The Frailest Thing: Media and the Self

40 The (Un)Naturalness of Privacy Andrew Keen is not an Internet enthusiast, at least not since the emergence of Web 2.0.

41 Living for the Moment in the Age of the Image We live for the moment because the moment is what an image captures.

42 Et in Facebook ego In Nicolas Poussin’s mid-seventeenth century painting, Et in Arcadia ego , shepherds have stumbled upon an ancient tomb on which the titular words are inscribed.

43 Dead and Going to Die It’s not uncommon to hear someone say that they were haunted by an image, often an old photograph. It is a figurative and evocative expression.

44 Eight Theses Regarding Social Media 1. Social media are the fidget spinners of the soul. 2.

45 The Interrupted Self In Letters From Lake Como: Explorations in Technology and the Human Race , written in the 1920’s, Romano Guardini, related the following experience: “I recall going down a...

46 Social Media and Loneliness In September of last year, psychologist Jean Twenge published a widely-discussed essay in The Atlantic titled “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?

47 Early Modern and Digital Reading Practices When I wrote the About page for this blog I cited an article by Alan Jacobs from several years ago in which he likened blogs to commonplace books.

48 Spectrum of Attention In March of 2015, I was invited to attend a seminar at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Cultur e led by Alan Jacobs, which focused on his 79 Theses on Technology .

49 Landlines, Cell Phones, and Their Social Consequences If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember the pre-cellular days of household phones.

50 A Chance to Find Youself At The American Scholar you can read William Deresiewicz’s lecture to the plebe class of 2009 at West Point.

51 What Do I Like When I "Like" On Facebook By one of those odd twists of associative memory, John Caputo’s little book, On Religion , came to mind today.

52 Facebook and Loneliness In 2008, Nick Carr’s article in The Atlantic, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” , touched off a lively and still ongoing debate about the relative merits of the Internet.

53 Bodies in Conversation When she published her NY Times op-ed, “The Flight From Conversation,” Sherry Turkle was quickly dismissed and lampooned by critics. Clearly Turkle had struck a nerve.

54 The Allegory of the Cave for the Digital Age You remember Plato’s famous allegory of the cave .

55 The Exhausting Work of Unremitting Self Presentation In The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life , Goffman suggested that we understand our social interaction by analogy to the theater.