Sixian

But clock time was not always viewed as being this organic. The accusation that is today leveled against the internet — that it distorts natural rhythmicity and turns the human body into a machine — was once leveled against clock time itself.

There will be dust. There is always dust. By that I mean there is always time, and materiality, and decay. Decomposition and damage are inescapable. There is always the body, with its smears and secretions and messy flaking bits off. There is always waste and it always has to be dealt with, and shipping it out of sight overseas to the developing... See more

Network effects are about adding value and defensibility to your product. A network effect is when every customer of your product adds incremental value to all the other customers of your product so that it becomes difficult for customers to find any alternative product which gives them as much value.

But that’s the crux of fidelity angst: if we take the promise of media immersion with the seriousness that technology companies encourage, we can’t help but break the spell by wondering if this is really it. The promise of immersion is thus self-negating.

Developing regions also become offshore “back lots” for wealthier nations’ abject maintenance work, like breaking up rusty ships and processing e-waste. As Jackson puts it, some places are “more on the receiving end of globalization than others.”

I won’t speak for anyone else, but I will say that this is the first time in my life that I’m not so confident the future’s going to be as rosy as I once was. The reasons work life might not be number one on the priority list right now are not lost on me. But I am still nostalgic for a time when the gravitational pull of work was strong. For me and... See more

In a 1970 interview, Marshall McLuhan foreshadowed this situation and described what it might do to our minds: “We live in post-history in the sense that all pasts that ever were are now present to our consciousness and all futures that will be are here now. In that sense, we are post-history and timeless. Instant awareness of the varieties of... See more