Technology “Facebook, Palantir, Cambridge Analytica, Amazon, the Internet Research Agency, Google: these are, every one, the children of Simulmatics” – Author Drew Kaplan Date 9 August 2020 Simulmatics is a relic of its time, an artifact of the Eisenhower-Kennedy-Nixon Cold War;...
Internet, Social Media, Technology Considering vertical vs horizontal perspectives Author Drew Kaplan Date 11 September 2017 Before 1930, moving picture aspect ratios were all over the place. But mass distribution...
Technology, Writing “A decade or so into the ubiquity of smartphones, our writing about them has yet to mature” Author Drew Kaplan Date 27 March 2017 A decade or so into the ubiquity of smartphones, our writing about them has...
Semantics, Technology “The word” smart “is flattering to both the objects and their users, even as it threatens to become a hazy banality” Author Drew Kaplan Date 4 July 2016 In the land rush to digitize the world, the home is the new frontier....
Religion, Technology “Religions have a particular habit of collecting yesterday’s technologies and holding on to them long after they’ve faded from use and collective memory” Author Drew Kaplan Date 23 March 2016 Religions have a particular habit of collecting yesterday’s technologies and holding on to them...
Technology “When a technology does die out in all places but one, something very special happens…” Author Drew Kaplan Date 22 March 2016 When a technology does die out in all places but one, something very special...
Technology “Because social effects lag behind technological ones by decades, real revolutions don’t involve an orderly transition…” Author Drew Kaplan Date 7 October 2015 Because social effects lag behind technological ones by decades, real revolutions don’t involve an...
Internet, Radio, Technology, Television “Publishing used to require access to a printing press and, as a result, the act of publishing something was limited to a tiny fraction of the population…” Author Drew Kaplan Date 3 August 2015 Publishing used to require access to a printing press and, as a result, the...
Technology “The success of Yo revealed a lot about Silicon Valley ideology: For all the changing-the-world talk, novelty frequently outweighs functionality” Author Drew Kaplan Date 15 June 2015 Silicon Valley’s single-use obsession found its most absurd expression last summer in the infamous...
Culture, Technology “…there is no more urgent task for American intellectuals and writers than to think critically about the salience, even the tyranny, of technology in individual and collective life” Author Drew Kaplan Date 22 February 2015 Aside from issues of life and death, there is no more urgent task for...