Two Guardian pieces on the philosophy of walking
I’ve long been interested in walking as an intellectual, and cognitively stimulating, activity. So it was cool to find two essays in the Guardian about walking and thinking.
French labor unions protect the right to disconnect
The Guardian reports (with that sardonic twist that seems inevitably to color British reportage on French subjects) that the French unions are negotiating labor agreements that protect worker
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.
“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
“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
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
Meaning to Pause
This is an interesting concept, especially in an age when 95% of wearables assume that their job is to make you "better" (that is, more) connected, available, notified,
“Being constantly connected… [means] we lack space to be and to breathe.”
Rachel Mann, a British author, controversial heavy metal rock critic, and rector of St Nicholas's, Burnage, Manchester, has a piece in the Church Times about technology, distraction, and the