Digiphrenia

In the digital universe, our personal history and its sense of narrative is succeeded by our social networking profile—a snapshot of the current moment. The information itself—our social graph of friends and likes—is a product being sold to market researchers in order to better predict and guide our futures. Using past data to steer the future, however, ends up negating the present. The futile quest for omniscience we looked at earlier in this chapter encourages us, particularly busines...

 Life is an Act of Endless Creativity

Life is an act of endless creativity. With all its simmering tragedy and occasional catastrophe, a human life is an amazing thing to contemplate and experience. None of us had any special plan laid out for us when we were born. By abandoning the idea that and say, "What's done is done. Now how can I make the best of the here and now?" Life is never static. Despite catastrophic tragedies, life has persisted in evolving new varieties of unimaginable forms. I find comfort in the narrative of evo...

 Creating Online Fictions of Ourselves

The most effective young Facebook users, however—the ones who will probably be winners if Facebook turns out to be a model of the future they will inhabit as adults—are the ones who create successful online fictions about themselves. They tend their doppelgängers fastidiously. They must manage offhand remarks and track candid snapshots at parties as carefully as a politician. Insincerity is rewarded, while sincerity creates a lifelong taint. Certainly, some version of this principle exi...