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technology 150

Resist Not Crypto

The status of NFTs in the world of 2027 depends, in large part, on how well we’re able to incorporate them into our positive vision of the good. We can,…

Pretend It’s a Book

Fran Liebowitz suggests that “a book isn’t supposed to be a mirror, it’s supposed to be a door.” Universities are the same. They are not meant to simply reflect the…

Life Under Sycamores

Frank Mulder is preaching the same Gospel. Pictures of Frank Mulder make him look like he could be a modern-day Johnny Appleseed, on a bicycle, planting sycamores instead of apple…

The Face of Education

As a new school year begins, Jon Schaff takes stock of the effects of Covid on education. Learning is relationship, and, if the point of college, as the very term…
September 15, 2021

From Technological Nostalgia to Technological Faithfulness

I bought myself an iPad in August 2016, and to say that it changed my life would be only a slight overstatement. For several years I had been experiencing increasingly…
August 20, 2021

The Tyranny of Big Tech Demonstrates the Tyranny of Faulty Ideas on the Right

Hawley’s book goes some way towards providing a framework for using the threat of a legislative boot to stomp Big Tech back down to size. Whether the Right will listen…
July 12, 2021

A Frenchman Discovers Silicon Valley Post-Animal Agriculture

In the book Steak Barbare, Gilles Luneau unravels the industry that depends on promoting a vegan diet and post-animal agriculture. His book sheds light not only on how labs grow…

Watching Movies and Wondering about Metaphysics in an Anxious Age

Casey Spinks muses on zombie shows, Pixar movies, Scorsese films, metaphysical realism, and the philosophical fate of modern culture in his review of Age of Anxiety: Meaning, Identity, and Politics…

When Innovation Runs Out: The Vindication of Maintenance

The Innovation Delusion goes a long way toward demystifying and destigmatizing the ordinary yet essential work of maintenance.

Education and Democracy in Disembodied Times: Emerson and Dewey on Humane Technology

In an age of knee-jerk innovation, the warnings articulated by Emerson and Dewey are more needed than ever. They advocated for applied knowledge, but they also insisted such technology must…

Bees’ Wings & Zerks

Supportive efforts can steer this ingenious workforce toward better stewardship and environmental integrity by reclaiming that awe that life on the land should inspire.

Mr. Munson’s Mustang: A Fable

"In order to implement vital system updates, you must install the Trans-Mog-Z Facilitator, available at any Big Horizon Automotive Intervention Center. This has been your first notice.”
December 14, 2020

Cultivating the Skills that Freedom Requires in Matthew Crawford’s Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road

Human driving requires unending mutual predictions and constant accommodations for each other. It is in such experiences that we end up with something meaningful for life in the physical world…

Wendell Berry and Zoom

While the futurists and transhumanists and purveyors of educational technologies would have us voluntarily cut off our arms so we can enjoy their fancy new prostheses, our priority should be…

Call Me Lucifer

Alexa is no doubt low-hanging fruit for the readers of Front Porch Republic. It is a place-contaminating, unlimited tyrant. If you've purchased one, watch out. When the lights start pulsing…
March 10, 2020

Noticing Birds

We don’t have to escape to a new and better location with more perfect neighbors. We need to lovingly attend to the ones we have.
January 29, 2020

Recapturing the Real: Physicality, Imitation, and Tradition in a Digital World

Our educational approach should include the validation of physicality, the imitation of the master, and the celebration of tradition.

I Am Not a Luddite

In my efforts to point people to various methodologies of eco-agriculture I often encounter those who dispute these approaches. One of the frequent refrains I hear is, “We can’t go…
July 22, 2019

What Are People For? Control or Love?

The arguments that Deneen and Shatzer advance are really two sides of the same coin; as one interpreter of Marshall McLuhan put it, “We make our tools, and then our…

Robo-umps and Us

As is so often the case when new technology promises to correct the errors of human fallibility, robo-umps could be bad for everyone involved.

A Primer on Digital Thinking Part 2: Eliminating the Human Element

In Part 1, I outlined the basic difference between counting and measuring and gave some examples of how data is not always objectively derived. Now I want to move the…

Learning to Distinguish between Demonic and Redemptive Technologies

In a recent essay for Christianity Today, “Do All Plants Go to Heaven?,” Abigail Murrish speculates that GMOs might be present in the New Jerusalem. It’s certainly an interesting question.…

Stop Talking about Wendell Berry on Twitter

Editor's Note: Matt's piece kicks off a mini-symposium on the question of whether localists should use social media, and if so, how. As a Twitter user myself, albeit a somewhat…
May 14, 2018

Learning How to Think with Alan Jacobs

Last fall Alan Jacobs published a slim book with a bold title: How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds. Jacobs is a professor of English literature,…