David Benjamin is a Brooklyn-based journalist and novelist who writes on technology issues, usually from the Luddite point of view.
MADISON, Wis. — I'm a good government geek. I retain a childhood faith that government done well — even if it's big — is better than no government at all, and even better than small government run by nitwits. This belief sets me at odds with America's current small government cult, whose patron saint is…
MADISON, Wis. — Heading west on the Illinois Tollway last week, I passed a familiar landmark, the Chrysler plant in Belvidere. It occurred to me how much this sprawling complex had touched my life, although I'd never had — or even considered — a job there. The closest I got to employment at Belvidere was…
Brooklyn, N.Y. — Part of my Sunday routine is yelling at the television set while reading The New York Times. The Times part is an American tradition; the yelling is always at David Gregory, hapless replacement for Tim Russert as host of Meet the Press . I suspect weekly that Gregory is a Trojan horse…
BROOKLYN — While I was running a weekly newspaper in Massachusetts, I wrote about a guy named Salvatore who lived next-door on School Street. His response to the first great American oil crisis, when the cost of heating fuel soared to almost a dollar a gallon, was to staple tarpaper to the eastern and southern…
In at least one episode (and probably more than that) of the popular TV show, NCIS , the crack sleuths of the Navy Criminal Investigative Service find interlopers in their midst — agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DeHoSe). Typically, the pretext for the unwelcome arrival of the stiffs from DeHoSe is that Jethro…
Reading about the big demonstration in Paris last weekend over a proposed French law allowing same-sex marriage, I paused at a paragraph that said Catholic, Jewish, and Islamic leaders are vehemently opposed to the legislation. The bishops, rabbis, and mullahs all agree that guys marrying guys and girls marrying girls is an unsavory practice that…
Usually, when I'm in Paris and someone warns me that he's sending a package, I mentally consign that unfortunate parcel to the Great Lost & Found in the Sky. If the package actually arrives — anytime in the following six years — I assign the windfall to sheer, dumb luck. Theoretically, the French post office…
Every year here, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), I hear milling crowds of multicultural geeks talking about “spectrum.” I've written entire CES dispatches about “spectrum” without knowing what it really is. I mean, I have a sense of what it is. I know it's everywhere, like God's grace, or karma. Sometimes, I envision spectrum…
Eric is my niece Sonnet's main squeeze. He's a sweet-natured young man who proudly states that he owns 11 guns. I took this alarming admission in stride, because Eric is a military veteran and a skilled hunter, well versed in firearms safety. He's not dangerous. However, in justifying his private arsenal, Eric casually articulated a…
As I was reading comments from {complink 379|Apple Inc.} CEO Tim Cook about the new iPhone 5 — “thinnest, lightest, fastest” — I couldn't help but think of Frances Gumm, Archie Leach, and Marion Morrison. A question crept into my consciousness. If the founder of Apple had been named Tim Cook rather than Steve Jobs,…