This work is a careful study of Franklin’s character that also turns out to a study in the changing paradigms of American society itself. He has admirers as well as critics, based on the time context he is viewed in. Some praise his materialistic approach to life while others decry his ...
I’m speaking today in Ben Franklin Hall in Philadelphia for a conference of Media Impact Funders. And, at the request of the organizers, I’m cosplaying the great hustler himself. My talk builds on one I gave a couple of years ago at Data & Society, but veers in some different direct...
When Franklin saw that his wise-sayings stuck in the popular memory, he rebooted them without irony inThe Way to Wealth(1758) as the sage advice of a new character, the pious Father Abraham. By 1790, Franklin was dead, his old jokes forgotten. But his sayings lived on as lessons for sc...