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 [...]
This is the story of three young men struggling for fame and fortune in the IT sector; finding one another and building a team, adapting the newest technology, injecting their own creativity, raising venture capital and applying painstaking effort, launching their product, outmanoeuvring competitors and rocketing to success—in the 15th Century! Parallels between the Early [...]
Wondering about human height led me to more unfashionable thoughts. We seem to be getting taller. My virtually six-foot college sweetheart was exceptionally tall for young women in the 1970s, but that seems close to average among today’s co-eds. The anecdote seems accurate—American men around age twenty who enlisted in the Great War were four [...]
Like many of my generation (Baby Boomers) I am something of a late adopter when it comes to certain technologies. I have owned an iPad for several years now, which I use mainly to receive and send email when I’m on the go. But I was surprised during a family get-together about ten days ago, [...]
What happens when we enter a world of constant connection—a world in which technology infiltrates nearly every moment of our waking existence? “We all feel the porcupine quill of constant contact, the irritant of ever presence, and long to escape, if only for a moment,” Rabbi David Wolpe writes for TIME Magazine. But Wolpe also [...]
So thanks to Carl for talking up Carson Holloway, The Imaginative Conservative, and civilized leisure. Carson is also a forceful opponent of judicial supremacy. That is the view that the Court says what the Constitution is, the view that fuels the renewed focus on (libertarian) judicial activism. The Court does not, in fact, have to [...]
An increasing number of Americans are looking to social media and online dating sites like Tinder or OKCupid to meet potential romantic partners. In a Friday column, David Brooks reviews the data presented by the book Dataclysm, written by the creator of OKCupid: People who date online are not shallower or vainer than those who [...]
The written word has obviously been crucial to the preservation and development of Western civilization. Without the invention of the alphabet and the printing press, or the widespread use of writing, you would not have access to the minds of those who contributed to Western thought. Considering that you live in a culture sculpted and hewn [...]
It is hard not to think of ourselves as the users of technology, especially since technology forms a core part of the image of our freedom. Liberty and freedom are things that we have. Depending what definition we use, liberty describes a natural faculty to do what we want, denotes the absence of external impediments, [...]
We continue to see constant progress in reducing human labor to a mechanical routine, like the script followed by workers in chain restaurants or the swiping motion that’s pretty much the only skill left in staffing the Walmart check-out line. If you think about it, the compliant behavior required by the scripted service worker is, [...]
Pope John Paul II’s “theology of the body” is becoming better and better known among ordinary Catholics, many of whom have found in it a way of connecting the central mysteries of the Christian faith—Trinity, Incarnation, and Eucharist—with their marriages, their bearing and rearing of children, and their sexuality. To such Catholics, the theology of [...]
As Germany uncovers even more American spies in its midst, its intelligence experts consider protecting themselves from digital snooping by reverting to manual typewriters. Is this a triumph of the old over the new? Will this bung a wrench into the optimism of our pimple-faced teenage technophiles? Will they stop swooning over every semi-useless electronic [...]
Disappearing Through the Skylight: Culture and Technology in the Twentieth Century by O. B. Hardison Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology by Neil Postman The polarities of boundlessness and limits have helped to define the human experience. Although men and women have always lived with infinite longings, at one time they could not avoid [...]
What Steve Jobs “sold” with his Apple devices was the myth of control, of importance, and of connection through technology. In truth, the vast bulk of what these personal devices offer constitutes a massive waste of time—and, worse, a diversion from genuine interaction with actual people, or nature, or our own minds. Redesigning the World [...]