Social e-books as online communities, for AOIR 2011

Tomorrow I’m off to the conference of the Association of Internet Researchers, an event I’ve always wanted to attend and this time actually get to present to! I’m part of a session on Books and Publishing, where I will be talking about the e-book...

Imagining innovation in the Google era

Neal Stephenson has written an important essay, Innovation Starvation, which I discovered via Ron Burnett. In it he grapples with the decline in world-changing inventions, and focuses particularly on the potential role of science fiction as an inspiration for...

#RIPSteve

We live and love online because Steve Jobs saw that technology could satisfy not only our brains, but also our hearts. Read the rest in my blog post for Harvard Business Review, Steve Jobs, Father of Social Media.

Steve Jobs in 10 Infographics

Steve Jobs is the rare tech innovator who will be remembered as much for his aesthetics as for contributions to functionality. No wonder that so much of his legacy can be captured graphically: 1. The history For an at-a-glance overview of the intertwined histories of...

Can smartphones create stillness?

If you want to learn something about stillness, visit a kindergarten class. I spent about 45 minutes with Little Peanut and his classmates today, and it gave me a whole new perspective on quiet — or the lack thereof. In the half-hour in which these 19 kids were...