seeds

There is a big difference between being interested in something and being committed to something.

Committed people do what interested people won’t.

My latest column at The New Yorker is about the revenge of homepages: Why we're turning toward individual websites as the platform era of the internet continues to disintegrate.

I started working on this piece because I've found myself going to homepages more often. It's a way to get a controlled, curated look at what a publication offers, and a ch... See more

envy as tea leaves for what we really want

“counterfeit fitness”: the constant, momentary “wins” that come with playing digital games give us a false sense of progression and accomplishment, a neurochemical high that feels like victory but is not, and which, if it becomes a habit, risks placating our ambitions to pursue true fulfilment.

Yet the two versions seemed to be fundamentally different movies. In the first version I saw, much of the discussion explored the way that pop musicians such as Eno and many of his collaborators — like David Bowie and Talking Heads — create and project an identity when they perform, making that persona part of their medium. In essence, it became a ... See more

The writing is all designed in advance. Is a conversation more truthful than that? Or in the context that we're talking about, is the conversation as a medium just more entertaining, a better way to grab the audience's focus?