Sublime

Thanks to the Internet, products across categories are now more susceptible to trends than to individual preferences. It’s easy to blame algorithms for the sameness of our taste choices, but the real culprit is us. Humans use social signals to quickly orient themselves in the world. On a daily basis, we actively classify one another by lifestyle, v

As the opportunity for electronic transactions of all kinds becomes omnipresent, there is no vestige of what used to be everyday life beyond the reach of corporate intrusion. An attention economy dissolves the separation between the personal and professional, between entertainment and information, all overridden by a compulsory functionality of com

law—criminologists put

Today we live in a Global Village in which Google is the marketplace, Amazon the general store, Facebook the garden fence and Twitter the local gossip. In the blink of an eye, activities that once only took place in towns or cities can be carried out with a flick of the thumb from a desert, ocean or plane.

Both threats strike at the heart of democracy, which, as Alexis de Tocqueville famously highlighted in Democracy in America, depends on deep and diverse, non-market, decentralized social and civil connections to thrive

policies of “humor over rumor” and “fast, fun and fair” responses.