Yesterday morning I posted a brief review on Kevin Kelly’s new book, What Technology Wants. Greg Smith remarked that he’s half-way through it. In a Twitter exchange with Kent Bottles later in the day I shared that I just started Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together. Turns out he just finished it. Serendipity? Hardly. It’s synchronicity with people who share my ideas ... Continue Reading about Thinking in Synch
What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly
Last week I read Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants (Viking, 2010/Affiliate link). Drawing from the fields of psychology, art, and science, What Technology Wants offers a dense but thought provoking look at the way technology advances. The book centers around the expansion of what Kelly calls the technium. This is a term he has coined to describe “the greater, ... Continue Reading about What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly
Narrative Medicine and Blood Pressure
More in the evolving meme of narrative medicine: Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (my alma mater) have found that for a select population of individuals listening to personal narratives helps control blood pressure. While the power of stories is old news, the connection to clinical outcomes is what’s newsworthy here. Read Pauline Chen’s ... Continue Reading about Narrative Medicine and Blood Pressure
Narrative Medicine and the Parallel Chart
This is something. From one of my fav medical magazines, Proto comes an interview with Rita Charon, an internist and literary scholar at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. She has initiated a new program in narrative medicine where medical students and clinicians fashion clinical experiences into narratives that reflect not only their points of ... Continue Reading about Narrative Medicine and the Parallel Chart
A Young Father and His Information
It was sometime in the mid-nineties that parents started showing up in my office with reams of paper. Inkjet printouts of independently unearthed information pulled from AltaVista and Excite. Google didn’t exist. In the earliest days of the web, information was occasionally leveraged by families as a type of newfound control. A young father and his inkjet ... Continue Reading about A Young Father and His Information
Bug Spray and the Doctor-Patient Disconnect
Before every upper endoscopy I spray a local anesthetic in the mouth to minimize a child’s gag. It’s pretty nasty tasting stuff. So I have this little charade I pull before every scope: I apply the spray, look at the bottle, then announce in shock that the nurses have mistakenly given me bug spray. As quickly as I deliver the punch line I make it clear that ... Continue Reading about Bug Spray and the Doctor-Patient Disconnect