David Pennington

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!

But E.B. White, one of our last great idealists, was eternally right when he asserted half a century ago that the role of the writer is “to lift people up, not lower them down” — a role each of us is called to with increasing urgency, whatever cog we may be in the machinery of society.

he stories you can tell in a film are a fraction of what you can do in a book. What's irritating is that you then do these things, and films have their own kind of structure. The thing dictates certain paces, no matter what you do. That's only because we're trying to make a film that reaches people; I mean I don't try to make a film for me -- I... See more

Again, the majority of Australians are sceptical about the productivity mantra. When they hear that word they see cost-cutting rather than shared benefit.

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.

Roland Allen’s The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper . Allen points out that “people often start diaries in times of upheaval,”

Myles helped me avoid an easy error:

Putting the tool before the craft.

Friction-maxxing is not simply a matter of reducing your screen time, or whatever. It’s the process of building up tolerance for “inconvenience” (which is usually not inconvenience at all but just the vagaries of being a person living with other people in spaces that are impossible to completely control) — and then reaching even toward enjoyment.... See more

I set an intention for 2025: fewer things, fewer tabs open at once - on my laptop and in my mind - but doing things well, present and mindful. Less, but better.