A selection of articles, essays, and reviews.
2021
How to Fix Social Media, The New Atlantis
Beautiful Lies: The Art of the Deep Fake, Los Angeles Review of Books
Meanings of the Metaverse, Rough Type
The Automatic Muse, Rough Type
2020
Keys to Amazon’s Success (review of Bezonomics), Washington Post
What Is It Like to Be a Smartphone?, Rough Type
2019
Thieves of Experience: How Google and Facebook Corrupted Capitalism, Los Angeles Review of Books
2018
Is Facebook the Problem with Facebook, or Is It Us?, Washington Post
“It’s Not a Bug, It’s a Feature”: Trite or Just Right?, Wired
I Am a Data Factory (and So Are You), Rough Type
Can Journalism Be Saved?, Los Angeles Review of Books
Why Trump Tweets (and Why We Listen), Politico
2017
How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds, Wall Street Journal
These Are Not the Robots We Were Promised, New York Times
Information Overload, New Philosopher
Zuckerberg’s World, Rough Type
A Brutal Intelligence (review of Garry Kasparov’s Deep Thinking), Los Angeles Review of Books
A Smaller, Nastier World, Boston Globe
2016
Behind Frenemy Lines, MIT Technology Review
The World Wide Cage, Aeon
Supple Mind (review of David Gelernter’s Tides of Mind), First Things
Context Collapse and Context Restoration, Rough Type
When Our Culture’s Past Is Lost in the Cloud (review of Abby Smith Rumsey’s When We Are No More), Washington Post
Let’s Rein in the Internet of Things Before It’s Too Late, Los Angeles Times
2015
La ilusión de Silicon Valley, El Pais
How Social Media Is Ruining Politics, Politico
Why Robots Will Always Need Us, New York Times
Welcome to Nowheresville, Penguin Books Blog
2014
Automation Makes Us Dumb, Wall Street Journal
Your Inner Drone, Longreads
The Manipulators, Los Angeles Review of Books
The Patience Deficit, Mother Jones
The Limits of Social Engineering (review of Alex Pentland’s Social Physics), MIT Technology Review
The Dreams of Readers, Rough Type
2013
Attention Must Be Paid (review of Focus by Daniel Goleman), New York Times Book Review
The Great Forgetting, The Atlantic
Paper Versus Pixel, Nautilus
The New Digital Age (review of Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen’s book), San Francisco Chronicle
Techno-Fix Troubles (review of Evgeny Morozov’s To Solve Everything, Click Here and Jaron Lanier’s Who Owns the Future?), Nature
Don’t Burn Your Books – Print Is Here to Stay, Wall Street Journal
2012
The Crisis in Higher Education (article on MOOCs), MIT Technology Review
Why Our Innovators Traffic in Trifles, Wall Street Journal
The Library of Utopia, MIT Technology Review
2011
Books That Are Never Done Being Written, Wall Street Journal
Growing Up Google (review of Douglas Edwards’s I’m Feeling Lucky), The National Interest
Past-Tense Pop (review of Simon Reynolds’s Retromania), The New Republic
The Medium Is McLuhan (review of Douglas Coupland’s Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing of My Work!), The New Republic
Drowning in Beeps (review of James Gleick’s The Information), The Daily Beast
Situational Overload and Ambient Overload, Rough Type
2010
The Dangers of Web Tracking, Wall Street Journal
Googlethink, The Atlantic
Hooked (review of Tom Bissell’s Extra Lives), The New Republic
Deafened (review of George Prochnik’s In Pursuit of Silence), The New Republic
Does the Internet Make You Dumber?, Wall Street Journal
The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brains, Wired
The PC Officially Died Today, The New Republic
Are Google Maps and GPS Bad for Our Brains?, Washington Post
2009
The Price of Free, New York Times Magazine
Googled (review of Ken Auletta’s book), San Francisco Chronicle
Computing the Cost (interview), The Sun
2008
Is Google Making Us Stupid?, The Atlantic
The Internet Rewards the Lazy and Punishes the Intrepid, Guardian
What Google Wants Is to Condemn Microsoft to the Electric Chair, Guardian
2007
The Oldest Profession Combined with the Newest Technology, Guardian
The Google Enigma, Strategy & Business
The Self-Recording Craze, Guardian
The Ignorance of Crowds, Strategy & Business
The Information Plantations, Guardian
2006
The Weakest Link, Strategy & Business
Complementary Genius, Strategy & Business
2005
Flying Blind, Strategy & Business
The End of Corporate Computing, MIT Sloan Management Review
Does Not Compute, New York Times
Top-Down Disruption, Strategy & Business
The Amorality of Web 2.0, Rough Type
Suits to the Rescue, Strategy & Business
2004
Bridging the Breakthrough Gap, Strategy & Business
The IT Advantage Thrown into Question, Financial Times
Mastering Imitation, Strategy & Business
2003
IT Doesn’t Matter, Harvard Business Review
2002
Unreal Options, Harvard Business Review
2001
Generation Blog, the Industry Standard
2000
Gated Communities, Industry Standard
Hypermediation: Commerce as Clickstream, Harvard Business Review
1999
Being Virtual (review of Richard Sennett’s The Corrosion of Character), Harvard Business Review