A while back, while I was reading about digital inheritance, I had a striking realization. What would my wife do with my laptop and phone? If she gains access to them, she would have access to my entire life. To make things worse, this is not the first time this morbid thought struck me. I always come back to this thought, pondering what story my digital trail traces tell me and more importantly – what…

Yesterday I saw a man completely sacrifice his body for a phone. When standing outside my favorite coffee shop, it began to rain—which wasn’t exactly a downpour but had huge rain drops that fell randomly. I watched as a stranger turned into a human umbrella from a scene I have seen repeat a number of times. A man standing next to me counter adapted his body in the most phenomenal way. He curled his upper…

Last Thursday at 11:42 PM, something unprecedented happened. My email inbox – that constant nagged waiting for me to digest – displayed the mythical number: zero. No bold unread messages demanding attention. No flagged items awaiting action. No saved drafts waiting to be worked on. Just strait, perfect, emptiness. My self-control forced me to collapse my window, as an unseen edge of panic rattled through my brain. How could someone live like this? I probed…

Last Tuesday, I whipped up the most secure password imaginable. It had everything a hacker would be scared of: special characters, numbers, upper case, lower case, and no links to my identity or any information I had chose or provided. Oh how lovely it was. There was no way it could be hacked. Digital Fort Knox. Seventeen seconds after creating it, I forgot it. The saying, “third times the charm” does not apply here. I…

Last Thursday at a private dinner, a colleague of mine was taken aback when I told her I did not follow the social media drama of a celebrity I had once heard of. That celebrity’s social media account is being discussed by so many people right now, I don’t understand how you missed it! Her fingers itched for her phone, desperate to tweet all about my blunder and shatter my bubble of lack of knowledge.…

Two Tuesdays ago, I suddenly remembered a dinner party that I attended. I had my friend Jessica’s dinner, and she was very excited to share the details of her recent job interview. As she filled me in on the company, rest assured I had already done a deep dive on the details into the scope of her undertaking three days before. I also had a ”No Wager?” moment at the appropriate time even though I…

Everything starts with an online article these days, and this one was no different. While scrolling the website, my eyes stopped at the heading “Digital Sabbath.” A concept implied not using any screens for 72 hours and allowing your brain to reset itself. I wish it stated something in the like, because the wisdom I stumbled upon while dooming at 1:47 am wasn’t really that helpful. As someone who built interfaces with the intention of…

On Tuesday last week, I took 11 minutes to write a two-sentence response to my colleague’s project proposal. It took me about thirty seconds to type. The other 10 minutes were set aside for what can only be described as digital choreography. I had to select the perfect emoji combination to ensure my response wasn?t interpreted as aggresive, uninterested, or overly enthusiastic. In the end I used a thumbs up as casual approval, a lightbulb…