technology

In Ian Leslie’s telling, curiosity is far from a valued quality. Augustine, he notes, equated curiosity with temptation.

In the wake of the grand jury’s failure to indict Officer Darren Wilson for the death of unarmed teenager Michael Brown—and in light of conflicting eyewitness accounts of the incident—many have argued that video evidence would have helped a lot. Body-mounted cameras offer a technological solution to what is otherwise a problem of human moral complexity: eyewitnesses can’t agree; officers can’t behave; human evidence can’t be trusted. Technology, the argument suggests, can supersede all of this.

And then, of course, a grand jury in New York City failed to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of another unarmed black man, Eric Garner.

I’m not writing a book on the Gospel According to the Fortune 500 any time soon. Do you know why? Because churches have a much more sustainable business model than businesses do.

I began watching Her suspicious that it would glorify bodiless romance or present a mere male fantasy. But the film surprised me.

Who do you consider to be part of the "new generation"? What do you think draws you to advocate for this new generation? What do you think are some of the greatest challenges this generation faces?

Technology is changing the nature of our selves. Yet, when I travel among different religious communities, many leaders focus on whether they ought to be on Facebook or not. I'm worried that our theological imaginations have not kept pace with our technological developments and I hope that in the decades to come, we can begin reflecting theologically on how our identities evolve. 

Multitasking is marked by a sustained sense of urgency in a world mediated by communication devices. Puttering is something different.

I work remotely, out of my home office. As such I am dependent on the smooth and ready operation of computer equipment. Recently I encountered some hitches.

Viewers don’t look to James Bond movies for profundity. Mostly they go to see buxom babes (now brainier and badder) and gravity-defying vehicle chases. But the most recent Bond installment offers some pertinent comments on technology.

Most people who serve as church leaders realize what an important time it is in our religious landscape. Because of demographic, generational, technological and economic shifts, we realize that many churches are coming to the end of their seasons. In this important moment, we will need leaders who can experiment, create, test and plant.

Terry Castle is concerned about students' constant contact with parents. I’m more interested in how they relate face to face.

As we’re all in the midst of Advent longing, I realize that I’m turning 40 in a couple of days. Which puts me in an odd position, since I write and speak about ministering with people in their 20s and 30s. 

It’s scary. Sometimes, we Scrappers have to swallow our pride in order to start working with the institution that turned us away. Often, Scrappers develop autonomy and a certain voice that we fear we'll lose if we move into partnership with an established organization. We worry that the structure will steal our ideas and they'll have the money and power to pull them off—without us. 

There is a good chance that you are a cyborg. A cyborg is a cybernated organism—which is anyone whose normal biological systems are en­hanced or extended by technological mechanisms, especially electronic and communication devices. The word "cybernetics" comes from the Greek word for "steersman" (kubernetes) and describes one who is in control, who is both flexible and agile in response to a given environment and who can tame it to certain ends. To the extent that we exercise such control through technological devices, our lives have become cybernated. If you have a hearing aid, a pacemaker or an artificial limb, if you use a computer or telephone or drive a car, you are a cyborg.

As soon as I heard that Steve Jobs had died I went on Facebook and posted, “RIP, Steve Jobs.” There were many responses, some that surprised me. A few people talked in glowing terms about how Jobs had transformed their lives, as though he were a spiritual guru.

Computers are changing the way we think. "Calm, focused,
un­distracted, the linear mind is being pushed aside by a new kind of
mind that wants and needs to take in and dole out information in short,
disjointed, often overlapping bursts—the faster, the better." This is
probably not a good thing, says Nicholas Carr.