Building a "Trendy" Time Machine

Grant McCracken says that contemporary culture is getting noisier and noisier, as small social changes are being logged on a plethora of digital platforms. He told Steve Paulson that all that noise makes it difficult to listen for the deep melody of our culture and its future.

McCracken teaches anthropology at MIT, where he wants to create a conceptual time machine. His latest book is "Culturematic".