Culture

Tech has changed our lives in so many ways. Two areas that interest me are our thoughts about knowledge itself, and our experience of solitude.

I used to like the game show Jeopardy and even tried out for it. I flew to Los Angeles for the day and passed the test when my daughter was five months old, proving to myself that my brain hadn't totally gone to mush. I didn't get called to be on the show, but the tryout was still a good experience.

But now, with Google and smart phones, we have all that information … Read more

Loren Feldman of 1938 Media is twisted.

Twisted in a brilliant, kiss my tuchas kind of way.

Here I am this morning, sitting in front of the computer with my earphones on, laughing my ass off. My wife walks over and she sees me cutting up over a rooster bouncing around on screen. Of course, she's not hearing Feldman's sarcastic voice-over in a hilarious lampooning of a Shel Israel video interview on Fast Company.

Feldman, who heads a Web video production company in New York, probably upsets a lot of people with his posts, but I think he'… Read more

Google has been caught up in a controversy over anti-Semitic videos that have been circulating on YouTube.

The Central Council of Jews in Germany has gone to court to force the video-sharing site to permanently purge the files, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz. The paper quotes Stephan Kramer, secretary general of the Central Council, saying he believes Google was culpable for "aiding and abetting racial hatred and discrimination."

This question is especially freighted with extra historical baggage in Germany, where the Holocaust occupies a front row in the nation's historical consciousness. And as much as it … Read more

Why does AOL have a thing for acquiring companies with silly names? (Last month, it bought widget maker Goowy.

My colleague Dan Farber weighed in earlier Thursday on whether Bebo can "save" AOL, a question that remains impossible to answer in the near term.

Truth be told, I've compiled a stack of old magazine articles since the turn of the century (I love saying that phrase) detailing the "challenge at hand" for, first, the merged AOL Time Warner and then Time Warner, which dropped AOL from its moniker in 2003. At a certain point, however, … Read more

Did Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg have his "Oscar Robertson" moment this week?

Bear with me on this one for a moment.

In case you missed it, Sunday's New York Times sports section carried a wonderful first-person retrospective piece by Robertson, one of the greatest basketball guards in the history of the game. But when he played at the University of Cincinnati in the late 1950s, Robertson was anything but a household name.

That changed after he lit up Madison Square Garden for 56 points in front of the New York media. Unfortunately, the post-game news conference was … Read more

I was sure that Henry Blodget's comment on the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal would come with a heavy dollop of schadenfreude.

After all, Spitzer as New York Attorney General forced Blodget to eat humble pie en route to an ignominious exodus from the securities industry. But in his new role as tech industry commentator, we're seeing a kinder, gentler side from the one-time Wall Street stock pumper.

On this blog at Silicon Alley Insider, Blodget opted for a "just the facts, ma'am," approach and reposted The New York Times' coverage as well as an excerpt … Read more

PALO ALTO, Calif.--It was only a matter of time before the crazy guy in the front row blew up. He had been fidgeting in his seat all morning. All it took was for author Andrew Keen to bemoan the public's loss if more struggling newspapers bite the dust.

Then it was Mount Vesuvius in the flesh with Nutsy Fagin shouting from his seat about a tangled conspiracy involving Gary Webb and the CIA and journalistic cover-ups. If you don't recall, Webb was an investigative reporter who authored a series of 1996 pieces for the San Jose Mercury … Read more

Back when I was a neuroscientist, I participated in all sorts of "Women in Science and Technology" events and outreach programs. I have been thinking a lot lately about another kind of "woman in tech," namely those who are able create new jobs for themselves thanks to online connectivity and business tools.

This comes about in many ways. As a writer, for example, blogging has clearly revolutionized grassroots journalism. But beyond that, digital technologies have transformed all parts of the publishing world, creating new opportunities for product development, printing, distribution, and publicity outreach.

I got in touch with author/entrepreneurs Sarah Headrick and Sarah Rivera after coming across their site Custom Made for Kids, which has the quality design of a site you would expect from a large company, but operates from a Yahoo Store platform. I was taken by the concept and illustrations for their personalized children's storybook, The First Adventures of Incredible You, and decided to find out more about the partners behind this new venture, suspecting the the internet was the key ingredient powering every level of their startup company.

Headrick and Rivera confirm that this is the case:… Read more

Babe Ruth's idea of a workout was to wash down a meal of five hot dogs with a couple of brews--before heading out for a night on the town. Or so I remember the story told to me in the mid-1980s by the longtime Yankee's clubhouse man, Pete Sheehy.

Pete had been working with the team since 1927 and by the time I interviewed him he had burned through a few brain cells. But his memories of "the Babe" remained fresh (probably because all of us sportswriters kept pestering him for anecdotes.)

So this much I … Read more