About Chris Wilson

I’m a journalist and developer in Washington, D.C., where I live with my wife, two young children, two Samoyeds, two cats, and a piano named Richie. I’ve always been drawn to serenely peaceful environments…

For my entire career in journalism (Slate, Time, etc), I’ve been interested in how computer coding can bring certain types of articles to life. When I was starting out in the late 2000s, this was still wide open territory. Across the intervening 15-plus years, it’s been a joy to help elevate computational journalism from niche wizardry to a core tool of immersive storytelling.

(I’m still available for freelancing if you’re in the mood for one-of-kind interactives—portfolio here.)

In the past three years, I’ve watched newsrooms twist themselves into knots trying to decide where they fit in the new order, watching with dismay as Gemini summarizes their hard-won information, usually without citation. For my part, I started to worry that the novel I’ve been working on for eight years now would be published—if ever—into a world when readers are not clear whether the story they’re reading is the product of a long, inglorious struggle by a human or the momentary musing of a machine.

I have one defense in that department: A 718-page manuscript composed on a blue Webster XL-500 typewriter. Say what you will about chasing aesthetics; I find that, after staring at a screen all day, compulsively toggling between windows, there’s nothing like the forced mindfulness of a machine that does one thing and prevents you from dithering over one paragraph.

The idea for Heat Signature (neé “Typewritten”) sprung from that small solace. While the model is sophisticated enough to go beyond merely confirming that a person did type the words on the page, that’s the core premise: If you want to know whether a human wrote something, start by discretely watching them write.