Below are links to three essays in conversation with one another on the relative merits of Facebook as augmented memory. Jurgenson argues that expressing the “glad I didn’t have Facebook” sentiment is likely to reinforce what he considers an unhealthy preoccupation with consistency of identity over time. Boesel and Horning each offer diverging perspectives on … Continue reading Memory, Facebook, and the Narrative Unity of a Life
Yesterday, July 12th, was Henry David Thoreau’s 195th birthday, or 195th anniversary of his birth, or however that is best put when the person in question is no longer alive. In any case, Thoreau is best remembered for two things. The first is his experiment in living simply and in greater communion with nature in … Continue reading What Would Thoreau Do?
America has always been a land of contradictions. At the very least we could say the nation’s history has featured the sometimes creative, sometimes destructive interplay of certain tensions. At least one of these tensions can be traced right back to the earliest European settlers. In New England, Puritans established a “city on a hill,” … Continue reading The Simple Life in the Digital Age
The title suggested itself to me before I had written a word. I picked up Walter Benjamin’s classic essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility,”* and in my mind I heard, “The Self in the Age of Its Digital Reproducibility.” I then read through the essay once more with that … Continue reading The Self in the Age of Digital Reproduction
In a short post, Walter Russell Mead links to five stories under the heading of “Big Brother Goes Hi-Tech.” Click over for links to stories about face scanners in Japan, phone-monitoring in Iran, “infrared antiriot cameras” in China, and computer chips embedded in the uniforms of school children in Brazil. The stories from Japan, China, and … Continue reading The Slippery Slope Is Greased By Risk Aversion
L.M. Sacasas 