Eric Whitacre is known for his breathtaking compositions of choral work. He has published more than four-dozen pieces and recorded several albums. More recently, he’s become known as the guy who puts together virtual choirs. What is a virtual choir, you ask. Well, his one first involved inviting 185 voices from a dozen countries to sing and record their various parts in their living rooms, door rooms, or wherever, and send them to him. Whitacre then combined all of these recordings into a single “virtual choir.” The finished piece became an instant You-Tube sensation in 2010. A year later, he gathered more than 2000 voices from 85...

We are closing in on the climax of another presidential campaign. Tonight we will have the first of three presidential debates and in a little over a month we will vote. Rather than offer opinions on a particular candidate – don’t worry, I have them, but haven’t typically used this space to share them – I’d instead like to take a moment and think about the political process, particularly in this “age of information.” In this TEDTalk, internet-expert Clay Shirky invites us to consider what we can learn from the changes occurring the worlds of technology and science as a result of the new “open-source” culture in which we...

I’ve been thinking a lot of late about the internet. In particular, about time spent on the internet. Maybe it’s all the blogging of late , but I think it’s even more paying attention as my kids (now in 6th and 8th grade) feel more and more pressure to join in the social media world that many of their friends have already and enthusiastically entered. In this regard, two recent pieces have caught my attention. The first is the cover story of this month’s Atlantic which asks the question, “Is Facebook Making us Lonely?” The answer, in case you don’t want to read the whole article, is a qualified yes. Essentially, according to...