About

I grew up in Chicago, not far from Wrigley Field. It tended to be cold. After graduating from high school, I moved west to California to begin an undergraduate degree at Pomona College. In January of my freshman year, set within the context of my profound (and, spoiler-alert, rather absent these days) technophilia and inexplicable fascination with “visual information,” I encountered the idea to create an augmented reality collaboration tool. It quickly turned into an obsession. I read papers on topics ranging from grid cells to creativity assistance tools. Many stars aligned and, in April of my freshman year, I elected to take a leave of absence and pursue the idea full-time as a startup. I moved to Silicon Valley and got to work. My technophilia was in full force during that period; simply reflecting on the fact of my new residence and new endeavor was sufficient to induce butterflies and, sometimes, chills. The idea morphed over time into a grand scale attempt to “augment intelligence” by building visuospatial representations of thought. It’s known that human spatial memory is superior to semantic memory, and so we sought to create a 3D language which would simultaneously possess the semantic expressiveness of natural language, and be inherently visuospatial. Therefore, the thought went, if a user were to use virtual/augmented reality to interact with a document composed in that language, they would form a spatial memory of the content instead of/in addition to a semantic memory, thereby increasing retention. We also hypothesized an augmentation of working memory would occur as well. For reasons I’ll maybe explore elsewhere and another time, I underwent a fairly abrupt philosophical transformation: I became deeply disillusioned with the idea of intelligence augmentation, and grew quite sour towards the technology world (adios, technophilia).

Partially in light of that, I ultimately chose to halt work on the project. As a sort of intellectual finale, I gave a TEDx describing the idea, and promptly stopped spending time on it thereafter. I spent the next six months studying introductory neuroscience on my own. The gemstone of that learning process was a spectacular and shining class on Coursera, Medical Neuroscience. I don't actually recall why I started it, but it turned out to be a hell of a good decision. I spent 12 weeks on the course and exited with ~380 pages of study guide. During those three months, I’d also become joyfully aware that I’d had a long-dormant creative side, and it was waking up loudly and brightly. I picked up piano again, and worked on original compositions daily. I started writing poetry, and poetry/essay fusions. Carrying over from my work on visuospatial language, the concept of metaphor pervaded the creative exploration, particularly in my poetry. That three-month period was, for reasons I don’t fully understand, the best three months of my life. I woke up at 6am every day, walked a mile to my coffee shop, read for an hour, then spent 6-8 hours studying, followed by a workout, followed most days by socialization. The neuroscience was a pure pursuit I enjoyed for itself in addition to its relevance to humanity. The creativity was, for lack of a better word, eruptive. What distinctly characterized that period over any other I can remember was how much beauty I sensed in the world. I remember a close friend using “superlative” as an adjective to describe me; not in the sense of “Avery is the best,” but in the sense of “Avery has a tendency to describe things as being the best.” I just couldn’t help but sense sublimity around me, be it sensory, social, or abstract. It was also an intensely contemplative period. It was the best I’ve ever been, and the best I’ve ever felt. I felt simultaneously five years old and fifty years old: the 5yo was the explorer with an easy time finding curiosities and sublimities, and the 50yo was the contemplative with an introspective and penchant for gratitude.

In month ~3 or so of my neuroscience course and general happy-fest, someone set up a meeting for me because they thought I knew something about neurotechnology; to say I “knew something about neurotechnology” was somewhere between extremely generous and patently false. I had a week before the meeting, so I binged ~30 episodes of the Neural Implant Podcast and became passingly conversational in the topic. I then began reading neurotechnology papers, and writing on the topic as well, always learning. You can, for instance, see here the first thing I ever wrote about neurotechnology. When I read it now, I sense a breathless enthusiasm for life, knowledge, and humanity that comes in more sparing doses these days; call me jaded, or something. Six months into my neuroscience studies, I wound up with the remarkably serendipitous opportunity to begin working as a venture capitalist, exclusively focusing on early-stage neurotechnology. I spent just shy of two years in that role at the wonderful Loup Ventures.

Venture capital never felt like a calling – rather, I was (am) someone who knows something about, supports the causes of, likes to contemplate, and thoroughly enjoys helping people in the field of neurotechnology. Something else I ought to say about neurotechnology is that it’s intimately related to fundamental philosophical questions and to humanity in general, two things towards which I find myself rather biologically predisposed (i.e., transcending/independent of rational considerations). I tend not to actively think about that fact as I prance through the day-to-day existence of Avery, but a little contemplation brings it right back around. As the neurotechnology thread of my life has unfolded, as has the creative one. More music, more poetry, an essay or two, bigger projects, and generally a desire to be around people who possess creative inspiration and talent. In the background, too, has been the unfolding presence of my armchair philosophy. The Bay Area, where I had been living up until summer 2019, was something of a creative desert; or at least, the creativity in the Bay really didn’t seem to exist at scale independently of technology. People in the Bay are creative, but it’s almost always tied to tech. I didn’t love that. So, for that and a number of other reasons, I wound up moving to New York, which is where I now reside—you know, amongst all the chaos and smells and Pollockian sensory stimulation and whatnot.

Imagine an individual’s life as a thread, wrapped around physical objects and people. New York, then, is characterized as a befuddling-ly intermixed tapestry of such threads. Threads you never thought might intermix somehow do, and they do so elegantly. New York is a place for threads of analysis, and it's a place for threads of creation. I moved to New York to embody the five year old and fifty year old. The five year old experiences, and the fifty year old thinks. Welcome to my site.

[An edit for the pandemic]

The latest update to my bio is that, well, there’s a pandemic. I’ve temporarily relocated to Chicago with plans to return to New York pending quasi-reestablishment of social normalcy. I’m now working independently as a consultant, helping companies in neurotechnology and biotechnology tell their stories. I’m also working on a novel. Says every writer ever. But still, I am. It’s about nihilism and oceans.

[A subsequent edit four years years later, September 2024]

Alright, the updates in short-form: that pandemic-era novel never came together, alas. Anyhow, I’ve pretty much gotten over the nihilism phase. New horizons abound! I got (very) into meditation, I dealt with a chronic health crisis, I moved back to New York and more recently have done the ‘ol bop-around-for-a-bit. This particular update comes as I’m about to launch a newsletter about creative intersections of art, invention, and the meditative process. (That’s one of 30 or so possible taglines I came up with today. Subject to change.) I’m currently writing a meditation book, with which the newsletter is associated. I’ve changed my LinkedIn profile like, 10 times in the last four years.