The impact of digital technology dominates this excellent collection of essays. As Dibbell points out, we now rely so much on digital devices, from BlackBerrys to iPads, that "we're all cyborgs now". Steven Johnson says the micro-blogging site Twitter has opened up a whole new world of "social creativity" and that in the future "every major channel of information will be Twitterfied". Twitter is also an unparalleled source of distraction and in his fascinating piece, Sam Anderson explores the pros and cons of this surfeit of information and the resulting epidemic of "elective ADHD". Clay Shirky argues here that the traditional print media are doomed: "Society doesn't need newspapers. What we need is journalism." But ironically these essays were all from the old media and even Shirky admits he doesn't know what the new model will be. But new media does get the last word  a tweet from astronaut Michael James Massimino on the International Space Station: "From orbit: Listening to Sting on my ipod watching the world go by  literally."