We last left Parks And Recreation on a bittersweet note: Leslie had just been elected to city council, but Ben was taking a job working on a Congressional campaign in Washington D.C. Both good things, but this meant they’d need to be apart during what would arguably be the most difficult time in…

Over the past month, I’ve been watching Dalton Caldwell’s App.net experiment with much interest. Essentially, he’s trying to rebuild Twitter from the ground up, only as a fully user and developer-supported network. In other words, he’s pissed off — as many people are — about some of the changes…

A month or so ago, Nicolas Nova asked me to write an essay for a project he was doing. He said they'd been working on a catalogue of novel "gestures, postures and digital rituals" and could I write about that, please, as a kind of foreword. "Curious Rituals is a research project conducted at  Art…

(This story appears on the Nov. 7, 2011 cover of Forbes.) Here’s that rare Steve Jobs story, one that’s never been told, about the company that got away. Jobs had been tracking a young software developer named Drew Houston, who blasted his way onto Apple Apple’s radar screen when he…

There’s a moment in the third act of The Avengers when one of the film’s heroes reveals his deepest secret, then performs an extreme act of heroism. It’s so over-the-top that…

“If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else.” ― Dave Ramsey Most athletes don’t make it to the Olympics. Most startups don’t strike gold. Most writers don’t get on The New York Times’ Best Sellers List. And that’s okay. We all have our own definitions of success, and…

Intense, emotional, and frequently out of control, the hip-hop superstar Kanye West allowed his antics to turn him into a national joke and to earn him the criticism of two American presidents. Would a massive concert tour with his friend and rival Jay-Z offer the troubled rapper a taste of…

When I was in high school, I didn’t have to worry about creating and sticking to a fitness routine. I had football coaches who took care of that for me. I just had to show up at the weight room at the designated time with the rest of my teammates and do the scheduled workout. Because of that…

By Farhad Manjoo On August 25, 2012 In the fall of 2008, just a year after it released the iPhone, Apple became the most profitable phone maker in the world. The milestone wasn’t much remarked upon by the press. At the time, Apple was still selling only a tiny number of phones compared to its…

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Tony Valdes. Greek mythology might sound like an obscure area of study, as if it is only relevant to wizened old professors in posh offices at Ivy League schools.  Or perhaps you associate the topic with vague memories of sensationalized Hollywood summer…

“You can do multi finger gestures on it, and boy have we patented it!” Steve Jobs used this to describe the iPhone back in 2007 at Apple’s keynote ( 7:20 ). A remark that was initially responded to with lighthearted laughter we see, through the power of hindsight, that they were all but joking. In a…

The last few weeks have been awash in nerds and geeks. ChipChick published a guide to dating a geek girl, while CNN decried “wannabe models” pretending to be nerds. Before that came the…

by Oliver ReichensteinApple has been working on its file system and with iOS it had almost killed the concept of folders — before reintroducing them with a peculiar restriction: only one…

Exclusively focusing on technological problems leads us to look for fixes in the wrong places. Another day, another New York Times story about technology addiction. It's almost like they are trying…

In the space of just over a decade, Christopher Nolan has shot from promising British indie director to undisputed master of a new brand of intelligent escapism. Joseph Bevan anatomises his body…

[For more, visit the Communication Insight Center.] Last week, I played the piano for my friend Macy Robison's cabaret-style recital Children Will Listen. The 1,400-seat Browning Center auditorium…

March 2012I'm not a very good speaker. I say "um" a lot. Sometimes I have to pause when I lose my train of thought. I wish I were a better speaker. But I don't wish I were a better speaker like I…

There’s a photograph in my living room that I took three years ago in a Vietnamese diner in Vegas. It’s of a girl I used to see, but do not think about anymore. It’s in black and…

Posted about an hour ago I suspect Mat Honan wishes he could hide the fact that he was listening to Cher and the Black Eyed Peas eight months ago on Rdio. But he can't.

When we cover topics that are a little deeper than say, Frank Sinatra s slang , there are always some people who pick up what we re laying down, some who understand it but respectfully disagree, and…