We’re still waiting for the internet revolution

At the risk of sounding like Jean Baudrillard, I would like to suggest that the internet revolution has not yet taken place.

So far, lots of very clever people have performed amazing feats of technical ingenuity. But for the most part our collective behaviour has so far failed to change enough to truly benefit us. Rather than making us freer, more relaxed and more efficient, in general everyone seems busier, more distracted and more tense.

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Mark Galeotti

Where have Russia’s Zs gone?

Unfortunately, technology is a bit like Hitler: it doesn’t know when to stop. No sooner has it annexed the Sudetenland than it starts invading Czechoslovakia. The world might be happier if Silicon Valley were put on a two-day week, to give us — and our social norms — time to catch up. Unless behaviour soon changes more significantly, we will have squandered digital technology’s real potential to solve second-order problems: the housing shortage, say, or transport congestion, or the spiralling cost of education.