Alan Jacobs

Can Kevin Kelly and Nick Carr both be right? A plausible thought about the future of the book. More »

The preservationist understood just how fragile America's folk musical traditions are. More »

James Joyce's narration leads us through the difficulty of finding knowledge in a pre-Internet era, reminding us how lucky we are to have this technology, despite all its flaws. More »

Filtering is the key to dealing with the Internet. Here's how my system works. More »

Should publishers give readers a complimentary e-book with the purchase of a hard copy? More »

If knowing how to program is tomorrow's "basic literacy," I'll probably die as an illiterate code plagiarist. More »

You can't judge a work by the length of its sentences (or Tweets). More »

While new pedagogical aids make sense for students, let's not forget that professors are desperate to escape the old ways of teaching, too. More »

A typographer objects to the use of Verdana. More »

The bundle of knowledge and certification that have long-defined higher education is coming apart, but what happens now? More »

People once copied quotations longhand of writers they hoped to emulate. Can copying and pasting inspire us just as well? More »

A new correspondent on The Atlantic Technology Channel will be covering reading and writing in an age of distraction More »

After the book was published, I read it in a state of admiration for the acuity with which it made sense of an extraordinary moment More »

"No one understands the true genius of Wikipedia if they look only at the current version of any given page." More »