You are less cool than your friends, statistically speaking.
Do you hear that high-pitched, keening noise? It’s the sound of millions of Beliebers, losing their collective shit all over Twitter. The Beebs, in case you missed it, was at the center of first an egging scandal, then a cocaine scandal (!), late this afternoon. It’s all very egg-citing. But in other news:
1. Does technology make us smarter or dumb us down? That’s the crux of Tim Wu’s new column for The New Yorker … not to mention a zillion books and think pieces. Wu’s take on iPhone-users as “cyborgs” is both fascinating and novel, though, so worth reading in full.
2. Jonathan Harris is some kind of genius: part programmer, part artist, part enduring Internet crush. (Is that last bit just me? Sorry.) Harris is responsible for some of my all-time favorite pieces of work on the Internet, like "We Feel Fine" and "Today." He also just penned a lovely, illustrated essay for Transom on his work and the problems of feeling creatively “stuck.”
3. A 73-year-old Swedish man wrote an earnest letter to the editor of his local paper, demanding the Internet be “shut down.” Irony of ironies: His letter went viral.
Oppa Romney style!
Postscripts: Everything you’re doing wrong, according to the Internet. Missed connections. Every click. Online shopping ... in 1984. These devices will tell your friends when you’re sad, and these devices will teach your dog to text. (Kinda.) Today in cryptocurrency: Dogecoin popular, Coinye sued, Bitcoin payable to the Chicago Sun-Times. No, it’s not just Instagram -- your friends actually are cooler than you.
Until tomorrow,
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