Challenge accepted, Mr. Kleon

As with every Buzzfeed article, the title says it all. It’s a good list, but I’d want to add my current favourite: «For the heart, life is simple: it beats for as long as it can. Then it stops.» (the opening sentence of Knausgård’s «My Struggle»).

If you know Ray Bradbury’s «Fahrenheit 451», you’ll know how genius this book design is.

This is a great question to address in a book: What are the 100 objects that future historians will pick to define the 21st century? Adrian Hon, CEO of a games company, takes the view from the 2180s to find answers. On the book’s website, you’ll find almost half of the chapters freely available, so start diving into this «story of how we became more connected than ever before, with objects like Babel, Silent Messaging, the Nautilus-3, and the Brain Bubble — and how we became fragmented, both physically and culturally, with the Fourth Great Awakening, and the Biomes.»

It is, in fact, a pretty simple rule: If you want to hear something interesting, don’t listen to the loudest. Evgeny Morozov is the loudest and – no surprise there – best heard technology skeptic these days. I certainly agree that technology skepticism is important and underrepresented, but for a good read on this, I recommend Douglas Rushkoff’s brilliant new book, «Present Shock». Unlike Morozov, Rushkoff tackles issues, not people. His thesis: We have lost our sense of the future and the past as we live in a time entirely centered around «Now».

After reading this book review, this is a sure buy. I mean, who doesn’t want to know, «Why is there something rather than nothing?».