David Pennington

If the reading revolution represented the greatest transfer of knowledge to ordinary men and women in history, the screen revolution represents the greatest theft of knowledge from ordinary people in history.

“Faith is better understood as a verb than as a noun, as a process than as a possession,” wrote Frederick Buechner. ”It is on-again-off-again rather than once-and-for-all. Faith is not being sure where you're going, but going anyway. A journey without maps.”

“if your new software no longer runs on old hardware, it is worse than the old software.”

I was supposed to be the example. I was supposed to be the good influence. It was only a matter of time until there was a division between “I should do this” and “I want to do that.” In my youth, there is the universal idea that my enjoyment always comes at the cost of someone else’s despair. How can you rest when your neighbor is working?

If Aldous Huxley had known about endlessly scrolling short videos from a handheld device, he would have made it the preferred media interface of his Brave New World .

He wisely understood—unlike Orwell or Bradbury—that ruling elites don’t need censorship and book-burning if they can convince people to voluntarily abandon literacy.

Don’t even mention dating or — gasp — sex when the simple act of looking into someone else’s eyes provokes anxiety. But what could they do? Give up their phones and the corporate-controlled, like-driven culture, which is all they’ve ever known? Silent scream emoji!

Side projects as the key to the good life By Marty Bell • 31 Jul 2025

When I was 13, I created a chat room for teenagers to talk about art and photography (the tagline was, if I remember, “The future of art but we don’t give a fuck”). I think that was the first self-made project I put out into the world, and it taught me one of the most important

... See more

Perhaps the immutable error of parenthood is that we give our children what we wanted, whether they want it or not.”

Most of us have a hard limit on the number of focused sessions we can do each day.