Washington D.C. Network – Pre-Game Meet-up and Red Sox vs Orioles

Join the Washington D.C. Northeastern Network for pre-game meet-up and a day at the ballpark. Watch as the Boston Red Sox take on their American League East Rival Baltimore Orioles.

Thoreau’s Walden: Nature, Technology, and Attention

What does Henry David Thoreau’s retreat into the natural world at Walden Pond have to do with our modern culture of distraction and technological immersion? We learned how Thoreau’s interest in the peace of nature was fueled by his distress at the information culture of the 19th century when the telegraph brought news to Americans at a startlingly brisk pace and the railroad moved goods across the country with breathtaking speed. Thoreau is one of our earliest writers about technology overload, and wrote powerfully about the need to rest the mind and retreat from eternally asking, “What news?” We took a look at how Thoreau also understood the possible interweaving of technology into nature, as in his fascination with the telegraph wires and trains that ran right past Walden pond.