Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts

Friday, August 18, 2023

Too Hot to Handle: Screened Out

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

I don’t spend a lot of time browsing the The New York Times, but this article was worth a few minutes. Nellie Bowles describes an increasingly common phenomenon: screens everywhere you go, doing almost everything people used to be paid to do. Touchscreens provide a consistent user experience, don’t take sick days, don’t unionize, and the hourly cost of maintaining them is considerably less than that of employing a person. For all but the wealthiest couple of percentiles of society, technology has become the go-to substitute for human contact.

Thursday, May 18, 2023

New, Improved, Advanced … You Need One

A few years ago I went on vacation in England. We had some special places to go, but of course there were a few of the obligatory touristy things as well.

We went to the Tower of London. It’s not a single tower, but a concentric castle formed of 21 towers. One of the main ones is called the White Tower. It was especially interesting to me since it housed a great collection of historical armaments spanning several centuries of warfare. Much of it is conventional stuff: swords, cannons, muskets, shields, chain mail and so forth. Some of the displays feature experimental weaponry, such as multi-barreled, repeating guns and so forth.

Cool.

Monday, December 21, 2020

Anonymous Asks (124)

“I have to write an essay for my university class on the Christian view of a technology. The topic that I choose is regarding genetic engineering and how we as a Christians view it.

So, some background information:

Genetic engineering is a procedure that could be done pre-natal (meaning before birth or during embryogenesis) or post-natal (on adults the procedure is called ‘gene therapy’).

The argument revolved around the question is whether this is allowed or not because ethically it’s as if we’re playing god.

I’ve asked my pastor about this some other time and he said that it’s allowed but only for medical purposes, not to change one’s aesthetics or to make someone racially superior.”

That’s an interesting question.

Friday, November 06, 2020

Too Hot to Handle: The Greatest Threat to Faith Today

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Writer Andrew Sullivan gives this advice to churches:

“If the churches came to understand that the greatest threat to faith today is not hedonism but distraction, perhaps they might begin to appeal anew to a frazzled digital generation. Christian leaders seem to think that they need more distraction to counter the distraction. Their services have degenerated into emotional spasms, their spaces drowned with light and noise and locked shut throughout the day, when their darkness and silence might actually draw those whose minds and souls have grown web-weary.”

Tom: “The greatest threat to faith today is not hedonism but distraction.” What do you think, IC? Is technology dangerous to Christians?

Friday, January 24, 2020

Disappearing Comments

Our reader WiC informs me issues he was having with his comments to our blog posts disappearing into the ether seem to have been unexpectedly resolved. If I recall, this happened most frequently to readers with Mac laptops.

Is it time? Is it Blogger? Who knows. Either way it’s good news.

So, if you have felt like commenting on a post here or there but have given it up for impossible, now might be a good time to give it another shot.

Thursday, July 25, 2019

New, Improved, Advanced … You Need One

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Friday, June 21, 2019

Too Hot to Handle: Screened Out

 The most recent version of this post is available here.

Friday, February 23, 2018

Too Hot to Handle: Sophistry

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

We’ve all seen this story before. Those of us who’ve lived long enough to remember Hal Lindsey have seen it repeatedly: a guy who specializes in the study of prophecy and has been teaching one book of the Bible for thirty years all over the world. His bread and butter (often quite literally) is finding something new to say about the same old subject that is also both current and, ideally, sensational.

Tom: And so, hot on the heels of Hanson Robotics’ press releases about their new “artificial intelligence” creation (and ‘her’ subsequent appearance on Jimmy Fallon’s show), here comes Bible teacher Mark Correll with his latest twist on prophecy: the first beast of Revelation 13 could be … AI.

Sunday, January 22, 2017

The Commentariat Speaks (8)

TechCrunch editor John Biggs mourns the fact that social media is no longer a place where you can air an opinion without fear of adverse consequences:

“Our errant Twitter thoughts can make us targets and we often don’t know we’re being watched. A prominent writer and friend recently mused about what would happen if he posted some political rants. The first thing that leapt to his readers’ minds was the potential for SWATing and doxing and then a visit from the FBI. Then, as evidenced by the above CEO example, you get fired.

Social media has become a very real, very visceral, and very censorial force and it can now only worsen the human condition.”

Now, none of this is news. Ironically, it’s John Biggs’ fellow Democrat voters who fired the opening salvos in the online equivalent of the nuclear arms race.

Friday, October 14, 2016

Too Hot to Handle: The Greatest Threat to Faith Today

 The most recent version of this post is available here.

Saturday, October 08, 2016

New, Improved, Advanced … You Need One

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Tuesday, November 03, 2015

Turn It Off

The other night I was out with Bernie and one of his neighbours, a man who works in the correctional system. Bernie has his own business to run. His neighbour had a co-worker in crisis. I had just come from work myself. We had a great time and some good, solid conversation, but in the course of a three hour dinner, every one of our cell phones was active between five and twenty times.

You have probably had similar experiences.

A new initiative in my department at work is migrating 90% of company communications to an intranet social media site patterned after Facebook. We are being discouraged from using email and encouraged to access the forum regularly from our phones when not on the job in order to keep abreast of developments and “share information more effectively”.

Thursday, July 31, 2014

New, Improved, Advanced ... You Need One

A more current version of this post is available here.