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[...] He stares at his students for a moment and says of the million dollars, "For most of you, that would be nothing."

I considered the two nothings: the nothing expected of the online students, the million dollars that would be noting to the Stanford students, of whom everything is expected. […

[...] You may find that, once you're released from having to understand it all, a certain fascination gets through. It can be like those times you hear someone playing the piano beautifully or a sax wailing through jazz improvisations, and the sounds ignite a longing in you, a desire to take up the…

by now the penetration of technology into the interstices of human existence has become nearly complete. And the code that surrounds us is closed to public view: opaque, inescapable.

At seven in the morning, an Edward Hopper white light slashed the facade of the building, and a legless man in a wheelchair sat before the employee entrance, selling yellow number-two Ticonderoga pencils. He was always there, friendly, and I was happy to see him. I bought a pencil every day.

I l…

[...] The act of narrration never leaves us. The need for story is in our bodies, in the evolution of our minds. We sleep. The brain is doing its housekeeping, weaving today's experiences into the synaptic connections of all that happened before this day. Shifting moments. Pathways strengthened, or…