"The late nineteenth century was a period of explosive technological creativity, but arguably the most important invention of all was Thomas Edison's incandescent lightbulb. Unveiled in his Menlo Park, New Jersey, laboratory in 1879, the lightbulb overwhelmed the American public with the sense of the birth of a new age. More than any other invention, the electric light marked the arrival of modernity. The lightbulb became a catalyst for the nation's...

"A freewheeling, sharp-shooting indictment of our tech-besotted culture by the Pulitzer Prize finalist. Over the past dozen years, Nicholas Carr has made his name as an agenda-setting writer on our complicated relationship with technology. Gathering posts from his blog Rough Type as well as seminal pieces published in The Atlantic, the MIT Technology Review, and the Wall Street Journal, he now provides an alternative history of the digital age,...