Mike Pilewski writes about life, politics and culture in the United States
Is time travel real? According to Hollywood, we’ll know nine months from now, when a young Michael J. Fox steps out of a specially converted automobile and grabs a sports almanac and a hoverboard. According to Internet folklore, other time travelers have already lived through 2015. The best-known of them, John Titor, described this year as a turning point in … >>
The Internet has come a long way in the last 25 years. Once the exclusive domain of scientists and the military, it’s now in the offices, living rooms and phones of almost everyone on the planet. One thing, however, has not changed: the propensity of users with inadequate social skills to torment one another in nitpicky arguments. This became more … >>
Where do you go first to get medical advice? To your doctor? Your pharmacist? Or do you do what many Americans do and go straight to the Internet? Describe to a search engine any health problem in English, and you’ll see that health advice is some of the most sought-after information there is. Mixed in among the writings of established … >>
This morning began with a pleasant surprise. I had just arrived at my office when a very dear colleague came in, holding a piece of cake. She started singing “Happy Birthday”. I am not normally one to turn down a piece of cake, but I do believe in telling the truth. “I’m sorry, but it’s not my birthday,” I said. … >>
We all knew this day would come. Last Friday, the Münchener Filmpassage shut its doors. This wasn’t just any video-rental place. It had the largest selection of English-language films anywhere in Germany, including numerous titles released directly to video that no one would have known about otherwise. I’d go in looking for one film and come out with four or … >>
If you tried to read the English-language Wikipedia last Wednesday, you couldn’t. Every page was replaced with a black screen explaining that, as part of a protest, the content of the free online encyclopedia was being hidden for 24 hours. (A banner appeared at the top of Wikipedia’s Spanish- and German-language pages, but this was hardly more distracting than the … >>
Last week, some of us in the print media observed a moment of silence for the death of a relative. After 146 years in business, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer printed its last newspaper on March 17. Unable to make a profit, the Hearst Corporation, which owns the P-I, has turned the paper into an online-only edition. You’d think that enough readers … >>