technology
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New roles for artists
“What matters is to know what you want and pursue it,” says Smith. She urges us to recognize that suffering is part of the package for everyone. “Life is going to be difficult.” Ride with it, she urges. Nothing is perfect.…
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Roxane Gay on the Joys and Perils of Twitter
When we debate modernity, we tend to engage in all-or-nothing propositions. Technology is either wholly good or wholly destructive. Somewhere between these two extremes is where we will find the truth. Our rock-star essays editor Roxane Gay has an essay titled…
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The Rumpus Interview with Katy Butler
Journalist Katy Butler discusses her memoir, Knocking on Heaven’s Door: A Path to a Better Way of Death, why medicine and technology often cloud the larger issues of dying, and how we should contemplate the end of our lives.
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Jason Novak Draws Monkeys for Esquire
Sending a monkey into space, as Iran will do later this month, is only one of many bad ideas involving monkeys and technology. Luckily, our very own Jason Novak has an illustrated essay in Esquire about some of the other things you shouldn’t…
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The Rumpus Interview with Ron Currie, Jr.
Writer Ron Currie, Jr. talks about his latest book, Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles, singularity theory, the importance of travel, and the hazards of characterizing traits as “masculine.”
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This Novel Takes New-Media Writing to the Next Level
Danger lies in the insertion of any technology in fiction, whether it is misunderstood, clumsily included, or over-relied upon. It dates a work, but it also helps indicate how well a novel lives in that date: whether something has been captured, or…
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Dave Eggers Gets Google-y Eyed
Dave Eggers’s upcoming novel The Circle is about a woman whose life takes a turn for the sinister after she starts work at “the world’s most powerful internet company” with its “towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend…
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Online Romance…from 150 Years Ago
From its title (Wired Love) to its tagline (“‘The old, old story’—in a new, new way”), this Ella Cheever Thayer novel from 1880 sounds surprisingly modern. Substitute texting for telegraphs or OKCupid usernames for telegraph operators’ initials, and the book…
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Twitter’s Got Nothing on Telegraphs and Cheap Newspapers
The rapid pace of technological development can be a little frightening: Is texting ruining our communication skills? Is the Internet butchering our ability to think deeply? As it turns out, these fears are nothing new.
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Jonathan Safran Foer on the Sociopsychological Effects of Technology
In an opinion piece for the New York Times, Jonathan Safran Foer (award-winning author of Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) contemplates the implications of living in a society full of “iDistractions,” arguing that the increased daily use…
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Tragedy is Fast, Knowledge is Slow
For months, I had worked to help students make connections between sports and society, to help them analyze and interrogate media representations of sport and of athletes….In the immediate aftermath of the Boston bombings, I had no answers and very…
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Protecting Possum Man’s Hard Drive
What do you do with a loved one’s letters, photos, and journals when they pass away? What about their emails, online accounts, and computer files? In an essay at Locus Online, Cory Doctorow describes his efforts to preserve the digital…