Technology
After teaching an introductory course on media ecology at the college level for eighteen consecutive years, I place current authors into two camps[…]
The last few years have seen a global pandemic, civil unrest, and increased political division. These miasmas of polarization, alienation, and apathy have been accompanied by stranger trends […]
When I was growing up, my father had a rather extensive collection of 78 RPM records, the ones made of shellac in the first half of the twentieth century before vinyl took over. […]
Going Upstream of Streaming Worship: Embracing Creaturely Limits in an Age of Autonomy and Disembodiment
Online worship. Zoom church. Streaming services on Facebook Live (if you can get it to actually work). We’re all used to this strange new world by now. But it can get stranger […]
A crushed spirit dries up the bones. (Prov. 17:22) He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree. (1 Pet. 2:24) Technology’s triumph over space, its power to entertain and distract, its promise of enabling us to construct not only our own virtual identities but our own realities […]
If there were a silver lining to the dark cloud of the recent COVID-19 restrictions, it would be that we were compelled to think about our bodies: what to put on them, what to put in them, how proximate to other bodies to place them. […]
Being Human at the Intersection of Embodiment and Technology: An Interview with Jens Zimmermann
An interview with Jens Zimmermann, the J. I. Packer Professor of Theology and director of the Houston Centre for Humanity and the Common Good at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. [...]
Where are you? Maybe sitting on your couch at home or looking at your phone on a walk. But what if we try to get more specific? […]
In the Orwellian year of 1984, the German synth-pop group Alphaville released the single “Forever Young.” The song’s video expressed the deep frustration of younger generations and their longing for a life lived to the fullest, threatened at the time by two superpowers locked in a nuclear arms race. Technology became for this generation—sometimes branded […]
“Transhumanism and the Image of God: Today’s Technology and the Future of Christian Discipleship” by Jacob Shatzer
Transhumanism and the Image of God: Today’s Technology and the Future of Christian Discipleship by Jacob Shatzer IVP Academic, 2019 192 pages (paperback), $22.00 February 1999 Christianity Today magazine cover featured “The New Theologians” with a capture of N. T. Wright, Ellen Charry, Miroslav Volf, Kevin Vanhoozer, and Richard B. Hayes—new theologians who were top […]
It seems that every other week, another think piece or investigative report drops about how much social and personal dislocation Facebook, Twitter, Apple, or Google have caused. From privacy invasions to behavioral addictions, what seemed like promising technologies and harmless baubles have become a source of perennial worry. We—the authors of think pieces, the heads […]
I used to think that the mild euphoria I experienced while visiting antiquarian bookstores was induced by my fascination with the artistry and craftsmanship that came from an era when book publishing was an art form. I still marvel at the well-preserved leather covers, illuminated pages, well-rounded Smyth-sewn spine, and marbled fore-edge of these old volumes. […]
Like it nor not, the smartphone is changing everything. Only a decade old, it is the most dominant culture-and-life-shaping technology in the world. With its myriad practical and compelling functions—Internet, phone, e-mail, texting, GPS, camera, photos, video, podcasts, music, social media, alarm clock, and so on—it has become virtually impossible to live without. This wouldn’t […]
Three decades of data have revealed a near-systemic evangelical ignorance of the Scriptures, theology, church history, Christian art, architecture, and iconography and, correspondingly, of Christian deportment, both social and practical.1 Somehow, despite the information superhighway literally at our fingertips and Kindles glutted with books, ignorance abounds. This ignorance has little to do with intelligence or ability, […]
