Virtual Memories Show 686:
Halstead York
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“The core Hampshire experience was figuring out how to do things for myself and figuring out how to excite other people about what I wanted to do.”
It’s time for the first installment of The Hampshire Tapes! Halstead York (F88) joins the show to talk about his experience at Hampshire College, how the spirit of the school and its grand experiment of student-driven education has stuck with him all these years, how the school’s structure taught him how to pitch projects, how the cover of an unstructured “hippie-trippy” college (my words) masked intense competitiveness and the need to be a self-starter, how reflecting on his time there has helped him maintain his techno-utopianism, and plenty more. Give it a listen!
“It’s amazing how much Hampshire prepared me — in stark terms — for what I would actually be doing for a lot of my career, which was pitching.”
“With interns from Hampshire, there was no middle-ground: you would either get absolute morons that thought they were geniuses, or some of the most self-possessed, thoughtful, intelligent people I ever worked with.”
“Hampshire’s experiment is a worthwhile alternative education structure. It provided a unique take on how you should approach higher education, and what a degree should mean.”
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!
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About our Guest
Halstead York is a technology product consultant and co-host of The Inflection Cut podcast. He has worked at the crossroads of media and technology for over a quarter of a century. In 1994 he took a wrong turn while trying to get a feature film edited and accidentally co-founded Journeyman, a pioneering services company specializing in digital media production and integration. Over the years, he has worked with Sony, Intel, and Microsoft as a media consultant, as well as Lightstorm Entertainment, Nike, and Hasbro, doing software development and integration.
Halstead’s lifelong passion for media and its relationship with culture has lead him to teach media studies at Portland State University and the American Film Institute, and create media programs for Portland Community College and The Northwest Academy. He watches too many movies and plays too many video games for a man of his quickly advancing age, and hopes that he’ll figure out what he wants to be when he grows up before his AARP card arrives.
Follow Halstead on Letterboxd, Bluesky and Instagram, and subscribe to The Inflection Cut podcast.
Also, he may kill me for posting this, but here’s a pic of Halstead (2nd from right) & other Hampshire pals (yes, that’s me on the far left), c.1990-91:
Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded remotely via Zencastr. I used a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Halstead by someone else. It’s on my instagram.