Ask a member of the Millennial generation to chose between owning a smart phone or a car and, hand’s down, the majority will choose the smart phone.  All a person can do with a car is drive, but a smart phone brings the world to your fingertips.  At least that’s the view writer

After World War II, Winston Churchill expressed hope for a united Europe, where movement between borders would be free and where any European in any corner of that society  could say, “Here I feel at home.” (“The War for Europe,” by Henry Porter, Vanity Fair, February 2016, p

As the 2016 presidential campaign shifts into high gear, my Facebook page has become a minefield of  political rhetoric. People are choosing sides and a few are strident.  Nonetheless, at a time when opinions appear to be pulling the country apart, Ronald Inglehart, professor of Pol

Artificial intelligence (AI):  Will it bring in the best or the worst of times?  That is the question futurists, philosopher, techies and scientists are debating.  Recently, Stephen Hawking chipped in with his opinion: we are doomed.  Certainly, robotics is turning our economy on

As if she were a character in a short story by Franz Kafka, Emily Dreyfus woke up one morning to discover she was a robot.  Instead of a face, she had an iPad screen.  Instead of eyes, she used a camera to guide her, though it lacked peripheral vision.  Instead of a mouth, she had

One of the mixed blessings of the technological age is that we are trained to think in statistics and ratings figures.  A computer can measure and quantify large numbers, so, today, almost anything can be ranked, even the trivial.  “On a scale of 1- 10, how would rate your last oi

Unlike Al Qaeda which took pains to avoid the World Wide Web and the digital age, fearing their movements could be tracked, Isis has embraced technology, employing it to inflate the organization’s profile and using it as a recruiting tool.  According to writer Jared Cohen, the orga

Somewhere, I read the video camera on my computer could be used to spy on me.  Panicked, I called my technician to ask how I could protect my privacy.  He replied, “Stick masking tape over the lens.”  Okay, that was a cheap, low tech fix.  I got lucky.  But what about all the

The other day, a wide-eyed employee at my retirement center approached me as I was headed for the dining room. “I just looked you up on Wikipedia.  Gosh, I didn’t know your were famous.”   I laughed. Being on Wikipedia doesn’t make me famous.  In fact, I recall an insider

I may have mentioned earlier that the house cleaning chicks at the retirement center where I live laugh at my flip top cell phone because it does nothing but allow me to make phone calls. Yesterday I found the pair of them on a  break, crouching against a wall.  Neither was talking.