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Love in flames: finding the joy in hostile comments

January 18, 2013

“I don’t know why you care about the shit that a bunch of total strangers say about you on the Internet.” This was my mom’s delightfully candid and potentially comforting response to this week’s comment eruption on my Harvard Business Review post. My mom is quite an extraordinary person, but her most extraordinary trait may [...]

Video: 10 reasons to stop apologizing for your online life

January 9, 2012

It’s time to stop apologizing for your life online. That was the central message of my talk at TEDx Victoria in November, now on YouTube. From valuing your online attention to taking your online creativity seriously as real art, I argue that we can only unlock the potential of the Internet when we stop talking [...]

3 practices that restore the meaning of friendship on Facebook

November 18, 2011

Do you insert audible air quotes when you talk about your Facebook “friends”? If so, it’s time to strip away those air quotes and get serious about your online friends, on Facebook and beyond. That’s part of the commitment to embracing your real online life that I’ll be talking about tomorrow at TEDxVictoria. My TEDx [...]

6 solutions to the sadness of social media

September 27, 2011

Is social media making us sad? On the UK’s Channel 4 News website, Benjamin Cohen is concerned that social media is changing the nature of friendship, and has adjusted his use of social media in response: I’ve stopped sharing as much, full stop….I’m not suggesting that everyone else should do the same, but I’m suggesting [...]

140-character lessons in how to live your real life online

May 19, 2011

Your online relationships, conversations and creativity are as real as anything you do offline. That’s the message I delivered last weekend at Northern Voice, Canada’s leading blogging conference. My talk, titled Stop Apologizing for Your Online Life, jumped off from the HBR post I wrote last year (which itself jumped off from a much longer [...]

Listening to the voice that says it’s ok to be online

April 3, 2011

I saw my first Broadway musical in 1979: a revival of I saw my first Broadway musical in 1979: a revival of The King and I starring Yul Brynner and Constance Towers. 1979 was the end of a the decade in which microphones became ubiquitous on Broadway, so I heard a King who captured me [...]

The 5 questions to ask about online distraction

December 13, 2010

Whether you’re worried about the Internet’s impact on your attention span, or tired of hearing about how life online is driving us to distraction, these 5 questions will help you think more deeply about online distraction.

The suffering of technology users

December 7, 2010

I love this paragraph because I think it distills and represents the pain and suffering so many people now feel around the role of technology in their lives: I like technology just as much as the next person, but sometimes I find myself feeling overwhelmed with it all. I rely on technology everyday to do [...]

Another voice for your real life online

September 20, 2010

Suzanne Moore at the Mail Online has written my favorite recent social media polemic, Why my friends on Facebook and Twitter matter as much as those in the real world. As a journalist, I am a fan of both Facebook and Twitter and am rather bored of people telling me that I shouldn’t be talking to [...]

2 weeks of tips on meaningful living online

August 2, 2010

Unplugging is not the only way to take control of your relationship to the Internet. If you want to create a more meaningful life and a healthier world, there are ways to pursue that online as well as offline. But you need to find tools that are more nuanced than the off switch. If you’re [...]

Responding to online criticism: reflections on my WNYC interview

July 29, 2010

Most people don’t even read the blog they’re responding to. That’s one of the comments that came up during my interview yesterday on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer show. I spoke with Amy Eddings (sitting in for Brian Lehrer) about my recent post for Harvard Business Review on how to stop apologizing for your online life. Not [...]

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