Ford, Paul
After archiving my late father I decided it was time to put it all together. Very much a work in progress. But also let's go.
Ftrain.com is the personal website and archive (1997–) of Paul Ford (1974–): a Brooklyn, New York, father and husband (from West Chester, Pennsylvania)—a highly intentional, self-important, widely-published, national-award-winning magazine essayist and journalist (dozens of publications), often-anthologized and also a novelist (Plume/Penguin), editor (Harper's Magazine [long before the odious letter]); an early Internet self-publisher; a web technologist and coder, with expertise around content-as-data; a lapsed (mainstream) Presbyterian, now a deep believer in the eventual anthropocene discontinuity; a well-regarded technology industry analyst and critic; an accidental tech entrepreneur and co-founder (but later highly intentional); an ungrateful recipient, when young, of much philanthropy, but later an awkward philanthropist, esp. for: technology access, food security, public climate change data, Lebanese orphanages, and quixotic cooperative publishing projects; relatedly an unintentional expert in class in America, having been in lots; a former college instructor lecturing to classes in America; an offensively frequent podcast host and/or guest; less frequently doing NPRish stuff; a semi-frequent public speaker at many conferences and institutions; an occasional advisor to many businesses, governments, universities, and community-based-organizations; a former archivist and magazine editor; a CMS programmer; a bureaucracy and standards enjoyer; often a columnist; too capitalist in the leftist space but too progressive for capitalist spaces but violently anti-centrist; pink, large; an empathist and relatedly a consultant; trusting to the pt. of paranoia and naïve about intentions; but let's be clear he's doing this out of self-interest; a city cyclist and fan of South Brooklyn, but fond of the bus; a reluctant thought leader; his litany of failure somehow culminating in pathological paragraphism. A product of his time and geography yet within many limitations hoping to be of real service. The site's name: When I was 22 I would stand on the roof of my apartment at Smith & 9th St. in Brooklyn and watch the elevated MTA F-train go back and forth, and wonder, Where will I go? The answer: Back and forth.
“I have much to learn.”
Photo © 2002 Christa Neu.
2025, by Rich Ziade.