Codes We Live By - Alex Klein

What do exploding Macbooks, rap music, and ancient cave paintings have in common? It all began with a challenge from Alex's 7 year old cousin: build me a computer anyone can make, as simple and fun as Lego. A year later, thousands worldwide raised $1.5 million to make it real.

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Alex Klein

What do exploding Macbooks, rap music, and ancient cave paintings have in common? It all began with a challenge from Alex’s 7 year old cousin: build me a computer anyone can make, as simple and fun as Lego. A year later, thousands worldwide raised $1.5 million to make it real. Kano cofounder Alex Klein tells the story, with codes and the computer arts.

The Kano kit has since been built and reimagined by young people around the world, from Seattle to Sierra Leone. It’s the most crowdfunded learning invention ever, and gives you the power to build a computer, a speaker, games, music, and more.

Alex is Kano's Chief Product Officer and storyteller. His writing on society, technology, cults and communists has appeared in Newsweek, New York Magazine, The Nation, The New Republic, The Times of London, BuzzFeed, and inside the backpacks of girls he liked back in middle- school. He loves words that play and images that stay, in the mind and over time. He also did graphic design for the Lincoln Center, and has been kicked off several improv stages in and around it.

Take the red pill. Wu Tang is forever.