Islands In The Clickstream

Steven Hawking noted in a netcast from the White House that the next generation of humans will live inside a common sense world of quantum physics the way we have lived inside a Newtonian landscape. “Common sense” is simply what we’re taught to see, he said, which is why new truths always appear at the [...]

Many of the more profound insights into both digital and non-digital realities sound like bumper sticker slogans, and whether they are truisms uttered by a well-intentioned friend or the sudden illumination that recontextualizes … everything … is due more to our readiness to hear them than anything else. For example, I was expressing anxiety the [...]

The way things are when we are very young becomes the standard against which all of our subsequent experience is measured. Our parents are the measure of all men and women. Our city is the measure of all cities. And the process by which we receive information is the model of what “feels real.” I [...]

A funny thing happened on the way to the panopticon — a transformational SNAP! changed all the rules. Life in the nudist colony may never be the same. Let me explain. A panopticon is a kind of prison dreamed up by Jeremy Benthem, a nineteenth-century English prison reformer. The cells are wedges like slices of [...]

How we experience winter depends — first of all — on where we live. Here in the upper midwest it is a low gray sky over a white landscape. When the snow began to fall on Christmas Eve, and the shapes of everything recognizable went under like a tired swimmer who stopped struggling, the snow [...]

I am told that the Japanese word “rikutsuppoi” means “an idea or position smacking of such a high degree of logic that it ignores reality.” Granted, too little logic is a dangerous thing. During times of change like ours, when the connections between the stabilizing matrix of our world views and our daily experience are [...]

I was disappointed when hour-long cartoons of Peanuts were made for television. I had been reading the comic strip for years, and when I read the words in balloons above the characters’ heads, I heard their voices inside my head as a kind of echo — the way you probably hear “my” voice inside your [...]

Microsoft did it again. Some users of the beta version of Explorer 4.0 were surprised to learn that, after they went to sleep, their computers were dialing Microsoft and telling it secrets, downloading information from Microsoft’s web pages and uploading information from the sanctity of their homes. The San Jose Mercury News reports that Microsoft [...]

“Coping with exponential change means using traditional spiritual tools …” If we’re lucky … after we have exhausted every other avenue … we turn to the traditional tools of spirituality to cope with stress and rapid change. That is, with life on earth. You won’t hear a word like “spirituality” in many Fortune 500 board [...]

Some of my older children have never been inside a physical bank. They know how to use ATM machines, write electronic checks, and carry smart cards, but think a trip to the bank is like a ride in a horse-drawn buggy. Yesterday I walked to a branch bank, waited in line, and chatted with the [...]

The accelerating pace of our lives contributes to the feeling that there is no firm ground under our feet. Since the average American worker in the 90s works one month per year more than the average worker in the 60s, it’s no wonder we feel pressed. And once upon a time our forebears lived under [...]

Independence Day 1997 The recent decision by the Clinton Administration to advocate a free and open Internet and the U. S. Supreme Court decision in favor of free speech on the Net are acknowledgements that you can’t catch an avalanche coming downhill. It’s always wisest — and takes less energy — to ride a horse [...]

Data — mere information — is neutral. The power of information that is linked and accessible is magnified by many orders of magnitude. The pattern is what matters. Technology advances. Software that matches patterns and flags anomalies is getting pretty good. But ultimately, computers aren’t about technology. They’re about people. The real power of the [...]

I wish I could say that I have always succeeded at everything I did, that every project I began was a win, but I can’t. Some roads led into cul-de-sacs or dead-ends. I do know, however, that I’m not alone. These crazy times of accelerated change make it hard for anyone to feel like an [...]

Our societies teach us the skills we need through games. Playing games is how we explore possibilities, identify talents and interests, learn values. Computer games are exploratory toys for investigating the digital world, but more than that, computers themselves are toys. The games — how they are built, how they change us when we play [...]