Back in Virginia
I’m back in Virginia this weekend, for a memorial for one of my professors, and to see Mom and family. I spent part of my childhood west of
The Even Smarter Phone
The folks at Digital Detoxing have announced their new Even Smarter Phone project. I love the appropriation of the smartphone form factor, and the space for a pencil.
Distracted Driving Awareness Month
Don’t forget: April is Distracted Driving Awareness Month.
“Never has our gaze been so carefully measured or so highly coveted”
Erin Anderssen shows that newspapers in Canada are still able to write about something other than Rob Ford: she has a long piece in the Toronto Globe and
The German ministry of labor banned non-emergency after-hours messages a week after my book came out. Mere coincidence?
Though I only just found out (via Ana Díaz-Hernández) that last summer, the German Ministry of Labor, concerned about overworking employees, set new guidelines against non-emergency communications with Ministry employees
Want to be more productive at work? Get off email in the evenings, new study says
The Wall Street Journal reports on a new study of productivity, accessibility, and worker effectiveness: Reading and sending work email on a smartphone late into the evening doesn’t
“I believe an interview needs to be prepared ahead of time to sound spontaneous”
From a Paris Review interview with Italo Calvino: I could try to improvise but I believe an interview needs to be prepared ahead of time to sound spontaneous.
“The real danger of videogames isn’t violence; it’s swindling”
Ian Bogost has a terrific essay about how video games are designed to be time-consuming and addictive, and how those qualities translate into revenue and goosed stock prices
What’s “pointless” about unplugging? On criticism of digital detoxes, and a criticism of “detox”
“It was viewed as hostile. Or precious. 'Oh, look at us, trying to have mental health.’” So said one the people I interviewed about Digital Sabbaths for my
Phrase of the day: Notorious learning
David Banks, writing in The Society Pages, talks about the rise of “notorious learning:" Notorious learning is the conspicuous consumption of information. It requires admitting ignorance of an