I Live in the Future & Here's How It Works: Why Your World, Work, and Brain Are Being Creatively Disrupted

by Nick Bilton

  Special, Special, Special Thanks

  Danielle Bilton, for your patience, understanding, love, and baked goods.

  Special, Special Thanks

  This book would not have happened without the invaluable input from following people: David Carr, John Mahaney, Karen Blumenthal, Matthew Fishbane, Mark Hansen, Katinka Matson, John Brockman, Clay Shirky, Clive Thompson, Larry Ingrassia, Tom Bodkin, Mike Young, John Markoff, Tim O’Reilly, Sam Sifton, Hubert McCabe, Mark Bittman.

  New York Times

  Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Janet Robinson, Martin Nisenholtz, Bill Keller, John Geddes, Jill Abramson, Rick Berke, Damon Darlin, David Gallagher, Suzanne Spector, Michael Zimbalist, Ted Roden, Alexis Lloyd, Justin Ouellette, Patricia McSweeney, Amy Hyde, Susan Edgerly, Brian Stelter, Jenna Wortham, Jim Roberts, Doug Latino, Kelly Doe, Brad Stone, Ashlee Vance, Steve Lohr, Matt Richtel, Miguel Helft, Tim O’Brien, Claire Cain Miller, Michael Golden, Evan “Scoop” Sandhaus, Bill Cunningham, Glenn Kramon, Rob Larson, Rob Samuels, Kevin McKenna, and Fiona Spruill.

  Friends, Family, “The Book,” & The Internet

  The entire team at Random House, including Tina, Meredith, Jacob, Tara, Rachelle, and Jo. Emily Nussbaum, Jack Dorsey, Andrew Hearst, Joel Johnson, Dennis Crowley, Alex Rainert, Karen Bonna Rainert, Eric Beug, Dick Lipton, Naveen Selvadurai, Richard Nash, Brian Lam, Lux Alptraum, Nick Denton, Jonah Lehrer, Dan O’Sullivan, Nick Carr, Nicholas Felton, Kati London, Nora Abousteit, Bre Pettis, Tim Hannay, Steven Pinker, Dave Morin, Clifford Nass, Maria Popova, Red Burns, Tom Igoe, Anil Dash, Fred Wilson, Chloe Sladden, Max Whitney, New York University’s ITP students and alumni, Linda Stone, Gideon Lichfield, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Jack Shafer, Michael Caruso, Baratunde Thurston, Frank Rose, Joe Wikert, Jimmy DiResta, Dan Gillmor, Sarah Slobin, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Chris Anderson, Mathias Crawford, Noah Robischon, the ladies and gentlemen of the Academy, Paul Berger, Kevin Slavin, Deborah Auer, Lane Becker, Jennifer Rodriguez Thor Muller, Denise & Michael, Aida & Jorge, Nancy & Sylvia, Cathy, Monica & Franky, Lissa and Debbie, Katie Cotton, Deborah Estrin, Diane Sawyer, Gillian Reagan, Nate Tabor, Zach Klein, Gary Vaynerchuk, Alicia Gibb, Andrew Savikas, Rachel D. Abrams, all the nice robots in the world, Sara Winge, Dale Dougherty, Jennifer 8. Lee, Gina Blaber, Brady Forrest, Kenyatta Cheese, Matt Buchanan, Andrea Sheehan, Scott Beale, Ori, Mor Naaman, Kim Naci, Mike Sharon, Jason Brush, Derek Gottfrid & Nick Thuesen, Jeff Koyen, Peter Ng, Bruce Headlam, Rex Sorgatz, Chad and Summer, Jennifer Magnolfi, Kio Stark, Nick Kristoff, John & Deirdre, Bob and Jamie, Ryan B., Marc and Tiff, Max and Roisin, Andrei K., Kevin E., Morgan, Leanne Citrone, Michael Citrone, Wuca & Pillow, Terry Bilton, Sandra and David Reston, Eboo Bilton and Weter, Betty and Len Bilton, Stephen, Amanda, Ben and Posh Jacobs, Daniel Jacobs, Ivan & Elsa Marin, Nathalie Marin, Chris Marin, Andy, Carm, George Jr., George Sr., Sonia, Joe, Chela, Tony, Jim, Andrea, Stephanie, Jessica, Lindsay, Diego and Yvonne, Cesar and Beatriz Southside, Sam H., Ariel Kaminer, Vint Cerf, Larry and Sergey, Tim Berners-Lee, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates.

  Smallest, But Not Least

  Pixel, Hip Hop, & Magnolia.

  Kthxbye!

  notes and sources

  The following sources represent a portion of the research and interviews used for this book. Additional links, reference papers, and interview quotes can be found online at nickbilton.com.

