Laughing at our Losses

As Prof. Michael Saler observes in a recent book review, Silicon Valley is the seedbed of a 21st-century ideology that's more readily mocked than negated. In To Save Everything, Click Here, Evgeny Morozov, dubbed by Saler today's H.L.Mencken, punctures the cyber-sect's banal platitudes in the most hard-hitting and sardonic critique published to date.

Laughter is often the last freedom of the vanquished, but considering the stakes at hand, it is no time for defeatism for defenders of a more human and humane culture. As a college basketball coach might urge his players, read and react!

Hybrid Hype

For modern theorists of technology, hybridity is ontological. They believe that to be human is to be technological. This seemingly innocent assumption has significant implications about how we think about morality, law, and politics. Perhaps this is what the Hybrid Age is all about: marketing masquerading as theory, charlatans masquerading as philosophers, a New Age cult masquerading as a university, business masquerading as redemption, and slogans masquerading as truths. The Naked and the TED

What We Read Shapes Who We Are

Since broadband began its rapid expanse at the millennium's start, Internet use has skyrocketed. In 2012, users topped 2.4 billion, more than one in three of Earth's inhabitants. Time spent online averaged 16 hours a week globally (double that in high-use countries). “We have changed how we interact,” the New York Times confirms. “Are we also changing what we are?” The question was posed to three knowledgeable observers. Their responses raise others. Are We Becoming Cyborgs?