If you ask most women, they would say they're always up for wearing a nice necklace. If you ask most men, they'd assert that they're happy to gift one to the woman they love. But chances are you wouldn't be as inclined to wear or give a vibrating social distancing necklace. You're probably wondering what on God's earth that is (as I was when I first read about it on the Smithsonian's website). You may remember that Italy was one of the first countries to get buffeted by the coronavirus. As of this writing, it has led to nearly 33,000 deaths in the European country. Even though the lockdown measures there have largely been eased, businesses big and small are taking steps to curb the virus's spread, and museums are no exception. At Florence Cathedral, electronic devices worn on lanyards will notify visitors if they’re standing too close to their neighbors. How? By vibrating and lighting up, much like a noisy cell phone or a pager you'd ge...

In many of my posts, I muse about what life must have been like in the 18th century and express a burning desire to travel back to colonial times. One of the things I can't imagine, though, is living in an era devoid of the technology we've come to rely upon today. Indeed, the internet has revolutionized the world like nothing else. Who would have imagined we'd be availing of it to do so many things -- from buy groceries and find love to speak with friends and family in different corners of the world? But the internet wasn't always as vast as it is today, with more than one billion websites. In fact, on August 6, 1991, British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee published the first-ever website while working at CERN, a physics lab in Switzerland. Appropriately, the site described the Web and how to use it. We should feel blessed to live in a time when technology affords us the opportunity to do things our ancestors could only dream of. You can buy virtually...