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"The period - the full-stop signal we all learn as children, whose use stretches back at least to the Middle Ages - is gradually being felled in the barrage of instant messaging that has become synonymous with the digital age"

Several parents and academics I interviewed think Minecraft servers offer children a crucial "third place" to mature, where they can gather together outside the scrutiny and authority at home and school,

" IN the coming weeks, two million Americans will earn a bachelor's degree and either join the work force or head to graduate school. They will be joyous that day, and they will remember fondly the schools they attended. But as this unique chapter of life closes and they reflect on campus events, one primary part of higher education will fall low on the ladder of meaningful contacts: the professors."

"Sometimes a mistake is so embarrassing, it cycles all the away around the shame circle and becomes kind of awesome. Today's case in point: Kyrzbekistan, a country accidentally invented by a New York Times piece that meant to reference the Central Asian nation Kyrgyzstan."

"What follows is - depending on how you want to think about it - either a gallery of technologies we lost or an invitation to consider alternate futures. Some of what might have been is fantastical: a subway powered by air, an engine run off the heat of your palm. Some of what we lost, on the other hand, is more subtle, like a better way to bowl or type. As new standards emerge, variety fades, and a single technology becomes entrenched. (That's why the inefficient Qwerty keyboard has proved so difficult to unseat.) We can take heart, however, in the fact that good ideas never disappear forever; the Stirling engine didn't pan out in the Industrial Revolution, for example, but it can keep the lights on for a small village. As you look through the images, then, please consider not only what might have been but what could still be again."

h/t Mike Caulfield