Why I like to check my email

Recently I’ve been trying to follow my friend Leda’s advice on taming the compulsive need to pull my iPhone out any spare moment: the eight seconds in which the grocery clerk is running a price check, the twenty seconds it takes to walk to the bathroom,...

The 10 best tips on how to write an online dating profile

It was inevitable that one of my single friends would get the hint. I go on and on about my fascination with online dating, and how tragic it is that I missed out by getting married before it was really a thing, and how much I would like to learn more about how it all...

Jobs of the future

It has been widely reported that for most of today’s elementary schoolchildren, the jobs that lie in their future don’t even exist yet. While that may be terrifying for those of us in the parenting or education game (how do you prep kids for a future you...

6 questions about the impact of social media on think tanks

Can think tanks make a difference? That is the question framing a one-day conference at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), where I was part of a social media panel chaired by CBC’s Peter Mansbridge. My fellow panelists were Chad Gaffield...

Lessons for online dating from offline marriage

Readers of this blog know that I am fascinated with online dating, probably the way that women who got married in the 50s were fascinated by the birth control pill. Like the pill, online dating has enabled a revolution in romantic and sexual behaviour, one that those...

8 ways iPhones and iPads affect family discipline

There’s nothing like the beginning of a school year to illuminate gaps in your family’s, um….discipline. After a couple of rocky weeks inspired us to take a closer look at our family’s rhythms and regimes, I found myself noting the central role...

A visual glossary of Drupal field types

This post originally appeared on simcentre.ca. We are currently working with Affinity Bridge on a collaborative research project that has us deeply involved in the process of developing a website on the Drupal content management system (CMS) — the same CMS that...

The post-reading generation talks about the future of books

This post originally appeared on SIMCentre.ca. Today I got to be a (tweeting) fly on the wall in Jonathan Aitken’s ebook design class. Somewhat to my amusement, Jonathan began by explaining how old people like us used to read in linear way, where you flip...

How will computer use affect the way people are wired?

I just finished taking the Future of the Internet survey that is run by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center. One of the questions asked about the impact of technology use on the...