David Pennington

In a culture obsessed with speed, certainty, and specialization, Leonardo’s secret feels almost rebellious: take your time, learn widely, think deeply.

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.

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

Our photographs are not memories; they are advertisements, billboards for a life we are too preoccupied to live.

The “Silurian Hypothesis” is a fun thought experiment.

It posits Earth may have had advanced civilizations in the deep past that we are, today, unaware of. Why wouldn’t we know about them? Because if they existed millions of years ago and died out, their architecture would be long gone. “No ruins of ancient football stadiums, highways or housing... See more

It isn’t that you don’t “get” tech, it’s that the tech you use every day is no longer built for you, and as a result feels a very specific kind of insane.

The solution to the atomization curse that both gives us significantly more time back, and makes us much happier, is to seek to reintegrate these various foci of life as much as possible .

Overall, the researchers found that both deep and shallow conversations felt less awkward and led to greater feelings of connectedness and enjoyment than the participants had expected. That effect tended to be stronger for deep conversations. Participants who discussed the deep questions overestimated how awkward the conversation would be... See more