Welcome

This site is very under construction right now, but I figured if I don’t update my site, I’ll never get around to it.

This site is using a custom Hugo theme I made, which you can find here, along with instructions for how to use it. There is still a lot of work to be done.

About Me

I’m Maximillian Mohammed von Briesen, or Moby for short (actually, pretty much everybody calls me Moby). I live just outside of Atlanta, GA (for now). I studied Computer Science and Music Technology at Georgia Tech, and I currently work as a software engineering manager and team lead at Storj Labs.

Software development is something I got into at a very early age, and it turned out to be a fortunate hobby to pick up. My career as a developer kicked off in high school, carried on throughout college, and continues to this day. I have previously worked at Skookum, Bitpay, and Mozilla.

Most of my position in this world is due to my parents, mentors, and a small handful of people who saw reason to extend incredible opportunities to me. I am indebted to all of these people, and hope that I will have the blessing of playing a similar role in the lives of others.

While much of my life to this point has been shaped by software and technology, software development is a fairly small component of my interests. Despite what some leaders in the tech industry might say, I believe that software will only play a marginal role in solving humanity’s greatest problems. We live in a very different world now than the world of 100 or 1,000 years ago, but the patterns of greed, injustice, and the rise and fall of empires transcend those temporal boundaries.

I am not sure what my future looks like, but I am very passionate about sustainable living. Alternatives to centralized electricity, sewage, water supply, and communications are of particular interest to me. But ultimately, this is not really a question of creating new technology - technology to solve many of these problems already exists. Rather, my question is - how can we cultivate geographically-defined social and family networks with the goal of sustainability?

Sustainability is not a band-aid that can be used to repair the systemic wounds in our world. It will require a complete reshaping of life as we know it (i.e. sacrifice), and a shift in the narrative around our future. What would a world look like without centralized water, electricity, sewage, communications, or government? It’s an uncomfortable question, but an important one. The United States as we know it has only been around for a couple hundred years. But it has also been around as long as anyone can remember - us, our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents. The Ottoman Empire existed for over 600 years. The Roman Empire for more than 1,000. One way another, whether we would like to see it or not, whether it happens now or an a few centuries, we need to be thinking about what happens when everything changes.

I find that people in my life get tired rather quickly when I discuss these topics. So this website largely serves the purpose of “personal echo chamber” or “public journal”. It is my fingerprint on the internet. However, if you feel inclined to contribute or discuss in some way, I’m always open to emails at mobyvb@gmail.com.