Tag: technology
32 Theses (and several more words) on Podcasting
Alan Jacobs has not been shy about his dislike of podcasts—but recently posted an apology, along with a comment and a request. The comment: I like podcasts that are professionally edited, scripted, festooned with appropriate music, crafted into some kind...
Moral Sentimentalism and Mechanized Society
Recently Alastair Roberts and I had the chance to do an email back and forth over an issue I’ve noticed increasingly often in the way that many are reasoning about issues of public ethics. Unsurprisingly, the discussion sprawled out a...
On the Demise of Grantland
The news that those of us who love good writing had been dreading finally came last Friday: Grantland is dead. No one can be particularly surprised at the move given ESPN’s acrimonious split with site founder and editor-in-chief Bill Simmons earlier this...
What Proximity is Worth
In my mind this post began as a recap of Q Boston, an attempt to make connections between the disparate array of presentations and conversations that took place during its 2.5 stimulating days. Much has been made of the focus...
Lost At Sea, in Space, in the Cloud
Two of my favorite films of recent months, Gravity and All is Lost, have more than a few things in common. Both are basically one-man or one-woman shows about individuals trying to survive in an incomprehensibly vast wilderness. Gravity finds...
Selfie Deception
What and how we consume says a lot about what we value. And what and how we consume has never been more public. Thanks to the broadcasting devices in our pockets and the social network audiences always just a few...
Ruminations on Joy
A few weeks ago I read Zadie Smith’s essay, “Joy,” in the New York Review of Books. If you haven’t read it already, I highly recommend doing so. It’s a beautifully written, decidedly contemporary reflection on joy with a tone...
Genetically Modified Food: Mark Lynas and Your Inner Luddite
Earlier this month, Mark Lynas, a leading environmental campaigner and erstwhile anti-GM food crusader, delivered a lecture to the Oxford Farming Conference that brazenly combined penitence and pugnacity, offering a public recantation of his own views on GM food while...
What makes the edifi “Christian?” On Media, Habits, and Christian Virtue
Last week news spread about the release of Family Christian’s edifi, which is being billed as the world’s first Christian multimedia tablet. Okay, I know what you’re thinking. At least I know what you should be thinking. What exactly makes...
Resisting the Rhetoric of Technological Inevitability
Articles about technology often come with a snappy, provocative question for a title. Take, for example, two of the most widely discussed tech articles in recent memory, both of which appeared in The Atlantic: Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us...