Reading Time: 4 minutesThere is no question that the internet has gotten a lot better since the Coronavirus pandemic began. The NYT Daily Episode about it has been one of the few bright spots of news coverage against an onslaught of grim headlines. Listen and you’ll hear a pastiche of uplifting audio from across the internet. There are …
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Reading Time: 4 minutesThe blowback from Mark Zuckerberg’s October speech at Georgetown came down fast and furious. Aaron Sorkin hated it. So did Sasha Baron Cohen. The condemnation ranged from cynical (that Facebook only cares about money), to the disingenuous, to the charge that he simply refuses to see the dark side of his own creation. Like a …
Continue reading “Why Mark Zuckerberg Might Actually Be Democracy’s Best Hope”
Reading Time: 7 minutesThere is something different about social media–something that distinguishes it from the habit-forming products that came before it. It’s social. (big surprise, I know) When we reach for that cigarette, or that pint of Ben and Jerry’s, the urge that motivates us–along with its (at least temporary) satisfaction–are centered within the individual. But the urge …
Continue reading “With Tech Addiction, We Are Often Our Own Pushermen”
Reading Time: 3 minutesWe all know why malls are dying in America; Amazon has changed the way we shop, out of brick-and-mortar stores and firmly glued to our couches—thumbing through product reviews while day-old DoorDash delivery boxes collect flies on a nearby coffee table. Our new way of shopping is obviously more convenient. If it weren’t, then malls …
Continue reading “Why I Don’t Mourn the Death of Malls in America”
Reading Time: 4 minutesIn many ways, Jia Tolentino is the perfect person to critique our contemporary internet-driven culture. Her rise as a journalist coincided with the era in which lines blurred between regular media and social media, creating a voracious, attention-craving monster hungry for our eyeballs. Writers like her became inextricably tied to the internet at a time …
Continue reading “Read this book by Jia Tolentino! (and then maybe mine…)”