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Jerry Seinfeld, Tech Critic
I’ll begin with a confession: I was inordinately influenced, during those formative adolescent years, by watching Seinfeld. I watched and re-watched way too much of it. I heightened the effect by...
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It’s Not the Smartphone, It’s You and It’s Me
There’s this line you’ve probably seen before, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.” It’s often attributed to Plato or Philo, but they almost certainly said no such thing....
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Home
“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” – T. S. Eliot Home. It’s a mythic notion. Two of the...
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Resisting the Tyranny of Productivity
Briefly, an additional thought on the Programmable World (in which ubiquitous wireless sensors make objects and machines “smart”): The envisioned Programmable World, as Bill Wasik has called it, is a...
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Kindling
The Tourist and the Pilgrim is now available through the Kindle Store. I’m grateful to those of you who’ve picked up a copy and spread the word. A couple of observations: First, you all are generous....
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Et in Facebook ego
In Nicolas Poussin’s mid-seventeenth century painting, Et in Arcadia ego, shepherds have stumbled upon an ancient tomb on which the titular words are inscribed. Understood to be the voice of death, the...
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Don’t Be a Relay in the Network
Back when the Machine was the dominant technological symbol, a metaphor arose to articulate the fear that individual significance was being sacrificed to large-scale, impersonal social forces: it was...
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11 Things I’m Trying To Do In Order To Achieve a Sane, Healthy, and...
It’s fair to say that when I write about the Internet or digital devices, my tone tends toward the cautionary, and that’s probably understating the case. But, as my wife would be quick to confirm, I...
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A Hedgehog in a Fox’s World
I’m ordinarily reluctant to complain. This is partly a function of personality and partly a matter of conviction. I’m reticent by nature, and I tend to think that most complaining tends to be petty,...
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If Nostalgia Is a Desire, What Does It Long For?
When we’re not using nostalgia as a term of derision, we use it to name a twinge in the gut that somehow blends melancholic longing with happy recollection. When this experience becomes acute it may...
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