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[also at the NYR Blog] “What food for speculation each person affords, as he writes his hurried epistle, dictated either by fear, or greed, or more powerful love!” —Andrew Wynter (1854) For a brief time in the 1850s the telegraph companies of England and the United States thought that they could (and should) […]
MoreAda’s Birthday
Ada Byron, later Countess of Lovelace, was born 197 years ago, 10 December 1815, so it’s safe to say that many bicentennial preparations are already getting under way. What an unusual sort of celebrity she has become, after nearly two centuries of total obscurity. Let us remember: she was forgotten. Today she is the Google […]
MoreAutocorrect, Unexpurgated
Even misspelled, a certain word may not appear in The New York Times. So for those who cannot live without @scarthomas, the full version of my Autocorrect piece is here.
MoreHarald Bluetooth? Really?
I wrote this—Inescapably Connected—eleven years ago. There was no such thing as “iPhone.” Bluetooth and Wi-Fi were barely coming into view. The “Network” was rising all around. We sipped information through straws that were about to become wormholes. Some of it has come true.
MoreMeta Enough for You?
For the Annals of Recursion. 1. In The Information (pages 408–409, for those who wish to follow along) I mention a poet named Thomas Freeman, who lived from approximately 1590 to 1630. I say he is “utterly forgotten” and add that he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry. I would never have heard of Thomas […]
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