Alan Jacobs

The web gives us the possibility of quoting our opponents in their entirety and, failing that, at least linking to their work.… More »

Keats said, "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter." What about those that are half-heard? Those inspire the imagination.… More »

Favored by artists and mathematicians, the drug powered a great deal of innovation in the 20th century.… More »

"Use this technology that's fun and indirectly and unconsciously you'll learn all the stuff we want you to learn."… More »

Search-engine optimization reshaped the craft of a good headline. Will Amazon's book promotions have a similar effect on novels?… More »

There is a tendency to imagine that work will someday be like today's leisure, heavy on multitasking and social media.… More »

The pace of technological and industry change makes tracking the ethics of Apple or Amazon remarkably difficult.… More »

Footnotes, endnotes, and marginalia have been a nuisance for centuries, but may have finally found a home.… More »

What looks like being ostentatiously thick-skinned may actually be a way to mobilize one's fans against an Internet enemy.… More »

Will the abundance of information reshape fiction as it has academic scholarship?… More »

Self-publishing an essay through Amazon is a reminder of the benefits of a traditional publishing house.… More »

Game designer Tom Armitage has created a wonderful device for archiving everything he links to in a given year: a bound book.… More »

Students may not be great at searching academic sources, but that's not helped by outdated tools.… More »

The success of e-education depends on whether universities can design online environments that are conducive to learning.… More »

Reading has always had a social dimension, but the promise of new reading services lies in something we don't yet have a name for.… More »

For many people, turning of their Internet connection can ramp up productivity. But if you rely on the web, you need a more precise offensive.… More »

In earlier times, people wished for jet packs and automated kitchens. Today, we are seeking a good to-do app.… More »

Recent years have seen an explosion of reading memoirs, the result of a recognition that this age-old habit is undergoing profound change.… More »

Most tech companies care about early adopters. The people who make Bible apps care about every last soul, which means they sometimes end up in distant realms of the linguistic and technical worlds.… More »

Maybe cognitive friction in our reading experiences -- be it in typeface choice or annotation mechanism -- is a good thing.… More »