Around the turn of the century, people started talking about the “attention economy.” A natural outgrowth of the ad-supported Web, this stemmed from the idea that people’s time and attention would soon be valuable commodities, because of their scarcity. The phrase has dwindled in popularity but the

Taking control of your social media use may be the most rewarding life hacking technique I know of, given its ratio of benefit to effort. I like social media. Networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat have a powerful ability to keep us connected with other humans. For me, Twitter has functioned

Like many people, my attention is fragmented and my concentration broken. I’m going to try working my way through this with the skills I know best: Writing and editing.

Kevin Kelly paints a disturbing vision of the next 30 years: A world governed by alien AIs, with screens on every surface, crowdsourced advertisements and influencer marketing campaigns assaulting us from all directions, and overwhelming flows of ephemeral data and “facts” making it impossible to ju

“Oculus Rift headsets are expensive, bulky, and block out the real world completely. But like the early Logitech webcams, they’re just the starting point. Eventually, VR tech will become smaller, lighter, and—especially in the case of mixed-reality—far less intrusive. When that happens, VR is going

Narrative specificity means avoiding generalizations and using details to make your story come to life. Leave it out, and your words will be hollow and dead, like empty snail shells strewn across the dirt. It’s not surprising that many writers miss this point, particularly in politics and business.

Yesterday I realized a dream I’ve had ever since I started open water swimming around 2010. I swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco. It’s about 1.25 miles though we covered a bit more water than that due to fighting the current a little. In all, it took me one hour and 13 minutes in pretty […]