  Introduction: cancel my subscription

  1 Canceling my subscription: Ryan Singel, “Times Techie Envisions the Future of News,” Wired, March 2009, http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/03/the-future-of-n. Also: Richard MacManus, “Sensors, Smart Content, and the Future of News,” Read Write Web, March 2009, http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/sensors_smart_content_and_the_future_of_news.php

  2 Print advertising: Newspaper Association of America, U.S. advertising sales report.

  3 The 10-megabyte hard drive: From an (1984) IBM print advertisement.

  Chapter 1: bunnies, markets, and the bottom line

  The source for some material in this chapter comes from confidential interviews with a senior-level Playboy manager and confidential interviews with sources close to the company; a personal interview with Jo Mason; a personal interview with Gram Ponante, a journalist covering the porn industry; personal interviews with Ollie Joone, Farley Cahen, Adella Curry of Digital Playground; and an interview on piracy with an adult entertainment industry employee.

  1 Internet and censorship: Peter Johnson, “Pornography Drives Technology: Why Not to Censor the Internet,” Federal Communications Law Journal 49 (1996): 217–26. Though not cited, further support comes from Jonathan Coopersmith, “Pornography, Technology and Progress,” ICON 4 (1998).

  2 VHS won the tape wars: Multiple news articles, including “The Beta-VHS Battle Offers Some Insights Into Coming DVD War,” The Wall Street Journal (2006); “Porn Industry May Be Decider in Blu-ray, HD-DVD Battle,” PC World (2006); “June 4, 1977: VHS Comes to America,” Wired (2010); and “Porn Business Driving DVD Technology,” Reuters (2005).

  3 Figures collected by AVN Media Network: AVN is an adult industry media group.

  4 How consumers decide which adult sites they are willing to pay for: Benjamin Edelman, “Red Light States: Who Buys Online Adult Entertainment?” Journal of Economic Perspectives 23 no. 1 (2009).

  5 Gawker Media: Personal interview with Nick Denton, chief executive and founder of Gawker Media. Further interviews with Brian Lam, managing editor at Gawker Media and editor of Gizmodo.com, and Lux Alptraum, editor of Fleshbot.com and boinkology.com.

  Chapter 2: scribbling monks and comic books

  1 The telephone: “The Telephone,” New York Times, March 22, 1876.

  2 The phonograph: “The Phonograph,” New York Times, November 7, 1877.

  3 Historians note that the railway brought an incredible amount of anxiety: Personal interview with Anne Harrington, Chair and Professor for the History of Science, Harvard College. Also “The ‘Railway Spine’—A New Disease,” New York Times, October 15, 1866; Ralph Harrington, “The Railway Accident: Trains, Trauma and Technological Crisis in Nineteenth-Century Britain” (1999) http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/irs/irshome/papers/rlyacc.htm; and Ralph Harrington, “The Neuroses of the Railway,” History Today, July 1994.

  4 One of the largest libraries in Europe: Online library database history, Northern England.

  5 Printing press: Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Also: The Society of Printers for the Study and Advancement of the Art of Printing, Harvard College Books Library, Boston, Mass.: 1906.

  6 Smaller, more portable books: David Finkelstein, and Alistair McCleery, Introduction to Book History, London: Routledge/ Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2007.

  7 Early newspaper articles described the television: David Hajdu, The Ten-cent Plague: The Great Comic-book Scare and How It Changed America, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.

  8 In a classic article in Newsweek: Ken Olsen reference, Financial World (1976); Clifford Stoll, “The Internet? Bah!,” Newsweek, February 27, 1995.

  9 Yet studies show that older technologies … emit stronger electronic waves than WiFi hubs: Series of online articles including: Cyrus Farviar, “UK Doctor Puts the Smackdown on Wifi Fearmongers,” Engadget, December 12, 2006; Richi Jennings, “Wi-Fi Causes Child Cancer?,” Computer World; Collection of external links http://blogs.computerworld.com/node/5543.

  10 A wave of books: Sven Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age, New York: Faber and Faber, 2006; Maggie Jackson, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 2009; Lee Siegel, Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob, New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2008; Colleen Cordes and Edward Miller, eds. “Fool’s Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood,” Alliance for Childhood, http://drupal6.allianceforchildhood.org/fools_gold May 28, 2010.

  11 Reader’s Digest: James Playsted Wood, Of Lasting Interest: The Story of the Reader’s Diges
t, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1958.

  12 The New Yorker published a five-part investigative series: John Bainbridge, “Little Magazine,” The New Yorker, November 17, 1945: 33–42; November 24: 36–47; December 1: 40–51; December 8: 38–53; and December 15: 38–59.

