I often think of the Noah Smith quote: “Fifteen years ago, the internet was an escape from the real world. Now, the real world is an escape from the internet.”

We’re lost in the garden of forking memes, and the idea of linear progress along a single historical time line seems like a quaint artifact from a much simpler era. Grand visions of the future are few and far between; the pop cultural landscape is littered with post-apocalyptic dystopias. If we want to make sense of how we got here, we have to... See more

“You know...fifteen years ago, the internet was an escape from the real world. Now the real world is an escape from the internet.”