The pen may well be mightier than the sword, but pens have been known to unsheathe a sword now and then. So what about video blogs and guns? In the wake of travesties like this latest shooting at UCSB, I’m sure the question raised at my dinner table last weekend was echoed in conversations around the country. Why are we ...
It’s science. Deal with it. We hear an awful lot about how copyrights on creative works “stifle innovation,” preventing new business opportunities from launching or thriving. And the self-serving advocates of these “new” ideas love to describe those of us who question their proposals as anti-technology, anti-progress, stuck in old models, and so on. But the idea that a digital ...
It’s a longstanding cliché we parents repeat that our kids can have more fun with a box than with the toy that comes in the box. It’s still true, and we still don’t trust our own wisdom in this regard because presenting a kid with an empty box for his birthday or some other occasion is a risky bet that ...
On Friday last week, a Q&A appeared on The New York Times website between journalist James Estrin and photographer Ami Vitale. The story pertains to the now widely recognized hashtag campaign #BringBackOurGirls, meant to raise awareness and perhaps pressure officials in our own countries to do everything possible to rescue nearly 300 schoolgirls kidnapped by Islamic terrorists in Nigeria. At ...
WARNING: There be spoilers here! Despite the bad reviews, I had to go see the film Transcendence last weekend. Given that its plot is based on certain theories pertaining to the technological singularity, how could I not go see it? Indeed, it was very much not a good movie, and although film criticism is outside the editorial scope of this ...
