We live in an age of informational omniscience. With a small glass rectangle in our pocket, we can summon the answer to nearly any factual question in a matter of seconds. Who won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1978? What is the capital of Mongolia? How does...
There is a classic philosophical puzzle known as the Ship of Theseus. It goes like this: the great ship of the hero Theseus is preserved in a harbor as a museum piece. Over the years, its old wooden planks begin to rot and are replaced, one by one, with new planks....
The traditional image of the artist is a lonely one. We picture a solitary genius—a painter in a dusty studio, a writer hunched over a keyboard—creating their masterpiece in isolation, only to reveal it to the world once it is finished. But this is an outdated and...