Sparking Little Platoons
When I became a Washington, D.C. newsroom intern, Twitter usage was mandatory (primarily so that we could help run the magazine’s Twitter account). I...
Marginalia
I was a bit surprised that Matt directed his critique at Twitter rather than at other forms of social media. At least Twitter isn’t...
What Tolkien Can Teach Us About Twitter
In December of 2016, I observed, alluding to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, that Twitter was akin to Trump’s ring of power. My point...
In Praise of Boredom
G. K. Chesterton reproached the modern experience of boredom. In Heretics, he declares:
There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the...
Alone Together on the Internet
The happy traveler is apt to become even happier as he crosses a state line into Vermont or Maine. These two misfits of the...
Big Other is Watching. Hallelu!
All hail Big Other, in whom we live and move and have our being.
All hail Big Other, from whom so many blessings flow.
All hail...
The Irony of Twitter
Several years ago I followed an exchange on Twitter between two academics. Both were lamenting the (in their view) low quality work done by...
Stop Talking about Wendell Berry on Twitter
Editor's Note: Matt's piece kicks off a mini-symposium on the question of whether localists should use social media, and if so, how. As a...
Whither Liberalism?
We live, to borrow the title from Daniel T. Rodgers’s excellent 2011 book, in an age of fracture. Whether any time in history has been...
The Triumph of the Datum
The middle of the twentieth century abounded with writers who simultaneously analyzed their own times and predicted ours: Daniel Bell (The Coming of the...