Oh, this is just too good. Neil Postman talks about the invention of the clock: But what the monks did not realize is that the clock is not merely a means of keeping track of the hours but also of synchronizing and controlling the actions of men. And so, by the middle of the 14th century, the clock ...

Hey, awesome! Jennifer Guerra at Michigan Radio did a piece on the new liberal arts, keyed to our book project, and it aired this morning. It features me, Gavin, and Emily Zinneman, who teaches creative writing at University of Michigan: "So much of creative writing -- especially stories -- is about...

It's hard not to be stirred by Microsoft's video vision of the year 2019 -- I mean, listen to that music! -- but, really, it's quite empty. To be fair, it's a vision of the future of productivity, so by definition it's all process, no product. But even so... is our high-tech future really just an as...

Just who is behind Things Magazine? Every time a new scattered yet somehow deeply coherent post shows up, I am assured ten new tabs in my browser window. And yet there are so few words, really -- it's hard to get a sense of context or personality. And I can't find a single name on the site. For now ...

The Futurist Manifesto was published 100 years ago today. That's 100 years of being angry that these jerks claimed and corrupted the word "futurist."...

Haruki Murakami in Israel: If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg. In the same speech, he says: There are only a few days in the year when I do not engage in telling lies, and today happe...

Oh this is wonderful: [...] What did Pauline Kael call Cary Grant? "The Man from Dream City." When Bristolian Archibald Leach became suave Cary Grant, the transformation happened in his voice, which he subjected to a strange, indefinable manipulation, resulting in that heavenly sui generis accent, n...

The Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique, twenty years later: Paul's Boutique is a landmark in the art of sampling, a reinvention of a group that looked like it was heading for a gimmicky, early dead-end, and a harbinger of the pop-culture obsessions and referential touchstones that would come to define th...

I refuse to force this ridiculous meme onto others but because people I respect have asked: 1. I am a Jewish intellectual from Northern California 2. There were three times in my life when I genuinely thought I was going to die. In retrospect, the first time I was just being overly dramatic — ...

Howard Weaver brings it: People who wish some billionaire would endow newsrooms so they don't have to change -- you know who you are -- have the musty smell of the mausoleum all about them. They move through twilight, walking stiffly toward a setting sun. They will find no pot of gold there. Yet the...