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.

Research has long shown that health and longevity come down to five fundamental lifestyle behaviors: exercising regularly, eating a nutritious diet, eschewing cigarettes, limiting alcohol consumption and nurturing meaningful relationships.

Everybody wants to play in the Stream, but no one wants to build the Garden.

“librarians are what the internet is aching for—people on task to care about the past, with respect to the past and also to what it shall bequeath to the future.” Can we reimagine libraries for the digital age?

One of the take-home lessons of Buddhist philosophy is that feelings just are. If we accepted their arising and subsiding as part of life, rather than reacting to them as if they were deeply meaningful, we’d often be better off. Learning to do that is a big part of what mindfulness meditation is about.

Electronics evolved rapidly without any help before. Why can't we pull it again?

These technological breakthroughs happened in a context of cheap energy. Unless we have a "unicorn tech" (nuclear fusion for example) giving us cheaper energy than 1960's oil, we will never again see these days of extraordinarily cheap energy.

Without cheap energy, we... See more