technology 160

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…

We need not rely with some desperation on the Hope that is a gift, if we can gin up optimism of our own sort.

Claremont, CA. When my mother came to visit last week, she brought a copy of The Yiddish Policeman’s Union with her. Before she departed for the airport this morning, she…

Claremont, CA. If you don’t want to read the new report from Harvard Business School, titled “Understanding Users of Social Networks,” you can just listen to the song from Avenue…

Rock Island, IL In the early days of FPR, and then again more recently, I was impertinent enough to write disparaging remarks about cell phones, which as everyone knows are…

Holland, MI. I confess: I hate farms. I hate everything about them. I hate the malodorous smells that take days to wash off. I hate the all-pervasive dirt which invades…

Rock Island, IL “Morning Cyanide” is a fun game for the whole family. The best thing about it is this: not everyone has to be awake at the same time…

Washington, Connecticut. The urge, some might say mania with which our species has attempted to distance itself from Nature is a defining occupation and it appears to be quickening in…