Nora Young Searches for the Soul of The Virtual Self

 I discuss Nora Young's new book for Nurun's Digital for Real Life blog:

In her new book The Virtual Self: How Our Digital Lives Are Altering the World Around Us, Nora Young explains how the combination of social media and geolocative smartphones now allow us to create elaborate shadow selves comprised entirely of data. Never before have we been able to share our daily activities with the world and also have them link back to our physical locations. The result is “a Data Map, a digital version of our earthly selves.”
The explosion of self-generated personal data has happened so quickly that we have yet to fully understand its implications. Through a combination of research, participatory journalism and in-depth interviews, Young considers the unintended consequences of our ability to post photos of everything we eat to Instagram and track our spending habits via Mint.com.

Read the full review.

Toronto Content Strategy Meetup Reboot

Take a glimpse at the new logo for the Toronto Content Strategy Meetup.

Almost makes you want to sign up for our fall series of guest talks, doesn't it?

How the Betamax, the TRS-80 and the Intellivision taught me to be a better novelist

In keeping with my family’s affection for doomed product lines and hexed formats, we purchased a Betamax. The year before, we’d bought a TRS-80 instead of an Apple II, and in due course we’d unbox Mattel’s Intellivision, instead of Atari’s legendary gizmo. This was good training for a writer, for the sooner you accept the fact that you are a deluded idiot who is always out of step with reality the better off you will be.

-- Colson Whitehead in the New Yorker