In 1999, which now feels like a very long time ago, I finished my PhD thesis at MIT. I had started working on it following my general exams in 1996 but promptly got very busy co-founding a company (the now defunct W3Health – a story for another day). Running a startup during the week, working on a dissertation on weekends and commuting between Boston and New York is not something I would recommend to anybody. In fact, the acknowledgments to my thesis conclude with:Most of all, I would like to...
