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Tag Archives: Technology and Society
Losing the Signal
Despite coming of age as cellphones were becoming ubiquitous, I developed an immediate dislike for them on arrival; I grudgingly bought one in 2005 when I began working, purely to keep in the car for emergencies, and but was not … Continue reading
Posted in history, Reviews
Tagged 1990s, 2000s, digital world, goods/services, history, Technology and Society
7 Comments
Worth Reading: A Guide to Surviving the Great Forgetting
My substack subscriptions have an obvious cluster concerning humanity and the machine — or more specifically, how modern technology, particularly devices and the omnipresent digital world, warp or distort humanity. I was fortunate to encounter The Shallows and Neil Postman’s … Continue reading
The Muses speak not to spiritless silicon
Dear Leon and Charlie, In the story of the creation, God makes the world, and everything in it, in six days. On the seventh day he rests. The day of rest is significant because it suggests that the creation required … Continue reading
Posted in General
Tagged arts-entertainment, Nick Cave, Stephen Fry, Technology and Society
7 Comments
Against the Machine
At some point during college, I tried to work out what an ideal human society might look like. This was back when I still strongly identified with the left, but my dreams were not of a world state and a … Continue reading
Posted in Reviews, Society and Culture
Tagged essays, Man vs Machine, Paul Kingsnorth, Technology and Society
7 Comments
Content & Context
Content collects several of Cory Doctorow’s favorite pieces of his written on “technology, creativity, copyright, and the future”, clumping in the mid-2000s. The content is mixed in medium, but united in message: herein are essays, speeches, and interviews that cover … Continue reading
Posted in Reviews, science fiction
Tagged 2000s, Corey Doctorow, essays, science fiction, Technology and Society
3 Comments
The Unsettling of America, audio edition
It was twelve years ago that I met a man named Jayber Crow, and met too, his author — Wendell Berry. Berry is one of my very favorite living authors, and would probably still make the list of favorite authors … Continue reading
Worth reading: Smash the Technopoly!
From “After Babel”, a substack written in part by Jonathan Haidt. This is a guest post from Professor Nicholas Smyth, who teaches a course called “Ethnics and the Internet”. “One thing I’ve been learning is that opposition to smartphones and … Continue reading
Hello, Everybody!
The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw a host of technologies released that utterly transformed society, and few as dramatic as radio. Hello, Everybody! is an engaging history of the early decades of radio, filled with some dramatic, unbelievable … Continue reading
Posted in history, Reviews
Tagged 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, history, Hoover, Technology and Society, telecommunications
2 Comments
Selected quotations from The Anxious Generation
Gen Z became the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addictive, unstable, and—as I will show—unsuitable … Continue reading
tl;dr
“[In Kurt Vonnegut’s egalitarian dystopia Harrison Bergeron,] anyone with a high IQ is required to wear an earpiece at all times that buzzes loudly every 20 seconds or so with a variety of noises designed to interrupt sustained thinking, thereby … Continue reading
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