Essays
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Page 49
Cloud computing for the confused
Cloudy with a chance of sun
It’s such an appealing trope, the notion of a big container filled with Everything That Matters, everything that ever was. We don’t like to think of things disappearing forever, vanishing without a trace. Especially ourselves. And maybe that’s what’s comforting about the Cloud, both as metaphor and engineered reality.
Essays
5 minute read
Living in a world of virtual reality
Whatever happened to “be here now”?
From Google Glass to theme park adventures, technology increasingly mediates and possibly attenuates our experience of social and physical realities.
Essays
4 minute read
A touching father-son moment
Bedtime story
There's no father-son moment quite like the bedtime story.
Essays
3 minute read
'Ainadamar' and 'The Monuments Men'
Is art worth dying for?
Two very different recent works, the opera Ainadamar and the film The Monuments Men, ask essentially the same questions: Is art worth dying for? Does civilization depend on the presence of the arts?
Essays
4 minute read
What is the artist's job?
Provocation or creation?
The artist needs to attract attention to his or her work, but there needs to be something worth paying attention to.
Essays
2 minute read
Ten reasons to be grumpy on Valentine’s Day
Whether you're in a relationship or not, there's plenty to be cranky about on February 14.
Essays
3 minute read
My Open Letter to People Who Write Open Letters
Nothing is more mouthwatering than a public dressing-down. To share your indignation and savor the complex schadenfreude of imagining your target imagining me reading your Open Letter is a heady brew indeed.
Essays
4 minute read
On becoming a performer
Study in A Minor for Voice, Solo Guitar, and Nervous Writer
After 30 years in the audience, watching others perform his scripts, it's time to take to the stage.
Essays
7 minute read
The Dearth and Death of Shakespeare
Saving our English curriculum from minorities
From the apoplexy over Webster’s Third and the much-maligned metastasization of social media, to "pearl clutching” over the lost Shakespeare, Milton, and Chaucer courses, it’s never about the language at all. It’s about any threat to the status quo.
Essays
5 minute read