One of the difficult balancing acts involved in writing about digital technology is how to keep up with it without drinking its Kool-Aid. In that context, I’ve just come on an observation that Walter Benjamin once made about being a critic.

“Criticism is a matter of correct distancing. It was at home in a world where perspectives and prospects counted and where it was still possible to adopt a standpoint. Now things press too urgently on human society.”

He wrote that in 1928. So maybe nothing changes.