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technology 150

Knausgaard’s Literary Response to the Tyranny of Technique

The right kind of literature has the power to make the immediate visible to us once again.
August 21, 2025

Parenting Across the Digital Generational Divide

One of the most curious things about raising two boys seventeen years apart is the divide I feel in their digital generations.
August 19, 2025

Old Models

Perhaps the choice not to have a computer is more a choice not to play pretend.

AI is Not Like a Calculator, and Other Conversations Worth Having

We are forgetting about other ways AI may be affecting people close to us, even ourselves.
July 29, 2025

The Land Ethic for AI

We have long drawn a dividing line between technology and humans, imbuing one with ethical responsibility and treating the other as merely contingent— therefore, technologies are “neutral” and it’s simply…
July 1, 2025

What Do Clare Morell and Chuck Magill Have in Common?

Chuck dreams of overcoming his allergy so he can reenter normal society. We reject the status quo because we want something better for our kids.

An Economist’s Take on the Age of AI: A Review of Robert Skidelsky’s Mindless

Skidelsky’s expertise is on full display as he tells the story of the impact of machines on the human condition.

The Crisis of the Self in an Age of Solutions

We live under the impression that we can do for the human community and the individual human soul what physicists have done with the atom.

Heroic Romanticism

It's entirely possible that many will give up human relationships, turning instead to the safety and predictability of technology, like an AI companion

1.5 Speed to Nowhere

Over the decades, I suppose I learned a lot from podcasts; plenty of facts and all the “sides” to stories. Very little of those things seem to matter to me…
May 6, 2025

Local Porch in NOVA: The Tech Exit with Clare Morell

Join Ben Christenson and others for a discussion with Clare Morell.
April 25, 2025

In Praise of “Old”

Similarly, I believe that most people can tell the difference between ugly and beautiful buildings.

Let us Converse Together (Without Our Phones)

Bilbro’s book is a careful study through profound literary texts about how we live in a world that has no patience for careful study through profound literary texts.

Against Spreadsheet Brain and For Taking Action with Ashley Fitzgerald

There’s a type of guy, sometimes they're Silicon Valley guys, sometimes they're just tech bros, sometimes they're environmentalists who have lost their minds

A Modest Proposal: Classical Schools Should Embrace AI

If classical schools insist on banning AI in all forms, their kids will be left behind.
December 30, 2024

Life in the Cyborg Age: A Conversation with Josh Pauling

And Robin and I really hope that this book can be part of that movement to help people get outside the Machine, throw sand in its gears, and live as…
December 13, 2024

Saying No to AI in Education

To rush AI into the classroom or into daily life is to put student well-being at stake. And as Kingsnorth reminds us, refusal to accept certain forms of technology can…
December 4, 2024

The Student’s Dilemma

The promise of AI is utopian and seems futuristic, but its effects on the educational landscape will make students nostalgic for the pre-ChatGPT days of yore.

Do-able Simplicities: On Letter Writing and Fountain Pens

Holding the letters was a delicate experience, noting the brittle nature of the paper, being careful not to let them tear at the aged folds, and yet the blue ink,…
November 28, 2024

The Very Online Culture Wars

The Very Online Right might be riding high now, but I anticipate that the election jackpot of the moment will not last and that this victory will soon look more…
November 25, 2024

Two Cheers for E-Bikes

Automobiles shield you from the outside world, its sounds, its colors. But on my bike, I encounter my environment directly.
November 8, 2024

The Final Word was Right

If there ever comes a true accounting of the costs we’re racking up for making, using, and discarding our mobile (de)vices, we will be obliged to admit that there has…
Jason Peters
October 21, 2024

Large Language Models and the Final Paragraph

Like the sonnet, the five-paragraph essay traps investment in truth felt in the heart and forged in the mind by means of its life-respecting limitations.

Steel-Manning the Amish: The Wisdom of Communal Discernment

What the Amish understand perhaps more than we do is the necessity of maintaining and protecting domains of embodied human agency in our lives.
September 20, 2024