Friday, January 16, 2015
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From
the author of "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" and the book The
Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, now comes The
Glass Cage: Automation and Us. Reviewer Alan Jacobs
says author Nicholas Carr is "among the shrewdest and most thoughtful
critics of our current technological regime."
[Carr's]
primary goal is to exhort us to develop strategies of resistance. It cannot
be stressed too strongly that resistance does not entail rejection.
Carr makes this point repeatedly.
I had to make that clear, too. Otherwise, you could never
enjoy this newsletter.
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Only 12 men have done it. For some, like
Neil Armstrong, life afterward took the shape of a quiet academic refusing
publicity. Others let their Christian faith inform their postlunar life.
James Irwin, of the 1971 Apollo 15 voyage, began a ministry, High Flight
Foundation. He spoke at a church at which I was associate pastor in the early
1980s. The tagline for his talk and the autographs he signed (usually
pictures of him standing on the moon) was "It is more important that God
walked on the earth than man walked on the moon."
This week's long read
is about the poignant postlunar life of Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk
on the moon. It has been anything but steady.
"Returning
to earth, that was the challenging part," he says. That was and remains
the insane part. He fulfilled a goal for humanity and then humanity required
only that he remain its proud symbol. Adored, obsolete, stuck in time.
"In my history book," he says, "when the pilgrims got to
Plymouth Rock, it wasn't to get a return trip home."
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It is
sadly clear that some Muslims are outraged when a publication features an
image of Muhammad. What is less clear is the history of such images in Islam
itself. As one Muslim scholar put it:
It's
really important for audiences that have never seen the pietistic images of
Muhammad to make a radical distinction between the mystical and beautiful
images that have been produced over the last 1,000 years by Muslims and for
Muslims, and the offensive and sometimes pornographic images [currently in
the news].
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You'll want to be aware that one of our bloggers, Peter Chin,
has just published Blindsided by God:
Disappointment, Suffering, and the Untamable Goodness of God.
Peter's article about how his
family touched on this theme resonated deeply with readers. Anyone who has
read Peter's blog will know that the book has keen insights into a perennial
concern.
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Okay, I admit I'm a sucker for article
titles like "You Won't Believe These
Incredible Drawings Were Done on Napkins." I clicked because
I didn't think such a thing was unbelievable. But they are incredible.
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Grace
and peace,
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