ideas

When you build software, you add little hooks into the code so that, as users open a window, tap a picture, upload a file, the code tattles on them, sending some of their data to another company's server. Log data is sowed; reports are reaped. This is known as “analytics” …

many times a year, as if on a hidden schedule, some tech person, often venture-capital-adjacent, types out a thought on social media like “The only thing liberal arts majors are good for is scrubbing floors while I punch them” and hits Send. Then the poetry people respond—often a little late, …

“I kind of want to live in the metaverse. There will be all the same stuff as my regular universe—friends, work, shopping, entertainment—but it will somehow be more thrilling. When I move, will I still be myself?” —Virtual Horizons Dear Virtual, It’s hard to believe that only two years have …

“Whenever my 6-year-old daughter gets asked what she wants to be when she grows up, she says, ‘An influencer.’ The thought of it freaks me out. What should I do?” —Under the Influence Dear Under, Your question made me think about Diana Christensen, a main character in Paddy Chayefsky’s 1976 …

Ten years ago, I used my first post-college paycheck to meet an astrologer. Guided by a rickety stairway, I entered her Alphabet City apartment-turned-sanctum and was greeted by an eccentric Aquarius donning avant-garde garb (she had moved to New York in the 1980s and appeared to still be living in …

In the beginning, the browser was an herbivore who ate buds, shoots, and twigs off of trees and bushes. While grazers faced down to munch on grasses, browsers kept their heads up. They reached and craned, looking outward as they searched for sustenance. The word took on a more figurative …

Imagine a universe where Meta, and every third-party application it does business with, knows the placement and size of your furniture, whether you have a wheelchair or crib in your living room, or the precise layout of your bedroom or bathroom. Analyzing this environment could reveal all sorts of things. …

When I worked as a copywriter at a dog-toy-slash-tech company, we used Airtable and Basecamp to organize our workflows. At my next job, the marketers made us learn Asana (“same as Airtable but much better”), but the product team pushed their work and sprints through Jira. I was laid off …

I've been in the entertainment industry since I was nine. I joined the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) when I was 11 in 1977, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) when I was 22, and the Directors Guild of America (DGA) the following year. I got my start as a child …

Time is not to be trusted. This should come as news to no one. Yet recent times have left people feeling betrayed that the reliable metronome laying down the beat of their lives has, in a word, gone bonkers. Time sulked and slipped away, or slogged to a stop, rushing …