Sarah Owen

"The society for the Suppression of Unnecessary Noise was founded by a physician named Julia Barnett Rice in 1906. Rice believed noise was unhealthy, and enlisted New York City’s gentry (including Mark Twain) to lobby for things like rules governing steamboat whistles, and silence pledges from children who played near hospitals."

Gen Z is the only generation to see recent declines in social media use, per Pew Research Center.

"We are constantly negotiating with the pesky figure of the algorithm, unsure how we would have behaved if we’d been left to our own devices. No wonder we are made anxious"

The sound of gentrification is silence.

But the intent is to build this city from scratch as fully smart.“By building a new city from the ground up we can come out with a more comprehensive city,” said Lee Jae Min, deputy director of the smart city project with the Ministry of Land, Industry and Transport. “It’s not going to be soon, but in the future, we plan to have a standard model of... See more

“What’s aspirational has changed,” says Beth McGroarty, research director at the nonprofit Global Wellness Institute. Pressures to be perfectly happy, beautiful, and “healthy” are being replaced with a more realistic, relaxed, and less consumerist culture.

People understand things through narratives, including the future. Everyone is the science fiction writer of their own life. When hoping for a good life, and thinking about what might bring that about, we are utopian writers; when fearful that bad things will happen, we are dystopian writers.