A review of The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves by W. Brian Arthur. Who still uses fax machines (other than Mia Farrow fans)? A review of Cassette From My Ex: Stories and Soundtracks of Lost Loves by Jason Bitner. Since stacks of vinyl are quickly disappearing, is it possible that we will be handing our kids our old hard drives for them to look through or USB drives for them to play with? More on Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music by Greg Milner. The father of video games: From a few notes scribbled on a notepad, Ralph Baer invented a new industry. Global Impositioning Systems: Is GPS technology actually harming our sense of direction? Enthusiasts use GPS to track down hidden booty. Free municipal wireless sounds like a great idea for any city that has already invested heavily in high-tech infrastructure — too bad there’s no more money to pay for the last link of the chain. Happy 40th birthday, Internet: In 1969 a UCLA team sent the first message over ARPANET — and fundamentally changed humanity (and more and more and more). A review of The Tyranny of E-mail: The Four Thousand Year Journey to Your Inbox by John Freeman (and more). Nary a decade after its coronation as the lingua franca of technological communication, has email already lost its crown? A review of Total Recall: How the e-memory revolution will change everything by Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell. A review of Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger (and the first chapter; and more). Private Worlds: Lives spent lurking too long in the shadows of the virtual. Stop your search engines: Forcing ourselves offline may be the path to true knowledge.
