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The AI Mousetrap

AI promises free cheese, but there is no such thing as a free lunch. Although we often boast about AI’s ability to create, we should instead focus the conversation on…
June 28, 2024

The False Promise of 3D Printers

As is clear to see, Business Insider's portrayal of 3D printing as a panacea for America's housing crisis falls short upon closer examination.

Pentecost and AI: Being Human in a World of Disabling Algorithms

Rather than empowering us to live in humble confidence in relationship with others and our maker, AI offers us a choice similar to that which confronted Esau.
June 5, 2024

On the Need to Reactivate Our Right Hemispheres

In our daily lives, we need activities that aren’t driven by our left hemispheres. We need leisure (as understood by Josef Pieper). We need to waste time. We need to…
May 9, 2024

Do our products own us?

Dodging deceptive design in the age of Big everything

Is a Radioactive Trash Mountain Coming to Town?

Rather than seeking the elusive mirage of purity, we ought to undertake the contested work of breaking the body of creation respectfully and responsibly. As Nobel demonstrates, the oil industry…
Jeffrey Bilbro
April 5, 2024

Staring Into The Abyss

Man must face the reality of his own existence and his ultimate fate. To stare into the abyss of eternity, to examine and grasp the meaning of life, is a…
March 28, 2024

Twenty Years with Philip

The difference a pen pal can make

Why We Don’t Believe in Free Will

A quarter of a century ago, Wendell Berry wrote, “the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish…

In Defense of Livestock

Rushing to enslave themselves like animals in a cage, the animal rights and climate activists who think they are on the “right side of history” are unwittingly reinforcing their dependence…
February 28, 2024

The Last Wild Harvest

Do we treat the created order as if it belongs to God or exclusively to ourselves? Is dominion the same as domination? Is stewardship the same as subjugation? Such notions…

Rejoice Evermore, Even for Grocery-Store Chicken

If we imagine that the fate of our times hangs upon our efforts, we’ll deceive ourselves and miss out on the goods and pleasures that are at hand waiting to…
February 16, 2024

Southern Hospitality in the New Machine Age

It’s not perhaps that the world doesn’t need change, but that as anti-Machine author Paul Kingsnorth put it in these pages, “the first work is changing yourself.” We have to…
January 22, 2024

First Hack: A Techno Myth

Unaware, we can stand in a museum, in a temple of modernity that extracts life from all other temples. We can gaze into the vengeful gift of a god while…

Petroleum and Me

I wish environmentalists would better understand that there are no mustache-twirling billionaires drilling and digging and burning oil just for the hell and the money of it. Like money, petroleum…
January 8, 2024

Small Plastic Gods: On the Tabletop Renaissance

Tabletop games put something in our twitchy, swipe-hungry fingers other than a digital device—a hand of cards, a pair of dice, a plastic Zeus. And since others have put down…
Steven Knepper
January 5, 2024

How to Buy a Dumb Phone (and How Not to Use It): A Reflection on FPR 2023

I did some research with the help of a “dumb phone finder” which told me the functions, network compatibilities, and reviews of the available flip phones and other simplicity-oriented devices.…

Is the Internet to Blame for the Decline of Literary Fiction? Possibly, But Maybe Not in the Way That We Think

It is not solely (or perhaps even primarily) about there being more hours of work and therefore less time for reading. It is about the possibility of work hovering over…

Happiness Fit for Humans: A Review of A Web of Our Own Making

Barba-Kay argues that we tend to resolve our cognitive dissonance by outsourcing all the choices that do matter and consoling ourselves with a plethora of choices that don't.
September 27, 2023

Home Alone

This trend is peaking in a small rectangle, the smartphone. As Marc Barnes observes, the smartphone has replaced the TV. The smartphone is portable and personal and has enticed us…

Voices From The Past: The Humanistic Letters of Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer More

Babbitt and More advocated the study of the humanities as a tool for the shaping of human souls toward virtue, helping confront what Babbitt characterized as the “civil war of…
September 14, 2023

Hope for a Humane Agricultural Future: A Review of Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future

The ecomodernist approach of Regenesis relies on a mechanistic understanding of humanity. The presumption is that humans are merely fleshy machines that can adapt to flourish in any environment as…

The Year We Went Inorganic

When my wife and I started our rural homestead, we were suburbanites with a lot of ideas. For one, we’d do everything organically. No question. Second, we’d endeavor to only…

Planting Our Flag in the Real World: Parents Take the Postman Pledge

Do real things together. Celebrate. Take delight in the world—together. Don’t feel compelled to broadcast your views about the dangers of technology. Let your life speak, but be prepared to…
August 21, 2023