This quick read draws on the science of the mind, ancient civilizations, mobile tech, Shakespeare, funny TV commercials, and a host of other diverse topics to explain why we prefer pictures over words, brevity over length and depth, and are thereby willingly giving up our ability to reach consensus and collaboration on any constructive action. Baskin makes a novel, contrarian conclusion come to life with illustrative examples, intriguing facts, and not a little bit of wit: it's not that a picture tells a thousand words, but rather we need a thousand words to understand most pictures. His...

Technology doesn't create social media phenomena as much as change and amplify it. Technology can't invent new human traits, or rewrite how we're wired. Today, we live at the cusp of a future that looks a lot like the futures our predecessors faced on this same day last year, a decade ago, or even a thousand years in the past. Each "today" essay documents a social phenomenon that is as real now as it was then. The short, two or three-paragraph entries reveal varied examples of crowdsourcing, viral, innovation, storytelling and every presumably new quality enabled by current technology. They...