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Laurence Scott

Ideas Contributor

Laurence Scott is the author of two books, The Four-Dimensional Human and Picnic Comma Lightning. He writes the Slow Internet column for WIRED. 

Is Social Media Making Us … Better People?

One painful interaction at a time, we’re mastering the gateway virtue of the networked world: tact.

On the Capitalist Internet, Even Celebs Join the Gig Economy

Gimmicky message services like Cameo treat goodwill as a friendly contagion, something anyone can catch and spread. Just don’t let the money run out. 

How We Came to Live in a Split-Screen Reality

The more of them we encounter, the more we begin to interpret the world according to their logic.

My Country's Leader Got Covid, Too. It Sucked

First you'll ask yourself feverish, dead-end questions about the nature of sympathy—and then it gets much worse.

Covid-19 and the New Intimacy

Don’t touch, but keep in touch! Covid-19 has us living in an alternate corporeality.

Star Trek: Picard, Fancy Sheets, and the Meaning of Home

An aging explorer returns to the final frontier on a journey of remembrance.

GIFs Are Glorious, GIFs Are Perverse

The icon of the internet loops from poetry to horror.

ASMR and the Soothing Power of Experts

Come for the tingly auditory triggers, stay for the existential coping mechanism.