“There’s no Dropbox plan that will let us upload body and soul to the cloud. We are still here on the ground, with the same people and on the same planet we are being encouraged to leave behind.” Author and media theorist Douglas Rushkoff asks: how much are we allowed to use technology and our […]
Internet
The Great Fiber-Optic Fraudster of Alaska
To this day, only Elizabeth Pierce knows why she defrauded partners and investors by forging contract signatures.
‘I’m Incredulous That People Do This Repeatedly. The Second Book Thing Is So Real.’
Mary H.K. Choi discusses her latest novel, which examines how “holograms and digital envoys” represent us online, and why it feels like her “second book signals the death of my first.”
How Google Discovered the Value of Surveillance
In 2002, still reeling from the dot-com crash, Google realized they’d been harvesting a very valuable raw material — your behavior.
Why “Florida Man” Really Isn’t All that Funny
“Is Florida Man a hero, a villain or a victim? And is it still okay to laugh along?” (No, it’s not.)
How the Cosby Story Finally Went Viral — And Why It Took So Long
A journalist who reported on the accusations long before they went viral wonders, “What kind of profession am I in, where stories have no logical reason for unfolding?”
Twitter Won’t Miss You: A Digital Detox Reading List (and Roadmap)
Maybe it’s time for an internet break… after you read this.
The Communal Mind
Patricia Lockwood travels through the internet in this piece, first delivered as a lecture at the British Museum in February 2019.
‘What Would Social Media Be Like As the World Is Ending?’
In Mark Doten’s “Trump Sky Alpha,” a journalist who has survived Trump’s nuclear apocalypse gets an assignment from what’s left of the New York Times Magazine: find out what people were tweeting as the bombs fell.
Whose Facade Is It, Anyway?
These days, whether you like it or not, your photogenic home may be a backdrop for tourists’ photoshoots. But posing in front of pretty facades, a practice perfected by travel influencers on Instagram, brings up issues of privacy and etiquette.
