Tap-tapping our brains away...
These days, anxiety about social media is apparently as much a part of modern life as social media itself. We have apps to make us get off Facebook. A National Day of Unplugging. Even digital detox summer camps -- for ADULTS -- a concept I really can't express enough contempt for. Into this fray enters the pop philosopher Alain de Botton, who was kind enough to explain to me why deleting Twitter off your phone will (a) improve your mental health and (b) let you appreciate the few fleeting years you have left on this earth. Happy Wednesday! Now the links:
1. Stop saying the Internet "hates" things. It doesn't. The Internet is a vast, unfeeling void, impervious to the whims of man. Anthropomorphizing the Internet is (I can conclusively say, as someone who does this, reluctantly, all the time) a cutesy/convenient way to summarize trends without wasting words in headlines. That said, it's patently untrue. And the simplification may have consequences for how we understand humans/the web.
2. Nobody hand writes things anymore -- but maybe that's a bad thing. Among children, handwriting seems to play a big role in cognition and learning. Among adults, it improves memory and information processing. And yet here we sit on our keyboards, tap-tapping our brains away...
3. How do you find the next Facebook? I have no idea, personally, but this small cabal of tech investors always seem to predict the next big thing.
Uh guh can't even.
Pocketables: We often talk about the need to "know" ourselves; Adam Phillips' opposite take -- that we're happier and more productive when we don't know "how much of [our] own aliveness [we] can bear" -- is frankly startling. (8450 words/34 minutes)
Postscripts: ZooEyes. Free Marissa. #ProudtoPlay. High-tech heels. The world's (1) most symmetrical object and (2) its saddest wedding party. How chocolate could save the world. What it means when someone faves your tweets. Today in drugs: wake and bake, drug or programming language?, the man who made ecstasy ... Maureen Dowd. Feel bad about Netflix binging? Don't! Grandma Hillary does it, too. However she is getting old ... and so are you.
Until tomorrow,
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