In the first chapter of Understanding Media (1964), called “The Medium is the Message,” Marshall McLuhan begins the book by explaining his most famous aphorism. Over time, the proposition has acquired the status of a cliché, such that its original meaning and intent can become obscured. But as W. Terrence Gordon, the editor of the Critical [...]
In order to explain surprising political phenomena like Donald Trump and Brexit, we have to look at the unprecedented impact of new technologies on our total environment. Douglas Rushkoff, the author of Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, has entertained the thesis that the television age, which brought people together, is over. He opines that [...]
When Max Weber suggested in 1917 that the world had been disenchanted, he meant that modernity was best understood by the expansion of “technical means” that controlled “all things through calculation.”[1] The real power of these technical means lay not in the techniques and technologies themselves but in the disposition of those who used them, in [...]
Reading is critical to our freedom and our happiness. Is it possible to be fully plugged in and at the same time to be absorbed by the greatest books ever written? Some educators are beginning to worry that the wired generation is going to give up serious reading altogether. Judging from our experience here at [...]
Childlikeness, as both the beginning and the end of our creaturely way of being, is the key to being effective and realistic in efforts to renew the world, and indeed is the grounds for never-failing hope in these efforts. Liberal culture’s anti-child practices are bound up with a logic of childlessness most basically defined in [...]
Apart from occasionally going to a sports bar to watch my favourite English soccer team, the only time I ever watch television is in hotel rooms or at the gym. Almost every time I do so I am reminded of the great blessing of not having one of these palantiri in my home. Occasionally, however, [...]
Those who have read The Lord of the Rings will know about the palantiri, the seeing stones which we look into at our peril. Anyone who looks into one of these stones does not see a complete lie. On the contrary, what he sees might be true. The problem is not that he is seeing [...]
The people of the United States spend annually upon higher learning more money, probably, than did all the nations of the world combined, from the foundation of the ancient universities down to the beginning of the Second World War. In the United States, ever since the Second World War and especially during the past two [...]
Here is what I learned from the article* about Amazon in the New York Times: Amazon is the place where your performance is constantly monitored with the latest metrics and you better not have a baby or get cancer. And where you embrace the “purposeful Darwinism” that encourages you to rat out your fellow employees [...]
From Adam and Eve to Eddie Cochrane, from earning your daily bread by the sweat of your brow to the summertime blues and beyond, work has always been the scourge of existence. A recent essay in The Atlantic suggests that Genesis is about to be reversed and the curse lifted. According to Derek Thompson, humanity, [...]
Ask yourself an odd question: “How conservative is my refrigerator?” Or, ask this of your car, your television, your tablet. Ask this of any number of things around the house. At first pass, this might sound unusual, if not ridiculous, because we generally don’t think of things as having behaviors or expressing particular ideas or [...]
(Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series, affords our readers the opportunity to join Professor Stratford Caldecott as he goes beyond the artistic elements of comics and marvels at the questions begged by their narration—questions concerning the meaning of life and the relationship between man and technology. —Alyssa M. Barnes, Editorial Assistant) The imagination of the child [...]
Since the nineteenth century, a widespread misunderstanding regarding the relationship between science and Christianity has persisted. The error is a common conviction that military metaphors provide the most accurate means for describing the engagement between the Christian faith and modern science. Historians of science employ the term conflict thesis, which in its strongest version “provides [...]
Vinod Khosia has managed* to say a lot in a few words about the consequences of “the next technology revolution.” Let me just list some points for discussion: 1. That revolution comes when it’s finally possible to construct “systems with judgment and decision-making capability more sophisticated and nuanced than trained human judgment.” And it’s coming [...]