“Facebook, Palantir, Cambridge Analytica, Amazon, the Internet Research Agency, Google: these are, every one, the children of Simulmatics” –
Simulmatics is a relic of its time, an artifact of the Eisenhower-Kennedy-Nixon Cold War;...
Tag Archives: technology
“The word” smart “is flattering to both the objects and their users, even as it threatens to become a hazy banality”
In the land rush to digitize the world, the home is the new frontier....
“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”
Religions have a particular habit of collecting yesterday’s technologies and holding on to them...
“When a technology does die out in all places but one, something very special happens…”
When a technology does die out in all places but one, something very special...
“Because social effects lag behind technological ones by decades, real revolutions don’t involve an orderly transition…”
Because social effects lag behind technological ones by decades, real revolutions don’t involve an...
“An individual with a camera or a keyboard is now a nonprofit of one, and self-publishing is now the normal case”
An individual with a camera or a keyboard is now a nonprofit of one,...
“The difficulty in starting companies is not just about finding the right technology, but also getting the timing right”
The difficulty in starting companies is not just about finding the right technology, but...
“The success of Yo revealed a lot about Silicon Valley ideology: For all the changing-the-world talk, novelty frequently outweighs functionality”
Silicon Valley’s single-use obsession found its most absurd expression last summer in the infamous...
“…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”
Aside from issues of life and death, there is no more urgent task for...
“The new devices do not in themselves authorize a revision of the standards of evidence and argument and style that we championed in the old devices”
Every technology is used before it is completely understood. There is always a lag...