  13 E. B. White captured this classic human response: E. B. White, “Irtnog,” The New Yorker, November 20, 1935: 17–18.

  14 Stone calls this “continuous partial attention”: Several blog posts by Linda Stone in reference to attention and e-mail on lindastone.net.

  15 Crystal, a linguist: “David Crystal,” http://www.davidcrystal.com/David_Crystal/biography.htm.

  16 editor at large Jesse Sheidlower: In-person interview, 2009.

  17 Research shows that they understand how to converse with different audiences: David Crystal, Txtng: The Gr8 Db8, Oxford University Press, 2008; Robert Provine, Robert Spencer, and Darcy Mandell, “Emotional Expression Online,” Journal of Language and Social Psychology, October 2009; Interviews with Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large, North America, Oxford English Dictionary, 2009 and 2010.

  Chapter 3: your cognitive road map

  1 Foursquare: Dennis Crowley personal interview, March, 2010.

  2 Twitter references: Personal interview with Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, for the New York Times, 2010.

  3 Imagined communities: Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso, 2006.

  4 Regina Lewis, AOL’s consumer adviser, said: Linnie Rawlinson, Linnie and Nick Hunt, “Jackson Dies, Almost Takes Internet with Him,” CNN.com, June 26, 2009, http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/06/26/michael.jackson.internet/index.html

  5 A Twitter tussle: George Packer, “Stop the World,” Weblog post, Newyorker.com, January 29, 2010, http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2010/01/stop-the-world.html. Also David Carr, “Why Twitter Will Endure,” New York Times, January 1, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/weekinreview/03carr.html. Also: Personal blog posts on http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com.

  6 The Internet is not only breaking down barriers: Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse M. Shapiro, “What Drives Media Slant? Evidence From U.S. Daily Newspapers,” Econometrica 78 no. 1 (2010): 35–71; C. R. Sunstein, “The Daily We, Is the Internet Really a Blessing for Democracy?,” Boston Review 26 (2001): 4–9.

  Chapter 4: suggestions and swarms

  1 Difficulty in making predictions: Clive Thompson, “If You Liked This, You’re Sure to Love That,” New York Times Magazine, November 23, 2008; Also: Eric Schmidt, online video from conference interview, 2010.

  2 More than half of society generally trusts complete strangers: Rick Wilson, phone interview, 2010.

  3 The cold-start problem: Timothy Bickmore and Justine Cassell, “Relational Agents: A Model and Implementation of Building User Trust,” CHI 2001 3 no. 1 (2001): 396–403.

  4 “Computers as virtually infallible”: BJ Fogg and Hsiang Tseng, “The Elements of Computer Credibility,” CHI 99 (1999): 80–87. Also: Phone interview with BJ Fogg, Stanford University.

  5 Why people feel comfortable with well-designed sites: “Jakob Nielsen,” in-person discussion based on New York Times interview, March, 2010.

  6 “Swarm intelligence”: Ashley J.W Ward, David J.T. Sumpter, Iain D. Couzin, et al., “Quorum Decision-making Facilitates Information Transfer in Fish Shoals,” Proceedings from the National Academy of Sciences no.105.19 (2008): 6948–953. Also: Haewoon Kwak, Changhyun Lee, Hosung Park, et al., “What Is Twitter, a Social Network or a News Media?” WWW 2010 (2010); Gilad Lotan, “ReTweet Revolution,” ReTweet Revolution, June 2009, http://giladlotan.org/viz/iranelection/index.html; Personal interview with Gilad Lotan, Microsoft Research Labs.

  7 Young people tended to share political news: Brian Stelter, “Finding Political News Online, the Young Pass It On,” New York Times, March 27, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/world/americas/27iht-27voters.11460487.html.

  Chapter 5: when surgeons play video games

  1 “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”: Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Atlantic July–August, 2008, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/. Also Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, New York: W.W. Norton, 2010.

  2 A number of books: Mark Bauerlein, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (or, Don’t Trust Anyone under 30), New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2008. Also: Maggie Jackson, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 2008.

  3 Stanislas Dehaene: Unite de Neuroimageire Cognitive. Dehaene, Stanislas. http://www.unicog.org/main/pages.php?page=Stanislas_Dehaene.

  4 Develop a new area within the brain: Manuel Carreiras, Mohamed L. Seghier, Silvia Baquero, et al., “An Anatomical Signature for Literacy,” Nature 461 (November 15, 2009): 983–86.

  5 Our magnificent minds adapt: Gary Small, Teena Moody, Prabha Siddarth, et al., “Your Brain on Google: Patterns of Cerebral Activation during Internet Searching,” American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry 17 no. 2 (2009): 116–26. Also personal interview with Gary Small at the SEMEL Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA.

