Fahrenheit 451 – How We’re Burning Our Own Books and How to Stop it

One of the books which had the greatest effect on me in my teens was Fahrenheit 451 and I still recommend everyone read it (along with Clockwork Orange, Brave New World, 1984 and Animal Farm). In some ways Fahrenheit 451 seems to have the greatest relevance to our time.

The prediction of a world where we are controlled by vacuous media and books are burned to deny people the knowledge required to question authority seems to parallel our click bait and reality TV dominated world.

However, in the most fundamental way I would argue that Fahrenheit 451 got things wrong. Continue reading

A Lesson from Homer Simpson – How Quitting Facebook Can Improve Your Life

A quote from Homer Simpson has always stuck in my head

“…every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain..”

Neuroscientists would probably have something to say about the scientific validity of that statement in terms of learning and memory but in the short term, when we think about mental capacity and attention, I think there is something important in there.

I’ll cut to the chase, I recently deleted Facebook from my phone and it has improved my life. Continue reading