Now.