Essay | Winter 2025
The Tyranny of Now
There’s no time like the present to revisit the warning of forgotten media theorist Harold Innis: “Enormous improvements in communication have made understanding more difficult.”
Nicholas Carr
Nicholas Carr is the author of several books on technology and culture, including the Pulitzer Prize nominee The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (W.W. Norton, 2010; updated 2020) and Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart (W. W. Norton, 2025).
In The New Atlantis
Correspondence | Winter 2022
Don’t Wait for Silver Bullets for Social Media Reform
A framework to protect privacy and promote the “public interest” gives us what we need now: the right start.
How to Fix Social Media
A century ago, new media tech brought fake news, privacy woes, and censorship fights — and American democracy tamed it. It’s time for new legislation that revives the wisdom of that era.
