Latest publications

How to win friends and influence people…through social media

Dale Carnegie's How to win friends and influence people could be described as the father of relationship marketing and the grandfather of social media. Two recent blog posts revisit the book and highlight its implications for the social media era. J. Eddie Smith's...

The single woman’s guide to texting

My husband and I are closing in on our 10th wedding anniversary, and for the most part, that is great news. About 11.5 years out of our past 12 years together have been very very happy, and if you zero out the months that were tense because one of us had a new Macbook...

Research reveals people can survive up to 24 hours without Internet access

I'm fascinated by the number of people who are experimenting with different forms of unplugging: journalists, bloggers and tweeters who take some kind of solo holiday from connectivity. But a recent study at the University of Maryland took a larger-scale approach,...

An evangelical perspective on information overload

I was fascinated to come across an evangelical take on the problem of information overload. Becky Sweat's article in The Good News reads: information overload can distract us from the most important priority in our lives—our relationship with God. Indeed, a healthy...

10 expert predictions on how the Internet will affect social relations

The latest Pew survey on the Future of the Internet looks at the effect of technology on social relations, and the expectations of 895 Internet experts are overwhelmingly optimistic. It shouldn't come as a major surprise that a sample of people who are selected for...

thirtysomething meets the Internet

When I was sixteen I hated Jane Austen. I read Pride and Prejudice, but couldn't get beyond the anachronism. Every plot point rested on the impossibility of speaking directly and honestly: Mr. Darcy, if you could simply explain yourself to Miss Bennet, I'm sure she...

The upside to teen life online

Frankasaurus has a great blog post about her experiences growing up online, comparing the impact of chat rooms on a socially awkward teenagers with the experience of using social media today. As she writes about her early years in online chat: It wasn’t long before I...

For Oprah.com: Gifts for the geeky dad (even after Father’s Day)

Do you have a tech-loving Dad in your life? This post for Oprah.com offers great gift ideas to show him that he’s your favorite geek.

How to stop waiting by the inbox

I recently sent one of those e-mails that leaves you feeling like a shmuck. Not because of anything I wrote, but because I knew I would be obsessively checking my inbox every five minutes until I got a response. There are all kinds of reasons you might find yourself...

A balanced look at the mental impact of social media

"The Internet is distracting and isolating and diminishes our capacity for focused work." "The Internet is transformative and connecting and is making us steadily smarter." The conversation about the Internet's mental and social impact often feels like a debate...