Category: Technology
Christian Web Conference: A Few Parting Thoughts
I just got back late last night from the Christian Web Conference, a gathering out at the alma mater that I’ve been involved with for several years. While I’ve enjoyed every conference I’ve been at, this one was particularly fun...
Marx: Administrative Tyranny?
As I mentioned earlier in the week, there’s been a great discussion going over at Bensonian.org on Terry Eagleton’s book Why Marx Was Right. As an avowed non-Marxist, I was somewhat surprised to be invited to participate in the discussion,...
Who’s Afraid of Marx?
Christopher Benson at Bensonian.org, has unveiled his introductory post on the blog tour of Terry Eagleton’s newest book, Why Marx Was Right. Organized by Yale University Press, Christopher’s site will have four different reactions each to a different chapter of...
Word Processing and Externalizing Thinking
Clive Thompson: When I first got my hands on a word processor, it felt absolutely uncanny: The words! They’re … they’re moving around! THEY LOOK LIKE PRINTED WORDS BUT THEY’RE MOVING AROUND. But pretty quickly I grasped the new style of...
Mere Experiences and the Accountability of Presence
James Polous: “There’s some uncomfortable truth we’re acknowledging every time we shy away from the world of real things and indulge in the world of mere experiences — a truth about which sorts of awkwardness, disappointment, and even suffering we...
Passive Agressive Blogging
So, one guy writes a post about how young people who were raised within the church are leaving behind Christianity and offers a few reasons why. Good post. Dude’s got a book coming out on the topic, and it looks...
The Dangers of New Media (fin)
The world around us is hardly static, as the high schoolers I talked with seemed to think. New technologies continue to open new possibilities, extending individuals’ and communities’ means of transmitting information around the globe. The world is, in this...
The Dangers of New Media (The Final Critique)
I have already mentioned the potential stultifying effect of consuming lots of information and the danger of reinforcing our inauthentic self-presentation. To those dangers, then, I would add a third: new media has the power to divorce us from the...
The Dangers of New Media (Losing Reality)
Losing Reality: New Media and our Relation to the World G.K. Chesterton did not offer his social criticism in essay form only. His novels are full of commentary, such that at their worst, they read like his essays. In his...
The Dangers of New Media (Authenticity Online)
There is a deeper problem, however, with communicating online. It is crucial in communication—whether in person or online—to be as authentic as possible. As new media are communally oriented, authenticity and honesty take on an added importance. But online communication...