a world defined not by production but by communication, not by objects but by images, representations of things take precedence over the things themselves. Everything is mediated. We become, whether we realize it or not, simulated beings experiencing simulated events in a simulated environment.

Every new medium creates a new environment. As we adapt to the environment, it shapes our perceptions and thoughts, our relationships with others, even our sense of self.

With digitization, communication has lost its human scale.

There are no bodies online, but there are myriad presences. With everyone pressing their virtual flesh on everyone else all the time, the communicative life becomes more extensive, and more oppressive, than it is in even the most densely populated of cities. Simmel’s description of the “psychological conditions” of the metropolis—“the rapid telesco

When the truth gets hazy, tyrants get to define what’s true. The irony here is sharp. Artificial intelligence, perhaps humanity’s greatest monument to logical thinking, may trigger a revolution in perception that overthrows the shared values of reason and rationality we inherited from the Enlightenment.

“We imagine most things before we experience them,” and our preconceptions “govern deeply the whole process of perception.”

Under the act, telecommunications companies were required to operate as “common carriers,” a legal term borrowed from the transportation business. Early in the industrial age, countries recognized that shipping firms were economic linchpins—many other businesses depended on their services—and as a result wielded enormous power over commerce and tra

A computer network exists to maximize the speed of data transfer and processing, to shorten the delay between input and output. The more we rely on computers to mediate what we say and see and think about, the more we have to adapt our thought, speech, and behavior to their characteristics and requirements.

In 1919, Lippmann wrote a despairing essay in the Atlantic Monthly titled “The Basic Problem of Democracy.” Democracy’s founding ideal—that of a well-informed citizenry capable of making reasoned judgments about national problems and plans—had come into being in a much simpler time, he argued, when most concerns were local and people had direct exp