Category Archives: Technology

TECHNOLOGICAL “PROGRESS” AND HUMANITY’S DECLINE

Bruce Brander, riffing on the assessment of the great Henry Adams:

“…the miracles of modern technology were only mistaken for progress. They amounted to humanity’s drawing unprecedented sums of energy from sources outside itself, which testified to rapid exhaustion of people’s inner energies and personal resources and their growing dependence upon nature’s reserves to sustain and enhance their lives. Technology merely masked decline, then served to speed it along.” (emphasis mine)

Brander’s book which has not nearly received the attention it deserves, is here:

 

DIGITAL MINIMALISM

Digital Minimalism is Cal Newport’s latest book.  I interviewed him on his previous book, Deep Work (see link below).  Both are absolutely terrific.  

I am gladly not on Twitter or Facebook, though some have tried to convince me otherwise.  I am on LinkedIn and obviously have some blogs.  These fit what I do. 

I’ve read several books and essays on the perils of social media.  All have been great, but Cal’s latest book and probably Neil Postman’s, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology are now my favorites.

Newport is hardly a Luddite, but he is a wise guide in helping us to think intentionally about how we spend our time.  If you look at Newport’s prodigious output of both popular and scholarly work, you know that he is practicing what he preaches.

Highly recommended!

Cal Newport: Focused Success in a Distracted World

LITTLE BOOK WITH BIG PUNCH!

Jaron Lanier’s book could be viewed as the eccentric musings of a technophobe, but that would be a significant misread. Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now is no Luddite screed.

Lanier offers a wise and balanced book on the various dangers of social media. As Lanier makes clear, he is not advocating a total move from the Internet, but rather a temporary time out to assess what the social media side of things may be doing to us.

Throughout Ten Arguments we learn (or perhaps we already knew it) disturbing aspects that come with social media like the constant manipulation by companies for financial gain. When Facebook executives are limiting their own children’s use of the Internet, we know there is both a problem and profound hypocrisy about the problem.

One of the more disturbing things that Lanier makes clear is that all this social media makes one know themselves less as people who we will never see get to know us better!

I don’t use Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. I am glad I steered clear, but I will keep posting reviews and interviews about good books like this one!

WISE AND WINSOME BOOK

I am a Protestant of catholic (small c) and evangelical sensibilities.  Even with potential disagreements in reading a book by Roman Catholic authors, I found myself in wide agreement.

A Mind at Peace is a short, thoughtful, accessible, and winsome book.  The authors wear their learning lightly, but the reader is well aware that they have done their homework.

As the title suggests, this book is about helping us have a posture of peace.  The authors do a good job of showing that technology is lethal to this kind of peace.  Neither of the authors are Luddites, but they are keenly aware of the disastrous effects that constant access to computers and smart phones has wrought.

My only slight disagreement may reside with Blum and Hochschild’s more favorable take on Stoicism.  They don’t say much about it, but my perception is that we may disagree some on whether some aspects of Stoicism can be of use to the Christian.

Four out of five stars

WHY I AM NOT ON TWITTER OR FACEBOOK

Image result for FACEBOOK DANGERS

Echo chambers abound.  In other words, on Facebook and Twitter you “gather” with like-minded people who confirm your entrenched views.

Funny name that Facebook.  There is no real face to face interaction and “gathering” or connecting is all virtual.  Real person to person interaction has gone the way of the Dodo bird!

Great pooling of ignorance.  Yes, there are thoughtful people on both Facebook and Twitter, but there are many more who are ignorant, and a large percentage seem not to know it!

The ancient Greeks said that to “learn is to suffer.”  Real learning usually means we have to unlearn something that we believed to be true.  This rarely happens, though I know of a few examples like the Westboro Baptist woman who realized via social media that her views were wrong.  But these kinds of examples are rare, very rare.  Probably not wise to build a case for something based on rare examples.

Let’s say you spend twenty minutes a day on Facebook and /or Twitter.  That adds up to a little over 120 hours per day.  Now think what you could do with 120 extra hours!