Take your pick: indie café or Beyoncé’s lip-syncing? We’ve become obsessed with authenticity and differences between echt and ersatz — but why bother doing anything for real if no one believes that you did?

The “neuroscience” shelves in bookshops are groaning. But are the works of authors such as Malcolm Gladwell and Jonah Lehrer just self-help books dressed up in a lab coat?

Douglas Coupland defined the angst - and gadgets - of 1990s geeks everywhere. But now he's grown up,

The Curtain: an essay in seven parts

Milan Kundera Faber & Faber, 256pp, £12.