Commentary on technologies of reading, writing, research, and, generally, knowledge. As these technologies change and develop, what do we lose, what do we gain, what is (fundamentally or trivially) altered? And, not least, what’s fun?
By: Alan Jacobs
May 1, 2017
Suppose you’re a person who believes that anthropogenic climate change is very real and very, very bad news. Suppose further that you believe that portrayals of a future of chaotic weather and massively destructive rises in sea level — e.g., the portrayals we see in Kim Stanley Robinson’s recent novels — are not manifestations of...
May 1, 2017
This from Michael Brendan Dougherty is worthy of some reflection: An example: I’m worried about the culture on college campuses. Maybe you’re not, but I am. The rash of near-riots against right-wing speakers was troubling enough. But the internet wasn’t satisfied with the level of anxiety that might inspire in me and it quickly...
May 1, 2017
Here’s a passage from an essay in the Guardian about the decline of e-books and the revival of the book’s fortunes: Another thing that has happened is that books have become celebrated again as objects of beauty. They are coveted in their own right, while ebooks, which are not things of beauty, have become more expensive; a new...
April 29, 2017
It’s been very interesting for me to re-read — for the first time in 40 years, so who am I kidding, let’s just say read — Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light. It’s a wonderful book, and I am especially pleased that I got to it just after reading Cory Doctorow’s new novel Walkaway. Doctorow’s book has some good points, but...
April 27, 2017
In this interview, Jill Lepore comments, To be fair, it’s difficult not to be susceptible to technological determinism. We measure the very moments of our lives by computer-driven clocks and calendars that we keep in our pockets. I get why people think this way. Still, it’s a pernicious fallacy. To believe that change is driven by...
April 26, 2017
I have a suspicion that my earlier posts on idolatry — one and two — bear a significant relation to the recommendation of Pynchon’s spectral Walter Rathenau that we should simultaneously reject “secular history” and “look into the technology of these matters.” But explaining the connection won’t be easy. I’m going to...
April 25, 2017
In his previous books — Culture Making, Playing God, and Strong and Weak — Andy Crouch has shown a remarkable facility for translating theological and philosophical ideas into the language of Christian practice and action. I haven’t mentioned this to him, but I suspect that when Andy confronts a new idea he asks himself, What...
April 25, 2017
The most distinctive element of Thomas Pynchon’s account of modernity, and the element that makes it so vital, is its uniting of theological and technological reflection. Though this truth is rarely acknowledged, a properly theological account of modernity will also be a technological account; a usefully technological one will also be...
April 24, 2017
Frederick Buechner’s novel Son of Laughter has a passage I think about often, a beautiful passage about idols and idolatry. Before you read it you should be aware that the novel, which is about Jacob the Patriarch, refers to God not as God, or the Lord, or YHWH, or even HaShem, but as the Fear. That said, here goes — and read it...
April 21, 2017
Herewith a kind of thought experiment: In a well-known passage from the 1559 edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin writes that “we may infer that the human mind is, so to speak, a perpetual forge of idols” (I.11.8). That’s the Beveridge translation — I’m not sure what more recent translations have,...