Imagine how different our lives would be if the internet didn't exist. For starters, you wouldn't be reading this right now. You would have no choice but to communicate with others by phone, via letter, or in person, as social media wouldn't be available. Chances are, you watch shows or movies via streaming services like Netflix, Amazon, or Hulu. You would instead be forced to watch them on TV or rent them through Redbox or the local video store. Imagine how many people would not be together if it weren't for Internet dating sites like Match.com or eHarmony. (I'm the perfect example of this, as I reacquainted with my now-wife, who I first met in middle school, through MySpace. You would have to make payments by mail, through the phone, or in person. You wouldn't be able to make purchases online. Instead, you'd have to hit up brick-and-mortar stores or buy your stuff through catalogs that come in the mail. It's important to note that were in...

What do you hunger for so much that no matter how hard you try, your appetite never seems sated? Is it food like chocolate or French fries? Hugs and kisses? Approval from others? For me, this is an easy one: knowledge. I love learning about all things history and psychology. A day that passes without learning something -- a new word, a new phrase, about groundbreaking research in consumer psychology, and so on -- feels like a day wasted. Nothing in this world can extinguish my intellectual curiosity. While everyone has their reasons for lamenting the fact that life is short, mine include the harsh reality that we can only learn so much during our limited time on this planet. To me, few things are as enriching as becoming more knowledgeable, more intelligent, more erudite. Whether it's learning how to use a formula to solve a mathematical problem or being able to expound on significant historical events, it feels great to "get" something -- and it's...

Isaac Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of the 20th century. His copious body of work -- he wrote or edited more than 500 books and roughly 90,000 letters and postcards -- spanned a myriad of genres ranging from science fiction to history and chemistry. He is perhaps best known for his Foundation and Robot series. His books have been published in 9 of the 10 major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification. Asimov once said the following, with which I wholeheartedly concur: "Education never ends." So short and sweet, and yet so powerful a statement. I've seen clips on YouTube of many of his interviews. Asimov championed self-learning and fretted that many people cease trying to learn new things once they graduate from high school or college. He foresaw that one day technology would enable people to educate themselves without having to set foot in a school (i.e., the internet). Unfortunately, he did not live to see how the World Wide Web has mad...

I hear so many people complain of boredom on a daily basis. This leaves me quite flummoxed considering the wealth of things to do nowadays. I find nothing to be as big a boredom buster as learning. There's a widely-held if erroneous view that learning stops the moment you receive your college diploma. This couldn't be further from the truth. Even though I'm no longer in college, I continue to indulge my passions for history and psychology by reading on my own. I get such bad traffic on the way to work and back that I'm usually able to get a great deal of reading done on my commute. (I only read while at a red light or in bumper-to-bumper traffic, of course.) I also read during my lunch break and before going to bed. To me, learning is not only intellectually enriching, but it gives me something to look forward to and build upon each day. I love coming across a word I didn't know the meaning of and looking up the definition. I have fun learning new historic...