Author Clive Thompson, a longtime contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired, will speak at 7 p.m. this Friday, September 26, at the Main Library at Goodwood. This is the Library’s first “after hours” event, and we will kick it off with a festive re
ception (on the third-floor terrace garden if the weather is good) beginning at 6 pm. His new book is Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better. It’s the perfect choice to help us celebrate 75 years of evolving Library services.
As a child growing up in Toronto in the 1970s and ’80s, Thompson became fascinated with the first “home computers”, the ones you plugged into your TV, like the Commodore 64, and programmed using BASIC. When he became a magazine writer in the 1990s, 
the Internet erupted into the mainstream, and he began reporting on how digital tools — everything from email to digital photography to instant messaging — was changing society.
Today, Thompson is one of the most prominent technology writers, respected for his long-form magazine stories that go beyond the headlines and harness the insights of science, literature, history, and philosophy. He specializes in writing not only on the inventors of technologies but on the often unpredictable ways in which everyday people use them. Thompson also writes for Mother Jones and Smithsonian magazines.