Karl Marx famously called religion the “opiate of the masses.” Well, to paraphrase Reggie Hammond, Eddie Murphy’s character in the film 48 Hours, “There’s a new opiate in town and its name is technology.” Yes, folks, everywhere you look these days, you see people “shooting up” their technological “drug” of choice, whether emails, text messages, [...]

There has been some egregiously bad decision making in the news lately, highlighted by the revelations around now-former Congressman Anthony Weiner’s ongoing sexually explicit Twitter conversations and photo sharing with six women. And just to show you that this post isn’t a partisan attack, let’s not forget the similarly bad decision making of also-recently-resigned Republican [...]

Is Technology Stealing Our (Self) Identities? Our self-identities, that is, how we define and see ourselves as unique individuals, play a vital role in who we are and the direction that our lives take. The self-identity encompasses the totality of knowledge and understanding that we gain about ourselves as we develop including our personalities, aptitudes [...]

The march of technology is inevitable and inexorable. We can’t stop it or even slow it down and we definitely can’t reverse it (nor should we want to). As I have noted in a previous post, one of my concerns is that this progress is so rapid that we don’t have time to determine or [...]

Recent research that has been making the media rounds lately has reported that when people are focused on a task they indicate that they are happier than when their mind wanders. This research is obviously not breaking news for the tens of millions of Buddhists and uncounted others who have experienced the phenomenon of being [...]

Facebook founder and CEO, baby-faced billionaire, and unintended star of a hit (don’t miss the double meaning) film Mark Zuckerberg announced last week that it will soon be offering a new messaging system, Facebook Messages, that integrates email (so 20th century), IM, SMS, Facebook, and other social media into one seamless stream of cyber-communication. With [...]

The next time you’re walking down the street, at the gym, in an elevator, out for a run, or even at your local coffee shop, look at the people around you and tell me what you see. What I notice is the ubiquity of people with headphones in their ears. Though not quite in the [...]

Some time ago, I wrote a post titled The Blogosphere Jungle in which I described the truly uncivil nature of the blogosphere in which respect for opposing views and dispassionate discourse were out and ad hominem attacks and demonization were in. Yet, as I have followed and responded to many comments to my own blog [...]

In his insightful 2008 article in the Atlantic, Nicolas Carr asks, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” He goes on to explore how new technology has altered our reading habits and, more unsettlingly, how we process information and think. It is a cerebral piece that meets the high intellectual standards we expect of that august magazine. [...]

I’ve been called a skeptic, an alarmist, and a doomsayer because the focus of most of my technology blogging is on the risks of and what’s wrong with technology. I realize that I may sound like a Luddite despite the fact that I’m actually an early adapter and readily admit that I couldn’t function in [...]