  6 Neuroplasticity: Bogdan Draganski, Christian Gaser, Volker Busch, et al., “Changes in Grey Matter Induced by Training,” Nature 427 (January 22, 2004): 311–32.

  7 I hear the same kinds of fears and anxieties: “Scientists Warn of Twitter Dangers,” CNN.com, http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/ptech/04/14/twitter.study/index.html. Also Hilary Stout, “Antisocial Networking?” New York Times, July 6, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/fashion/02BEST.html and “E-mails ‘Hurt IQ More than Pot’ ” CNN.com, April 22, 2005, http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/04/22/text.iq/

  8 Zettabytes: Roger E. Bohn and James E. Short, “How Much Information? 2009 Report on American Consumers,” Global Information Industry Center, December 2009, http://viadigitalis.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/How-Much-Information.pdf. Also phone interview with researchers for the New York Times article and personal news article written for the New York Times.

  9 Surgical residents on their video game habits: James C. Rosser Jr, Paul J. Lynch, Laurie Cuddihy, et al., “The Impact of Video Games on Training Surgeons in the 21st Century,” Archives of Surgery 142 no. 2 (2007): 181–86.

  10 “Medical errors,” which have become the eighth leading cause of death in this country: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, http://www.ahrq.gov. and Webmd.com.

  11 Using a Wii golf club: Shiraz Badurdeen, Omar Abdul-Samad, Giles Story, et al., “Nintendo Wii Video-Gaming Ability Predicts Laparoscopic Skill,” Surgical Endoscopy, January 28, 2010 and personal interviews with previous neuroscientists.

  12 Studied the newly released game Tetris: Richard J. Haier, Benjamin V. Siegel Jr., Andrew MacLachlan, et al., “Regional Glucose Metabolic Changes After Learning a Complex Visuo-spatial/Motor Task: A Positron Emission Tomographic Study,” Brain Research 570 (1992): 134–43; Richard J. Haier, Benjamin Siegel, Chuck Tang, et al., “Intelligence and Changes in Regional Cerebral Glucose Metabolic Rate Following Learning,” Intelligence 16 (1992): 415–26; Richard J. Haier, Sherif Karama, Leonard Leyba, et al., “MRI Assessment of Cortical Thickness and Functional Activity Changes in Adolescent Girls Following Three Months of Practice on a Visual-Spatial Task,” BMC Research Notes 2 no. 174 (2009); and several phone interviews with Richard Haier, neuroscientist.

  13 Steven Johnson: Steven Johnson, Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter, New York: Riverhead, 2006. Also Mitchell Stephens, The Rise of the Image the Fall of the Word, Oxford University Press, 1998.

  14 Hand-eye reaction time: C. Shawn Green and Daphne Bavelier, “The Cognitive Neuroscience of Video Games,” in Paul Messaris and Lee Humphreys (eds.), Digital Media: Transformations in Human Communication, New York: Peter Lang, 2006. Also M.W.G. Dye, D. E. Baril, and
D. Bavelier, “Which Aspects of Visual Attention Are Changed by Deafness? The Case of the Attentional Network Test,” Neuropsychologia 45 (2007): 1801–811 and phone interview with Daphne Bavelier, Department of Brain and Cognitive Science and Center for Visual Science, University of Rochester, New York.

  15 Pew Research: Amanda Lenhart, Joseph Kahne, Ellen Middaugh, et al., “Teens, Video Games, and Civics,” Pew Internet & American Life Project, September 16, 2008, http://www.pewinternet.org/~/media/Files/Reports/2008/PIP_Teens_Games_and_Civics_Report_FINAL.pdf.pdf

  Chapter 6: me in the middle

  1 Put this succinctly at a technology conference: Kevin Slavin, Proceedings of Picnic, New York City, 2010.

  2 Movie’s digital campfire: Sitaram Asur and Bernardo A. Huberman, “Predicting the Future With Social Media,” (2010), Arxiv.org, March 29, 2010,. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1003.5699.

  3 “We believe that a large portion of the people who have bought e-readers”: Hillel Italie, “Publishers Say They’re Holding Back Some E-books,” Business News, Associated Press Online, December 9, 2009.

  4 Survey by L.E.K. Consulting: “Hidden Opportunities in New Media: Opportunities Uncovered and Myths Debunked,” Tech., L.E.K. Consulting, January 20, 2010, http://www.lek.com/About/Hidden_Opportunities.cfm.

  5 Admitted to piracy himself: Peter Serafinowicz, “Why I Steal Movies … Even Ones I’m In,” Gizmodo, Gawker Media: May 14, 2010, http://gizmodo.com/5539417/why-i-steal-movies-even-ones-im-in