Our industry does not respect tradition — it only respects innovation. — Satya Nadella, il nuovo CEO di Microsoft

The world is not yet finished, but everyone is behaving as if everything was known. This is not true. In fact, the computer world as we know it is based upon one tradition that has been waddling along for the last fifty years, growing in size and ungainliness, and is essentially defining the way we […]

Getting away from technology by leaving it behind becomes a pointless exercise in competitive reductionism. Where do you draw the line? Your smartphone? Your GPS? Your compass? Your tent? Fire? Here’s a better idea: Shut up and bring your iPhone into the backcountry. […] The phone isn’t the problem. The problem is us—our inability to step away […]

The NSA is collecting so much of our online data, they should just start marketing themselves as a backup service. — Dave Pell

Imagine walking into a library or bookstore and needing three or four pairs of different glasses to read different books manufactured to specific viewing equipment. Or buying a book and then having to arbitrarily destroy it after say, two weeks. That’s just nuts. But it’s the current situation we’re in with ebooks. — Art Brodsky

Here at PopularScience.com, we’re shutting [comments] off. A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to “debate” on television. And because […]

Every single version of the iPhone to ever be released has been doomed. In fact, some of them were so doomed I’m surprised we even acknowledge their existence anymore. Apple needs to just give up before the company has to start selling coffee mugs from its headquarters just to turn a profit. — Mike Wehner

What every economist, and for that matter every writer on any subject, needs to realize is that unless you are a powerful person and people are looking for clues about what you’ll do next, nobody has to read what you write — and lecturing them about what they’re missing doesn’t help. You have to provide […]

Technical limitations of primitive photographic technology falsely imposed a performance art aspect on the medium. […] The notion that a large part of the creativity of the medium was the ability to recognize and capture moments in real-time. […] One photographer. One lens. One camera. One angle. One moment. Once you miss it, it is […]

Every object, at least in our perception of it, carries its antithesis. Behind the plenitude symbolized by the vase we sense an emptiness: the wilted bouquet rotting in a landfill. And so it is with the tools of communication. When we look at them we sense not only the possibility of connection but also, as […]

At a certain point, life gets in the way of documenting it. — Pat Dryburgh

Just because your tablet can take pictures doesn’t mean it should. The phrase that carpenters and handymen live by is, “use the right tool for the right job.” It’s possible to hammer a nail with the butt of a gun, but just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Tablets can take pictures, but tablets […]

It’s natural to want to share experiences with the people you care about. But I think our reasons for sharing experiences on social media are more cynical than that. It’s not sharing, it’s bragging. When we log in to Facebook or Twitter we see an infinitely updating stream of people enjoying themselves. — James Shakespeare

Sharing used to be an exchange; now it’s a declaration. The internet is supposed to be a place where everyone can be themselves and find like-minded people. But what we’re seeing right now is a faux intimacy. We think we know people so much better because of the internet, and the information it puts at […]

Technology is aging in reverse. The longer a technology lives, the longer it can be expected to live. — Nassim N. Taleb

You have to want to be jacked into the Internet all day long, every day. This is not the life most journalists imagined when they were looking at 1970s magazines. — Alexis Madrigal

People say ‘my phone sucks.’ No it doesn’t! The shittiest cellphone in the world is a miracle. Your life sucks. Around the phone. — Louis C.K.

I think nostalgia is very quickly replaced with convenience. — Craig Mod

In the last ten years, we’ve discovered two previously unknown species of human. We can film eruptions on the surface of the sun, landings on Mars and even landings on Titan. Is all of this very boring to you? Because all this is happening right now, in this moment. Check the time on your phone, […]