More a blessing than a curse

What's the half-life of the Internet's attention span? By my math, it's less than three days. That's at least how long it took tweets about the Paris attacks to fade. On Saturday, 94 percent of Buzzfeed's tweets were about Paris; by Monday, only one in five were. As for the solidarity hashtags, they lasted only a few hours.

1. Our machines haven't turned us into robots. It's tempting to see technology as this soul-corrupting force -- but in reality, it's not. We can be empathetic on the Internet; we can be social, we can converse. In innumerable ways, our phones are more a blessing than a curse.

2. Why are the kids of Silicon Valley killing themselves? In certain corners of Palo Alto, it's become an epidemic -- afflicting smart kids at elite STEM schools between their app launches and robotics competitions.

3. What you learn from binge-watching Periscope on Apple TV. Nothing of value, basically!

New favorite subreddit: r/arewerolling (link)

Pocketable: How Twitter stole the "jewel" of the Westboro Baptist Church. (10,642 words/43 minutes)

Postscripts: Taste the Translation. Death by spam. The worst Swedish friend-finder and the earliest mobile "app." Of course Overstock is run by preppers; of course your GPS is bad at math. Want a bot to show you everything that's wrong with online dating? Just pop in for a quick chat! #JeSuisEnTerrasse. #Nightshift. #ConcernedStudent. Moby Dick in the Internet age and Zuck in his element. Fwiw, I liked this story better when I wrote it. ;)

See ya tomorrow,
@caitlindewey

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