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7 rules for rule-breakers
The Internet may be based on standards, but it hates rules. Thanks to the Internet we are now faced with almost daily choices about when to obey, and when to defy. If you’re going to be an online rule-breaker (and you probably should be, at least some of the time) these 7 rules can help with your rule-breaking.
1972: ELIZA, IANA and the search for (in)finite attention online
The 1972 Internet gave us ELIZA, a computer therapist, and IANA, which allocates IP addresses. Together they structure our contemporary dilemma: how do we get scarce, human attention in a world of infinite online distraction?
Another view of the Internet in 1971
Rob Cottingham, who was actually around in 1971, remembers the early Internet a little differently. He's annotated the Computer History Museum's 1971 ARPAnet map, which I included in my kick-off on my 40 years of looking back on the Internet: Thanks, Rob, for this...
One 40-year-old looks back on the Internet, c. 1971
As I approach my 40th birthday, I look back on 40 years of life online.
Why I’m happy to pay for the New York Times
My latest blog post for the Harvard Business Review is a celebration of the New York Times' new paywall. OK, maybe not a celebration of the paywall itself, but a celebration of the decision to alpha test the paywall on Canadian readers. This news gave me the same rush...
Twitter makes jet lag even more painful
It was 3 in the afternoon, but it could have been 3 in the morning to judge from the exhausted faces of a roomful of entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs constitute the up-and-coming generation of businesses in Cluj, Romania, and I had just spent the day talking them...
How many e-mail clients do you need?
Jodie Tonita is a lovely person. She is passionate, funny, kind to children and small animals, and an amazing hula-hooper. Unfortunately she was sent by our alien overlords to ensure I never do my actual work. As evidence, check out this message Jodie left on my...
How to write a blog post in 10 minutes
For Lent, I’ve decided to give up reading about digital fasts
Gosh, how I love digital fasts. And Lent 2011 has given us a bumper crop of digital fasters who now find 40 days without Facebook (or Twitter) more profound and painful than a month without booze, TV or smokes. Well, if they can live without us for 40 days (sniff!)...
How to sustain a social media presence in 3 hours a week
Feel like you don’t have enough time to create a meaningful social media presence? In this post I spell out my step-by-step process for creating and maintaining a high value, useful blog and Twitter presence in just (I mean it!) 3 hours a week.