Must Artificial Intelligence open the door to "that hideous strength" described by C.S Lewis? Time will tell, though I suspect the answer to the juggernaut that is Artificial Intelligence may well be the Babel scenario. In recent online postings, writer Rod Dreher has been commenting on various predictions of an apocalypse caused by Artificial Intelligence. [...]
Yuval Harari, in his latest book, "Nexus," believes that AI endangers the utopian dream of unbridled license that has long been the goal of countless revolutionaries on the left and libertarian anarchists on the right. Modernity is replete with philosophers who interpret reality through prisms. By simplifying their perceptions, such figures seek to change history. [...]
Some observations: 1. The singular (classic) Greek contribution to liberty is freedom of the mind. That means, more or less, the freedom of Socrates. 2. Well, there’s also the freedom of the citizen. The freedom to participate in ruling and so be more than a merely material or economic or tribal or familial being. 3. [...]
For several years, I have made the New Year’s resolution to make my Sundays Internet-free. That means I cut off any connection with the Internet, be it email, websites or videos. It does not include phone calls or text messages. This Internet fast allows me to dedicate my Sunday to other things. It is not [...]
Architects and homeowners have long assumed that the only way to keep houses cool and comfortable is to equip them with central air conditioning. However, as electric rates increase, many homeowners are looking for alternatives, especially in very hot climate zones. Some have resorted to so-called passive homes that rely upon massive amounts of insulation, [...]
What sort of thing is the internet? It’s not exactly a physical thing, but it was made by human hands. It is a real thing, but not something I can touch. It is something man-made but difficult to nail down because it is unlike just about everything else. Asking ‘what sort of a thing’ something [...]
What in the twenty-fifth hour might happen to those of us who prefer to live outside the data flow, still analog, still un-captured? Take some time to read "The Twenty-Fifth Hour," a deep and dark book narrating history prior to World War II. It is for the reader to wonder if the novel resonates today. [...]
During the last few centuries, while exploring the material world more deeply, many people have lost the way towards their own self, that inner sanctum where they can meet the Creator of both Man and of World. Thus the symbolic universe seems to have been forgotten, even though it is always there to be discovered. [...]
“At the Council of Trent, nobody noticed that it was Gutenberg who made all the problems,” said Marshall McLuhan, “and at Vatican II, nobody mentioned the hidden ground of electric information which has created all the moral and theological problems of our time.” Marshall McLuhan identified our time of postmodernity as the “ecological age” in which [...]
Despite making fun of the nature of tech company perfidy and internet culture, “The Mitchells vs. The Machines,” like too many animated films, may simply add to the inability of its younger viewers to follow a story for more than a minute. I should have known. The ad that popped up for The Mitchells vs. [...]
According to Friedrich-Georg Jünger, modern man’s veneration of technology reveals his distant kinship to the Titans of myth. This ‘titanic’ impulse to dominate and consume expresses itself through our technology-driven industrial economy, which now determines every aspect of life from the air we breathe to the food we eat. Ongoing debates concerning the growing power [...]
The burden of Theodore Roszak’s “Where the Wasteland Ends” is to explode the myth that the problems attendant upon the technocratic society can be resolved by technology. Where The Wasteland Ends: Politics And Transcendence In Postindustrial Society, by Theodore Roszak (492 pages, Doubleday, 1972) The burden of this book is to explode the myth that [...]
Because of the strong secular faith instilled in us by education, most of us trust that science and technology, democracy, and capitalism, the three legs of Modernity, can bring about only good ends and fail to see that these three triumphs of humankind can diminish the human person. With the publication of the book The [...]
The obvious question is rarely asked: what is the end of this enlargement of human control and this endless technological reaching? I sense a communal dread about it. Are we building the Tower of Babel—a recurring trope this week? Are we headed for the annihilation of humankind? This past week, adults from across the country [...]