An anonymous confession. A recent study reported by The New York Times suggests that people are people with or without Facebook. People without Facebook have mood swings; people with Facebook have mood swings and access to thousands of pictures of people they might only kind of know. Examining the study, Benedict Carey explains how “heavy […]
The Philosopher from the 1800s Who Talked About Social Media
Long before Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, there lived a man in 19th-century Denmark who foreshadowed them all. His name was Søren Kierkegaard. We recognize him as a philosopher and a pugilistic theologian. Plus, the guy could tell a story like nobody’s business. And in one of his stories, he all but prophesies the future soul […]
Another Week Ends: Questing for Cultural Innocence, Narrating Luther, Inverting Transhumanism and Reforming One’s Pets
Lots of love – commingled with envy – for everyone at the Tenth Annual Mockingbird Conference in NYC! “For the rest of us” (G. Costanza), some links for the weekend: 1. First up, The Hedgehog Review here in c-ville posted a wonderful article on “The Persistence of Guilt.” Who knew that the great Sigmund Freud […]
Another Week Ends: Robotic Employees, Free Speech Zones, Travel by Bubble, Carnival Culture, More Love, Less Self-Help, and Mary Tyler Moore
1. Ever feel like a robot at work? The good news is, you’re not the only one; the bad news comes from an article by John Harris in The Guardian: “Digital giants are turning workers into robots.” In various places of employment, invasive programs are monitoring work ethic; in other words, a parable of the law. […]
Mr. Robot Wants to Save the World
“Watching a group of young people rebel against the one percent — these are not new ideas,” Portia Doubleday, a star of the hit show Mr. Robot, explained to an interviewer. “They’re things that as a society we’re all thinking but don’t know how to tackle. He’s just relating to what so many of us are […]
Another Week Ends: The Problem with “Parenting”, Solipsistic Audiophiles, Más Havrilesky, Self-Defeating Happiness, and Dubious Decency
1. Having a dog used to be easy, and were it 1995, I’d get one in a heartbeat. Fill up the gallon pail of food, a couple large buckets of water, and for the next three days the responsibilities were watching it run around (outside), fetch, the usual. Now I might be leaning cat-wards – dogsitters, […]
Pokémon, Pharisees, and the Importance of Play
Pokémon GO hit smartphones just over a week ago and it’s already an international phenomenon. In the American market, the game reached No. 1 on the downloads chart in just 13 hours, and according to some vendors, is pulling in $2 million a day. It is already more popular than Tinder and Instagram, and it’s nearly out […]
The Sun’ll Come Out Tomorrow in Tomorrowland: Disney Does Eschatology
The futuristic city of Tomorrowland in the film Tomorrowland rises from the amber waves of a vast field of ripened grain, gleaming in the sunlight like, well, like the New Jerusalem “coming down out of heaven from God” (Revelation 21:2). But this is the City of Man, or at least a possible city of humanity’s […]
Lifelogging Mediocrity and The Quantified Self
They’re calling 2014 “The Year of the Wearable” in the tech world. Love or hate Google glass, it seems as if wearable tech is in the future- if not for us, then perhaps for our kids. Smart watches want to replace your smart phone. Smart wristbands want to track all your steps and exercise movements. […]
Man’s Prosthetic God: Technologies of Glory and the Still-Present Need for Salvation
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote some thoughts on identity and freedom, prompted in part by Apple’s iPad Air commercial. So to continue the theme of ads-from-tech-companies, I thought I might also offer just some brief comments on Microsoft’s ad from the Super Bowl, which is begging for religious reflection. (If you happened to […]
Another Week Ends: Rich Exhibitionists, Public Potheads, Political (L)aw, Sons of Bill, Gamer Success, and Dissociative Pornography
1. For every voyeur, there’s an exhibitionist – and social media sites are no exception. We try to post the most enviable pictures of ourselves possible on Facebook or, at the very least, the most desirable. And others obsess over other people’s pictures, thinking, “If I could just be in that group of people, doing […]
