technology 143

Efficiency is a false god.

[This post is adapted with permission from “GPS and the End of the Road,” an essay in the anthology Why Place Matters: Geography, Identity, and Civic Life in Modern America,…

Read this just before your shut your computer down for good. Here's a taste: Once upon a time, a friend of mine accidentally took over thousands of computers. He had…

Hidden Springs Lane. What’s the deal with Smart Phones? Go to any public gathering and most of the young people (and some of the not-so-young) are clearly more interested in…

History is never merely history.

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Senator Rand Paul's filibuster of the nomination of John Brennan to be head of the CIA--something that he did in order to "draw attention to…

Hidden Springs Lane, VA. Sprint is running a new ad pushing the merits of its data plan. While it might be a mistake to make too much of an ad,…

Our dwelling place is the state not of nature but of culture.

In the spring of 1994 my grandmother chose to go off dialysis. Four days later, she was dead. I still remember my parents waking me up in the middle of…

Many FPR readers will enjoy the new symposium, "Views on Hawthorne, Simms, History, and Progress," in ANAMNESIS, A Journal for the Study of Tradition, Place, and 'Things Divine.'

Several times lately I’ve opened my email and found notices about people who want to friend me, but I don’t think that means they want to befriend me. Thanks to…

Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles.

The future is grim, my friends.

We’re like small-mouth bass, and we’ve swallowed the technological treble hook.

Fortunately America still gives birth to her Framers and they come with every generation.

How do we explain a culture that tells children that sex doesn’t matter much, that “girls can do anything boys can do,” and at the same moment is treating the…

Computers are not The Answer to creating better students.

Going to the gym? Call a friend. Running an errand? Send a text. Eating something interesting? Take a picture and show the world on Facebook.

What a trifling thing it is to control man! How easily we believe in fairy tales when they come cloaked in the black box of authority and superior knowledge.

Nostalgia is, therefore, an index of alienation, communal decrepitude, and, at high levels, cultural patricide.

The general continued to pay for the upkeep of the LSU tiger in an airconditioned cage. The amount of money involved was almost precisely the same as the subsidy for…

Beautifully and substantially-made books suggest something that deserve to be pored over at length, just as one lingers with friends after a wonderful meal.

Why not stand on the shoulders of the Kindle?

Here’s a sign of the times: if you’re worried about what all these digital and internet technologies are going to do to books, you can join a movement to signal…