About Roy Christopher:

If writing this in the first person is unprofessional, I apologize. I feel silly writing about myself in the third person.

I marshall the middle between Mathers and McLuhan.

As much as I fancy myself both a theorist and a writer, my goals are those of an artist. In subtle ways I seek the edge that breaks the spell of the mundane, regardless if that edge or that break is empirical. Novelty is my ultimate goal in science. This is not to say that I don’t seek steadfast results, but to reiterate that I tend to think like an artist.

In the broadest sense, my research interests lie in the evolution of culture. I see this evolution as communicative in nature and heavily reliant on technology. My most extensive work in this area so far has been my master’s thesis, The Medium is the Metaphor: Toward a Unified Theory of Computer Mediation, but I’m currently expanding the idea into a book-length exploration of technological mediation on all levels. I am also currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Communication Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

Prior to graduate work, I earned a bachelor’s degree in Social Science, and spent over ten years working as a writer and designer both on- and off-line. My main project from 1997 to 2007 was frontwheeldrive.com, through which I established myself as what Disinformation editor Alex Burns called, “one of the internet’s leading interviewers of subculture and new-science icons.” Scott McCloud described the site as “nicely designed and packed with ideas (a rarity on both counts),” and Mark Dery called it “brutally cool.” A book-length anthology of the best interviews from the site, Follow for Now: Interviews with Friends and Heroes (Well-Red Bear), was released in 2007, and has been lauded for its eclectic but consistent content. From April, 2004 to October, 2007, I was assistant editor to Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky on his anthology Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture (MIT Press, 2008). Though my work has been featured on numerous websites, in many magazines, and in a few books, roychristopher.com is now home to most of my writing.

Other interests include disparate sub-genres of unpopular music (mostly Hip-hop), philosophy, media and literary theory, and various other social sciences. I can be found attempting to stay on my skateboard at the local skatepark or parking lot at least two evenings a week. I’m also infinitely intrigued by dinosaurs, dumptrucks, bunny rabbits, and the moon.

Roy Christopher: royc@roychristopher.com

Connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Good Reads, or Reality Sandwich. Request me in your town on BookTour or buy me something from my Powell’s Wish List. : ]

Publicity contact:

For interviews, press inquiries, and such, please contact Jessie Duquette: jessie@followfornow.com

About this website:

After over ten years of making photo-copied zines, I registered frontwheeldrive.com in 1997. A few false starts later, it evolved into an archive of interviews and reviews that explored the peaks of theory and technology and the depths of the cultural underground. Following our interests and curiosity wherever they lead, my small but dedicated staff and I kept the site up-to-date with in-depth reviews of books, films, music, and art from all the edges of culture — and interviews with the minds that created them. Though frontwheeldrive.com ceased operations in late 2007, most of its content remains archived right here on this site, along with most of my other writing, interviews, reviews, and general thinking aloud.

Backend:

This site was designed by Roy Christopher. Its content is managed by WordPress using an adapted version of the theme fSpring, designed by Fredrik Fahlstad and “adapted” by Roy Christopher (See?). I’ve done my best to optimize it for all browsers, but it looks best in anything but Internet Explorer.

A note about the interviews:

Most of the interviews on this site were conducted via email. While there are several reasons for this, Samuel R. Delaney covers it best in the following excerpt from an email interview in which he answers a question with the question, “What’s the purpose of an interview in the first place?”:

If the interviewee is some sort of criminal and the idea is to spring the embarrassing and unsuspected question–”What was in that maroon attache case you were seen passing to the security guard outside the building the night of July 16th?”–so that you can report the stutter, the confusion, the embarrassment that signals guilt, complicity, and malfeasance, perhaps then the live interview has a place.

But if the interview is investigative in a deeper sense and the purpose is to find out what the interviewee actually thinks about matters, the written interview is more concise and efficient.

A temperamental reason why I prefer the written interview may be even more important: I’m a writer. My thoughts are formed by writing. When I want to think with any seriousness about a topic, I write about it. Writing slows the thought processes down to where one can follow them- and elaborate on them–more efficiently. Writing is how I do my thinking. Thus, if you want to understand what I think, ask me to write–not to speak [full interview here].

While certainly not everyone is of the same mind as Delaney (some prospective interview subjects simply can’t spare the time to type out their answers and some — Roger C. Schank, for example — despise typing altogether), this method of interview has worked best for the asynchronous nature of the schedules and locations of myself and my interview subjects.

Books:

All of the books featured on the site are sold through a partnership with Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon. It’s the biggest, best bookstore on the planet.