A decade ago, long before the financial calamity now sweeping the world, the federal government's economic brain trust heard a clarion warning and declared in unison: You're wrong.

What Went Wrong

Louis Menand:

Is texting bringing us closer to the end of life as we currently tolerate it?

Back when most computing was done on a desktop, people used to complain about how much pressure they felt to respond quickly to e-mail. At least, in those days, it was understood that you might have walked away from your desk. There is no socially accepted excuse for being without your cell phone.

Thumbspeak

Andrew Sullivan:

For centuries, writers have experimented with forms that evoke the imperfection of thought, the inconstancy of human affairs, and the chastening passage of time. But as blogging evolves as a literary form, it is generating a new and quintessentially postmodern idiom that’s enabling writers to express themselves in ways that have never been seen or understood before. Its truths are provisional, and its ethos collective and messy. Yet the interaction it enables between writer and reader is unprecedented, visceral, and sometimes brutal. And make no mistake: it heralds a golden era for journalism.

Why I Blog

Fareed Zakaria:

Some of us—especially those under 60—have always wondered what it would be like to live through the kind of epochal event one reads about in books.

Well, this is it.

Amid all the difficulties and hardship that we are about to undergo, I see one silver lining. This crisis has—dramatically, vengefully—forced the United States to confront the bad habits it has developed over the past few decades. If we can kick those habits, today's pain will translate into gains in the long run.

There Is a Silver Lining

Jeffrey Sachs:

The era of small government is dead.

Either we once again invest in our future, notably through an expanded public sector, or we will lose our future.

The immediate need is to save the financial system through ample liquidity from the Federal Reserve, government backing of the commercial-paper market, and banking sector recapitalization, mainly by private money but also from public funds as needed.

Yet the greater challenge is not simply to stop a collapse, and certainly not to resurrect the housing bubble, an impossible and misguided goal that is still widely espoused through one scheme or another to get mortgages flowing again.

How to Rebuild America

Kevin Kelly:

Here is why you don't have to worry about the Singularity in your lifetime: thinkism doesn't work.

The Singularity is an illusion that will be constantly retreating -- always "near" but never arriving. We'll wonder why it never came after we got AI. Then one day in the future, we'll realize it already happened. The super AI came, and all the things we thought it would bring instantly -- personal nanotechnology, brain upgrades, immortality -- did not come. Instead other benefits accrued, which we did not anticipate, and took long to appreciate. Since we did not see them coming, we look back and say, yes, that was the Singularity.

Thinkism

What ever happened to privacy? The simple right to be left alone? Surveillance cameras track our movements. Governments monitor our phone calls, e-mails, and Internet habits. Insurance companies know what drugs we take. Banks and credit agencies keep tabs on our smallest purchases. And new technologies -- which gather, store, and share information as never before -- have made all of this possible.

But, as the acclaimed social thinker Wolfgang Sofsky shows in this brief and powerful defense of privacy, neither technology nor fears of terrorism deserve all the blame. Rather, through indifference and the desire for attention, we have been accomplices in the loss of our privacy. When we aren't resigning ourselves to privacy's disappearance as the inevitable price of living in a new age, we are eagerly embracing opportunities to divulge personal information to people we know--and, increasingly, to people we don't.

Dramatically demonstrating how much privacy we have already surrendered, Sofsky describes a day in the life of an average modern citizen--in other words, a person under almost constant scrutiny. He also briefly traces the changing status of privacy from ancient Rome to today, explains how liberty and freedom of thought depend on privacy, and points to some of the places where privacy is under greatest threat, from health to personal space.

Privacy is a timely and compelling reminder of just how important privacy is--and just how devastating its loss would be.

See also:

Privacy is one of the most important concepts of our time, yet it is also one of the most elusive.

Recently:

Noooooo problem ... don't worry about privacy ... privacy is dead ... there's no privacy ... just more databases ... that's what you want ... that's what you NEED ... Buy my shit! Buy it -- give me money! Don't worry about the consequences ... there's no consequences. If you give me money, everything's going to be cool, okay? It's gonna be cool. Give me money. No consequences, no whammies, money. Money for me ... Money for me, databases for you.

Privacy: A Manifesto

Terrorists, child abductors, muggers, delinquent teenagers, malicious colleagues ... Who wouldn't be worried? The world can be a dangerous place, for sure. But have we lost the knack of judging risk? Are we letting paranoia get the better of us? In this entertaining and thought-provoking book, based on the most up-to-date scientific research, Daniel and Jason Freeman highlight just how prominent paranoia is today. One in four of us have regular paranoid thoughts. The authors analyze the causes of paranoia, identifying the social and cultural factors that seem to be skewing the way we think and feel about the world around us. And they explain why paranoia may be on the rise and, crucially, what we can do to tackle it. Witty, clear, and compelling, Paranoia takes us beyond the tabloid headlines to pinpoint the real menace at the heart of twenty-first century culture.

Paranoia: The 21st Century Fear

There is a fashion these days for apologies: not apologies for the things that one has actually done oneself (that kind of apology is as difficult to make and as unfashionable as ever), but for public apologies by politicians for the crimes and misdemeanours of their ancestors, or at least of their predecessors. I think it is reasonable to call this pattern of political breast-beating the False Apology Syndrome.

What is this all about, and what does it signify? Does it mean that at long last the powerful are making a genuine effort to see things from the point of view of the weak, or is it, on the contrary, a form of moral exhibitionism that subverts genuine moral thought and conduct?

From the archive:

Lisa: "Can't you see the difference between earning something honestly and getting it by fraud?"

Bart: Hmm, I suppose, maybe, if, uh ... no. No, sorry, I thought I had it there for a second."

"Society just can't accept the idea that 50 percent of the population could die ... I'm sorry if I'm making people a little frightened, but I feel it's my role."

False Apology Syndrome

Chuck Klosterman issues his predictions for the coming century. Featuring robot wars, near annihilation, and President Tom Brady.

A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century