100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet

In her recent book, New York Times Book Review editor Pamela Paul catalogs some of the things we have lost because of our move to networked digital realms over the past 25 years.

Whatever our emotional response to this departed realm, we are faced with the fact that nearly every aspect of modern life now takes place in filtered, isolated corners of cyberspace — a space that has slowly subsumed our physical habitats, replacing or transforming the office, our local library, a favorite bar, the movie theater, and the coffee shop where people met one another’s gaze from across the room. Even as we’ve gained the ability to gather without leaving our house, many of the fundamentally human experiences that have sustained us have disappeared.

In adapted excerpts from the book, Paul covers filing cabinets, bad photos, and a list of things like privacy, cursive, and the ability to ignore people.

• 100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet
• books
• Pamela Paul