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Posts from the ‘Technology/Digital Culture’ Category

May 12

10 Comments

Our Narcissistic Noise

As one whose professional mandate includes the task of “community building” I have begun to take a more focused interest in what brings and keeps people together, both inside and outside of a church context. I’m hardly the first to notice or comment upon this, but one crucial element of any kind of meaningful community is a meaningful sense of a shared history that we can participate in, both collectively and individually. Communities don’t just form because people really want them or think it would be a good idea to be a part of one. Some orienting story or purpose is a necessary component of any viable and healthy community. Read more

Mar 9

4 Comments

Why I’m Not on Facebook

Periodically, I receive puzzled queries as to why I have not joined the rest of the human race in the mad flock to “connect” on Facebook. There are a number of reasons why I refuse to do this—many of them undoubtedly rich in theological depth and razor-sharp in the penetrating cultural critique they represent—but none as flat-out hilarious as the ones in this piece I came across via Arts & Letters today. Here’s two quotes to whet your appetites: Read more

Dec 6

8 Comments

Text Message

After a period in the technological wilderness, I recently got a cell-phone. Needless to say (at least for those who know me) a large percentage of this device’s marvelous technology is utterly wasted on me. Last week I managed, after 20 minutes and no small amount of frustration, to send a six-word text message to a co-worker. As you can imagine, my euphoria was virtually unbridled. Perhaps my text-messaging incompetence is turning me into a curmudgeonly old killjoy, but I just cannot seem to get excited about these little bursts of grammatically-challenged communication.

Given the preceding, I got more than a chuckle out of this:

Nov 24

8 Comments

The Perils of Television

Turns out, it’s even worse than your parents led you to believe.  Not only does watching television make you stupider, but it makes you unhappier as well—at least, if the experts in this article are to be believed.  Here’s a quote: Read more

Jun 24

Scientists Have Discovered…

It seems like every week or two I come across an article bemoaning how distracted we’ve become with our over-reliance on technological gadgetry, our inability to turn our devices off, and our constant foraging for information, checking email, etc. Usually this is framed as a negative thing primarily because of its detrimental effect on the economy—too many work hours down the drain due to our inability to focus on a single task and our proclivity for allowing our minds (and mouses) to get distracted and wander off into cyberspace or BlackBerry land. Read more

Feb 29

1 Comment

Googling Eschatology

This article from today’s Globe and Mail caught my attention if only because I had a conversation with a friend after hockey on Saturday night where he described a virtually identical situation. He was tucking his daughter in at night and she asked him “dad, when does the world end?” Like the author of this article, who recounts how she dealt with her four-year-old’s “where do we go when we die?” question, he was dumbfounded and didn’t quite know how to respond. The guy beside him said “just do what I do whenever my son asks me a question I don’t know the answer to—tell her you’ll look it up on the internet later”—an option also considered by the boy with the existential crisis in the article. Read more

Oct 7

22 Comments

What’s Going on Here?

Well, here’s one that falls into the “what not to be thankful for” category on this Thanksgiving weekend. I stumbled across this depressing article this morning. Apparently, some evangelical churches in America are using the video game Halo to attract young people to their churches. I don’t know much about this game except that it is popular, it is violent and you have to be 17 years old to purchase it. Read more

Aug 14

3 Comments

A Simulated Theodicy

I was interested to read this article in this morning’s New York Times. According to Nick Bostrom, an Oxford philosopher, the chances of human beings and our perceived existence on planet earth being a computer simulation are around 20%. John Tierney, the Times writer covering the story, considers this scenario to be even more likely—”almost a mathematical certainty” once we accept some “pretty reasonable” assumptions. Read more

Aug 8

10 Comments

Ad-trocious

I don’t like advertising.

I resent the exorbitant amounts of money that are spent to convince people to buy things that, in all likelihood, they probably don’t need. I resent the pathetically transparent appeals to human pride and vanity that accompany most commercials, and I resent the level of intelligence that most advertisements implicitly assume of their audiences—as if I am really expected to believe, for example, that shaving with four blades (or is it five now? I can never keep track of how close a shave I ought to be demanding from the manufacturer of my grooming products…) will transform me into a ravishingly handsome fighter pilot, barely able to fend off the hordes of gorgeous women who will inevitably be lured my way by the extra micro-millimeter of hair that I have managed, with the benefit of “fusion” technology, to harvest from my face. Read more

Aug 3

13 Comments

I Give Up! (An Utterly Ridiculous Reflection on Bathroom Technology)

I’ve done a lot of traveling over the past couple of weeks. First, it was back to southern Alberta to spend some time with my family, then up to Edmonton for a speaking engagement, then over to Hepburn, SK for a whirlwind visit with my brother and his family, then back to Lethbridge to spend a week with Naomi’s folks, and then, finally, the long trip back to Vancouver. And then, after only a brief period at home, we were off again—this time to Galiano Island to spend a delightful couple of days enjoying the laid-back island life with friends. We just returned tonight and are now going to settle down around home for the month of August (and try to get some of the work done that I have been putting off for most of the month of July!). Read more

Jul 2

5 Comments

iInsanity!

Readers of this blog will know that I have mixed feelings regarding the ubiquitous nature of technology in our culture. On the one hand, I am happy to use it for the things that make my job easier; on the other, I resent the way in which I allow it to monopolize my time and dictate the manner in which I engage with the world around me. I resent the way it conditions us to value the immediate, the visually stimulating, the excessive, the spectacular, and the trivial. Technology giveth and technology taketh away; it is a decidedly mixed blessing. This, in a nutshell, is my view on the matter. Read more

May 10

1 Comment

Tech-ed Out

I first came across the writings of Neil Postman in the late 90’s—before I decided to return to school, and just before I owned my first computer. Since then, I have spent a good deal of my time in academic environments where I have observed the steady proliferation of technology in classroom situations. In my first year at university, there were a couple of laptops in the classroom, my second year a few more, and this past year at Regent a friend and I estimated that in a class of 130 people, somewhere between 40-50% of the students were using laptops—myself, by this time, included. Read more

Apr 27

The Limits of “the Natural”

More on The Ethical Imagination…

Somerville exhibits a virtual reverence for “the natural” in her quest to argue for the “secular sacred” as a potential universal grounding for ethics. In situations of ethical ambiguity, our default position should always be to “the natural.” Let me give you an example. Read more

Apr 17

The Perpetually Distracted “Informavore”

I’ve been meaning to bring up an article from last month’s edition of The Walrus for a while now, but time has not permitted it. The article is called “Driven to Distraction,” and discusses the effect of the “ubiquitous technology” of our modern world upon our ability to think (I tried to link to the article, but it’s in an area only available to print subscribers. I guess you’ll either have to trust my summary of it, or go find an actual hard copy—which may not be a bad idea, given the content of the article…). Read more

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