Longreads

Unearthing a major disaster to learn the lessons held withinYou can learn a lot about the way the movie industry works in a given moment by looking at its successes (whether accidental or…

Web startups are made out of two things: people and code. The people make the code, and the code makes the people rich. Code is like a poem; it has to follow certain structural requirements, and yet…

Deindividuation is what happens when we get behind the wheel of a car and feel moved to scream abuse at the woman in front who is slow in turning right. It is what motivates a responsible father in a football crowd to yell crude sexual hatred at the opposition or the referee. And it's why under the cover of an alias or an avatar on a website or a blog – surrounded by virtual strangers – conventionally restrained individuals might be moved to suggest a comedian should suffer all manner of violent torture because they don't like his jokes, or his face. Digital media allow almost unlimited opportunity for wilful deindividuation. They almost require it.

"I didn't have time to sit around going, 'Gee, I wonder if there's a better environment for me.' No, Al Gore's going to be my boss! I slept on it overnight, and we started going with it on Sunday. Everything since then has been like that. 'What do you need?' We're not doing this new show to find a place for me to have a home—we're going to do this right. We're going to take MSNBC's business away from them—that's the idea, to do it better."