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Alissa Quart-2

Teen identity in the culture of self-promotion…

To the worm in horse radish, the whole world is horse radish, runs the old Yiddish proverb.  The same might be said of Americans and popular culture.  Since it’s all we know, it’s quite often invisible.

 

Unfortunately,

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Facebook-Sad

Facebook, sadness and the ‘friendship paradox’…

Understanding the social impact of Facebook and the other social media is an ongoing challenge.  Yes, it helps us stay in touch with lots of friends and acquaintances.  It’s a good way to quickly pass on certain kinds

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Imagining the Kingdom

How social media turns our gaze back upon ourselves…

Technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral.  This is a lesson taught by Plato and repeated by Neil Postman.  The French sociologist Jacques Ellul makes the same point and so does historian of science Melvin

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Stop Phubbing

Stop Phubbing! The war against anti-social phone use…

Phubbing is phone-snubbing.  It happens when someone pays attention to their mobile phone instead of the people in their immediate presence.  Many of us are guilty!  We’re also guilty of excusing our companions when they reach for

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Twitter Addiction

Listening to the pain of a recovering Twitter addict…

What does it profit a man if he gains 130,427 Twitter followers and loses his own soul?  The best person to answer this question is Sammy Rhodes who, in his own words, became “irrepressibly and obsessively hooked” on Twitter.

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Patience--Boy with Squirrel

How we’re wired to be impatient and how one art teacher is resisting…

Technology is not neutral—it wires our expectations.  It enables our desires to be satisfied with ever increasing immediacy.  The two-day delivery of Amazon Prime is not about to become passé.  But like the other giant retailers Walmart

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The Shallows

What the Internet is doing to our minds…

The fate of the book is widely debated, though for some its disappearance is a foregone conclusion.  But what about the fate of a book that discusses the technologies that are displacing the book?  Interestingly, one such book,

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Posthuman-Hayles

Christian theology in a posthuman culture…

What has Christian theology to do with posthuman culture?

 

Much—or it should!  Over a half-century ago C. S. Lewis warned that the last step in man’s conquest of nature would mean the conquest of human nature itself. 

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Brock--Ethics-Technology

Learning to read in cyberspace…

Some of the most important questions never get asked!  Certain things seem so obvious that we never think to inquire into their nature.  Reading is one of those things.  It’s taken for granted that reading is for

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Reality. What a letdown...

Reality. What a letdown…

What does technology want?  It wants to give us choices, to give us lots of opportunities, proclaims Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired magazine.  Once described as the “happy evangelist from Geekdom,” Kelly argues that technology enables us to

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