An Albert Einstein quote: “Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times since he never gets to see or hear anything else.”
Even though on the Internet,... See more
The internet doesn’t have to demand our presence the way it currently does. It shouldn ’t be something we have to look at all time. If it wasn’t, maybe we’d finally be free to hang out. The first time I ever heard about Facebook, back in 2004, was from someone proudly declaring that she had just spent four hours using it. At the time, it was... See more
I myself write online of course and I will continue to do so but save for this essay, this latest contribution to the thousands of terabytes of jeremiads that festoon the worldwide web, I don’t have much to say about our online world anymore. I’m tired of it. Half an hour or so a day is ample time to catch up with my online community of people and... See more
There are lots of layoffs, lots of budget cuts, lots of scary articles about how little books are selling, or whatever. I’d argue, however, that we’re in a moment of recalibration. A lot of the digital world isn’t working, not just as it pertains to media. The Internet writ large isn’t as fun as it used to be. Yet there is, I think, an awareness of... See more