Sherry Turkle. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less From Each Other. (New York, Basic Books, 2011): $28.95. 384 pages.

Michael Bugeja. Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age (New York, Oxford, 2005): $26.11. 226 pages.

CES has brought a new forest of tablets...

Nov 2nd, 2010 was the foreseeable future, like a storm far out to sea barreling towards your spot on a lonely shore. You were always going to get wet and cold and you knew it. The only uncertainty was whether you would be knocked on your posterior or swept away....

As an engineer, climate scientist and former journalist, Heidi Cullen has a unique perspective on climate change.

Other recent books like Eric Pooley's excellent The Climate War or Laurence Smith's lamentable The World in 2050 look at the struggle over consequences of climate change. Cullen's book, Weather of the...

The rumor mill has been activated. There will be a new Apple gadget soon.

Steve Jobs intends to catch the off-to-school market by introducing a video-chat iPod in mid-August instead of a month later per Apple tradition. People's attention will be diverted from the mess of the iPhone 4's...

Who cares right? There's much bigger jail news today. Lindsey Lohan's time is at last up.

But even if he is still largely unknown in the lower 48, Conrad Black is a public figure in Canada, that country north of Chicago that shelters a population equivalent to two very large...

I don't watch television these days. Like a growing number of people, I download things that interest me from the Internet or watch streaming videos on a variety of sites. If Hulu was available in Canada, I'd subscribe to it. It's not. We haven't even switched over to digital signals...

It's a little known fact, but the Cold War actually began in my hometown of Ottawa in 1945 when Igor Gouzenko, a radio cipher clerk at the Russian Embassy, attempted to defect to the RCMP carrying a briefcase full of pay documents indicating there was a vast network of Russian...

Recently, I spoke with Caspian Makan, fiancée of Neda Aghasoltan, who died in the democracy protests following last summer's controversial elections in Iran. Mr. Makan has since received asylum in Canada and has joined the country's large expatriate Persian community. In January, the Times of London reported...

Tuesday night: President Obama's address recommends establishing an escrow account for BP's assets in order to guarantee the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill cleanup is properly financed by the responsible party.

America is listening. Will BP?

People are angry at BP. They're cycling naked in the streets, throwing brown paint on...

You've lost your job. Now what? That's the question put forth in Candice Reed and Kitty Martini's Thank You For Firing Me!: How to Catch the Next Wave of Success After You Lose Your Job. Granted there are dozens and dozens of books offering advice for people who are out...

I spoke to Ian McAllister* author of two unforgettably beautiful books: The Last Wild Wolves and the Great Bear Rainforest about some glossy full-color brochures sent to local rainforest citizens by Enbridge Inc., the world's largest oil pipeline construction company.

The news from Louisiana about the oil spill is so terrible I can't read past the headlines. It's lucky I'm not a "professional journalist." Involuntarily, my face just turns away from the screen.

This has been going on for 50 days.

I was supposed to speak about the...

I've written about the very strange character of small town in Canada before. Recently, the cultural horizon of my tiny corner of it (Richmond, BC) has been enlarged by the Winter Olympics, by visits from Stephen Colbert and Jay Leno and by the impending comedic presence of Owen Wilson, Steve...

I spoke with U.C. Irvine's Professor Leo R. Chavez author of The Latino Threat,* last week about Arizona's new legislation that delivers unprecedented power into the hands of the police.

Arizona wants to give their police broad powers to curb undocumented immigration by questioning anyone suspected of visiting America illegally....

Guest Blog by * Chris Goodall, writer for the Guardian and green party candidate British election.

Okay, I lost the election. But what I lost was not a seat in the British Parliament. I lost something much more valuable: the chance to push for a climate bill...

I got a response to a blog the other day from someone called Revinax wishing me dead or -more accurately- wishing me a "harsh, brutish and short life."

Because I have an otherwise useless Ph.D. in English Literature, I immediately recognized this as a misquotation of Thomas Hobbes.

I...

By Clive Hamilton.

Is it strange that Sarah Palin, who once thought Africa was a country, now quotes verbatim from emails stolen from Britain's Climatic Research Unit or that Lord Monckton, a leading English climate denier, addresses a Tea Party rally in America?

Climate denial has outgrown the early...

I felt surprisingly proud as I walked past the Bleecker Street Pub in lower Manhattan during the final minutes of the decisive Olympic hockey game. It looked like a nice bar and I would have gone in except it was so crowded I couldn't get through the door. I watched...

By Emily White, author, Loneliness: A Memoir*

When I started a memoir about long-term loneliness, I faced the recurring question of whether or not I was just writing about depression. Trying to be as patient and precise as possible, I repeated "no, it's really loneliness," over and over again. Five...

More often than not comedy is about gender. This is because comedy began as a wedding festival that made men and women laugh at themselves...at how society regulates the way male and female are forced to get along.

My generation misunderstood a social philosopher named Lenny Bruce who busied himself...