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Clive Thompson

November-December 2017

Social media is keeping us stuck in the moment

Social media is designed to keep us trapped in the present and devoid of history. Clive Thompson on why internet moguls want us to keep scrolling

Clive Thompson@pomeranian99

The next time you look at social media, I want you pay attention to a subtle detail on each post: the timestamp. If you’re on Twitter, for example, when was each post published? When I was writing this paragraph, I glanced down at my Twitter feed, and here’s what I saw: A tweet about a Chinese […] More »

How to win This Magazine’s Great Canadian Literary Hunt

hilary beaumont

The first year we ran the contest was 1996 (that’s the issue cover at right). That year, Toronto writer John Burton won first place in This Magazine’s Great Canadian Literary Hunt. Burton’s entry, “Sisters,” was his first-ever published story. It triumphed over some 1,000 other entries. Burton was a virtual nobody in the literary world, […] More »