From the category archives:

Culture

A selection of my published work since 2001 is available here. Contact me with any specific requests.

Longfellow to Linda Lovelace

Although it has many features of an academic compendium — page numbers that reach into four digits and scores of scholarly contributors — this new

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James Wood on Richard Powers

The fiction of Richard Powers sometimes resembles a dying satyr—above the waist is a mind full of serious thought, philosophical reflection, deep exploration of music

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How the Internet has democratized drinking

We are moving from a monologue to a dialogue, and this reflects a fundamental truth about wine: It is a matter of taste, and taste

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“Buycotting”

It has many names: “buycotting,” ethical consumerism, moral economics, latte activism, critical consumption. Whatever you call it, buying is getting ever more political across the

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“Authors of our own ambitions”

Alain de Botton: A kinder, gentler philosophy of success | Video on TED.com.…

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Choire Sicha on Media Literacy

Stealth marketing, direct advertisement and product placement work only on the clueless, and our immersive, hippo-like wallowing in the marketplace serves only to make us

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The Mzungu Thing

The safer parts of Africa have become a workshop for high-concept philanthropy, wrapping adventurism in a veneer of charity.

via Alex Halperin, The Mzungu Thing

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A Short Manifesto on the Future of Attention

So this is what it’s come to: when an attention gift economy seems more practical and sustainable than an exchange economy for information commodities[.]

via …

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