Correlational analyses showed that emotional intelligence was positively related to emoji use

The danger in utopian thinking is that it can easily turn you into a pointless vandal. The more useful thing is to think of betterment as a process rather than thinking that we just have to get rid of the bad people and then everything will be okay. If you could have enough utopianism to question the world as it is and imagine how it could be better, I think that’s a wonderful thing, but if you take it too far, you actually undermine yourself. So, I would say, a like “homeopathic utopianism” I will support.

A sweeping interview about Silicon Valley and the possible shapes of the future with the man who coined the term “virtual reality.”

The more people used Facebook at one time point, the worse they felt the next time we text-messaged them; the more they used Facebook over two-weeks, the more their life satisfaction levels declined over time.

On the surface, Facebook provides an invaluable resource for fulfilling the basic human need for social connection. Rather than enhancing well-being, however, these findings suggest that Facebook may undermine it.

The history of Facebook from its beginning ‘til now is the story of numerous crucial moments in the development of the internet: rubicons that can’t be uncrossed. It’s the story of the transformation of our behavior and the story of how legal rules built for the era of TV and print are struggling to keep up…

We want friendly, helpful software. Why wouldn’t we? Yet as we cede to software more of the toil of thinking, we are diminishing our own brain power in subtle but meaningful ways.

No one asks how the tape worm benefits the host. What if consciousness is like that? What if it’s the cognitive equivalent of ‘junk’ DNA?

A sci-fi author and biologist ponders the significance of brain interface technologies.

They looked generic. Yet a fangirl still exists in contradiction to the dominant culture. She’s not considered normal or sane…

The definitive history of the One Direction Fandom.

The first set of emojis was designed for a Japanese cell phone company by Shigetaka Kurita in 1998. Texting was still really new. There were only 176 of them and they were 12-by-12 pixels each.

… what is the essential part of our voices, and what isn’t?

An audiophile explains why we seem to hate phone calls these days.

Chatbots fool us more often than we think… especially when they replicate our very worst habits.

The Garden of Eden. My ancestors’ graves. A watermelon field in Central Texas…

The panic attacks started after Chloe watched a man die.

What it takes to keep social media clean.

The key is to think of what we offer as a gift.

Some “sage advice” on how to find—and be—a “hero.”

… digital technology often seems to make it harder for us to respond in the right way when someone is suffering and needs our help

The three major aspects of computer technology that most visibly have taken over older technologies are word processing, electronic communication, and the development of large scale archives of both text and visual materials. These in turn have led to many other changes that raise interesting questions about our professional life, including aspects of pedagogy, intellectual community, economics, ownership of our work and our texts, and, perhaps most importantly, the quality of our work.

Acknowledging it doesn’t change your vulnerability. You’re vulnerable whether you develop a language to think about it or not.

In which the hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous meatspace of three continents, acquainting himself with the customs and dialects of previously unknown and unchronicled folk … and other material pertaining to the business and technology of Undersea Fiber-Optic Cables, as well as an account of the laying of the longest wire on Earth

A riveting account of what it takes to make the internet work.