I love this photo, taken in the early 1940s, of a skilled shop technician at the Douglas Aircraft factory in Long Beach, Calif, where they made B-17s and other aircraft used in World War II. The image is beautiful in itself, but the woman in it also looks fully absorbed in what she’s doing. The… Continue reading »
Archives for The Way We Live Now
Data Love and Internet Hell
I have the lead essay (“Internet of Stings”) in the Dec. 2nd Times Literary Supplement, writing about four books that lay out the risks (and a few of the rewards) of the way we live online: “In this post-factual, truth-averse era, many of the destinations that draw us online have become unsafe spaces, hostile and treacherous,… Continue reading »
Pictures of You
Like a lot of people, I don’t enjoy having my picture taken. Hold on. I typed “like a lot of people” almost automatically, as one of those thumbsucker openings that allows a writer to warm up before diving into what he/she/ze really means to say. As soon as I wrote it, though, I started to wonder…. Continue reading »
Coding and “Computhors”
Is this internet killing books? What do poetry and software have in common? Can computers write literature? The Times Literary Supplement asked me to write about three books that take up those questions: The Edge of the Precipice: Why read literature in the digital age?, edited by Paul Socken; Geek Sublime: Writing Fiction, Coding Software,… Continue reading »
Boxed In
Look what the Post did with the layout of my latest review (I wrote about Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace, by Nikil Saval). Nifty! And slanty. The online version might be a little easier to read. What did I think of the book? It’s well and dutifully researched, stylishly written, and ultimately something… Continue reading »
