In the 1920s, a generation before the coming of solid-state electronics, one could look at the circuits and see how the electron stream flowed. Radios had valves, as though electricity were a fluid to be diverted by plumbing. With the click of the knob came a significant hiss and hum, just at the edge of audibility.

As soon as the printing press started flooding Europe with books, people were complaining that there were too many books and that it was going to change philosophy and the course of human thought in ways that wouldn't necessarily be good.

Particle physicists may freeze a second, open it up, and explore its dappled contents like surgeons pawing through an abdomen, but in real life, when events occur within thousandths of a second, our minds cannot distinguish past from future.

For much of the twentieth century, 1984 was a year that belonged to the future - a strange, gray future at that. Then it slid painlessly into the past, like any other year. Big Brother arrived and settled in, though not at all in the way George Orwell had imagined.

Social media seemed to promise a way to better connect with people; instead, it seems to have made it easier to tune out the people we don't agree with.

I'm done. Done with social media. Done.

With reality TV, sometimes it's amazing chemistry and you get these gems that turn out to be everything you hoped, and the camera loves them and they just blossom on the show. And then sometimes it's not all you envision.

Encryption provides enormous benefits to society by enabling secure communications, data storage, and online transactions.