Photo by Jean-Baptiste Bellet.Yesterday I sat on a wooden stair on a seawall as the tide came in all around me. I thought about how easy it would be to accidentally drop my iPhone into the surf below - hundreds of dollars worth of magical technology and irreplaceable data gone in an instant.

It fascinates me that something that takes so much insight and sophistication to design and build can be destroyed in a flash. It takes far less effort to tear something down than to build it up.

Criticism is easy. Much easier than creating whatever it is that's being offered up to the critic.

It is with this in mind that I undertake a thoughtful criticism of Lizzie Widdicombe's profile of Taylor Swift in The New Yorker this week. My main issue? Ms. Widdicombe herself was too critical of her subject and missed the larger story of Taylor Swift's significance and influence.