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Science-and-Technology

Items related to technology and science

The Real Digital Revolution: Social networking is changing the marketing landscape: “Brand advertising can’t stretch the truth anymore or try and gild the lily. Because if it does, we’re going to find out about it, find out that you’ve been lying to us all along about extras that don’t work and specials that aren’t special. And our reaction is not going to be pretty.” (Alan Wolk, AdWeek; h/t: Ryan Moede )

Wed 27 Aug 2008 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

The Return of Religion: “So who, in this subliminal contest, is the truly reasonable one? The atheists beg the question in their own favour, by assuming that science has all the answers. But science can have all the answers only if it has all the questions; and that assumption is false. There are questions addressed to reason which are not addressed to science, since they are not asking for a causal explanation.” (Senior Fellow Roger Scruton, Axess )

Wed 16 Jul 2008 • Responses: 0 • from Mark Meador • Link & Comments

Where the Avatars Roam: “Libertarians hold to a theory of ‘spontaneous order’—that society should be the product of uncoordinated human choices instead of human design. Well, Second Life has plenty of spontaneity, and not much genuine order. This experiment suggests that a world that is only a market is not a utopia. It more closely resembles a seedy, derelict carnival—the triumph of amusement and distraction over meaning and purpose.” (Michael Gerson, The Washington Post )

Mon 09 Jul 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Addressing climate change: “As someone who lived under communism for most of my life I feel obliged to say that the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity at the beginning of the 21st century is not communism or its various softer variants. Communism was replaced by the threat of ambitious environmentalism. This ideology preaches earth and nature and under the slogans of their protection – similarly to the old Marxists – wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning of the whole world.” (Czech President Václav Klaus, address to the U.S. Congress, March 2007 )

Thu 14 Jun 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

The Maes-Garreau Point: Speaking of “Not in our Time,” just ran across this provocative essay from Kevin Kelly on predictions of the future. 2040, anyone? “In other words we all carry around our own personal mini-singularity, which will happen when we die. It used to be that we could not imagine our existence after our death; now we cannot imagine the details of anyone’s existence after our death. Beyond this personal singularity, life is unknowable. We tend to place our imaginations and predictions before our own Maes-Garreau Point.” (Kevin Kelly, The Technium )

Tue 17 Apr 2007 from Peter Edman • Link & Comments

Gore’s Faith Is Bad Science: “To which the prophet replies, with religious intensity, that all debate should be over. Those scientists with inconvenient views should be defunded and silenced. We should replace scientific inquiry with faith. We should have faith that climate change—‘global warming’—is caused primarily by human activity. And we should have faith that the effects will be catastrophic, with rising oceans flooding great cities and pleasant plains and forests broiled by a searing sun.” Worth a read. While Barone is not alone in suggesting that there is a religious component to climate change advocacy, his reading of the relationship of real faith and science is a bad caricature. (Michael Barone, Town Hall)

Mon 26 Mar 2007 from Peter Edman • Link & Comments

Any shade of politics you like, so long as it’s green: This is an excellent piece demonstrating the power of a coherent worldview to properly appreciate and critique the wider cultural setting; Hume is apparently a Marxist, but I would hope soon to see a similar depth of thinking from a Christian thinker. Bracket, if you must, the argument, and consider the level of critique. “The adoption of these attitudes across the political class represents something far more important than the cynical tax grab which some critics have claimed it all is. The crusade against manmade global warming is underpinned by a much broader loss of faith in our manmade society and its once-proud accomplishments, from industrialised farming to flying the world. You only had to listen to Cameron, supposedly the great white hope of UK politics, sounding off this week about how many species are threatened with extinction ‘because of mankind’s relentless grab for the finite resources of our shared home’ to realise how mainstream mankind-bashing has now become.” (Mick Hume, Spiked Online)

Fri 16 Mar 2007 from Peter Edman • Link & Comments

Al Gore’s remission of sin: “While I have my own religious thoughts, I will not disdain any man's search for the transcendent. But a religion should be understood by both its adherents and others for what it is—a religion. The trouble with global-warming believers is that probably most of them delude themselves into thinking they are practicing science—not religion. And yet, the signs of religiousness are readily to be seen. Al Gore and his Hollywood coterie have almost comically manifested one aspect of their new religion in the last few weeks—the sense of sin and the search for remission of such sin.” (Tony Blankley, The Washington Times, March 7, 2007)

Fri 09 Mar 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Twilight of Sociology: Senior Fellow Bill McClay on sociology past and present: “. . . by treating the structures of society as infinitely malleable, sociology betrayed its calling: It ceased to study society in a profound way, acknowledging difficult truths, and substituted activism, usually aimed at an ungrounded notion of ‘social justice.’” (Opinion Journal)

Tue 06 Feb 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

We’ve never had it so good: Speaking of progress and gratitude, there's this excellent review of Indur Goklany's book The Improving State of the World: “Yet rather than celebrate the immense achievements of economic development, there is a widespread feeling of resentment. Many people in the developed world believe that life is getting worse. Economic growth and technological development are viewed with anxiety and sometimes outright hostility. If our great-grandparents could be brought back to life they would be astonished by humanity’s achievements but also bewildered by our ungrateful attitudes towards these gains.” (Daniel Ben-Ami, spiked)

Fri 02 Feb 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

The Evidence of Progress: “Some of these new solutions are often worse than the problems they were supposed to solve, but it is my observation that on average and over time, the new solutions slightly outweigh the new problems.” Helpful perspective on technological progress in an age of doom-and-gloom. (Kevin Kelly, The Technium)

Fri 02 Feb 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Why Apple Makes Me Cry: “I'm a very modern person. I don't have any affiliations to traditional religion, and I don't really feel any national loyalties. I was born in the U.K., but I've lived in cities like London, New York, Paris, Tokyo and Berlin. It's become clear that if I do have a religion, it's a humanist one—a profound reverence for human creativity, for example. And if I do have something like a consistent homeland, it might as well be the Mac OS. Because wherever I am physically, that's where I spend most of my time.” (Momus, Wired News)

Thu 18 Jan 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

The Dawkins delusion: “While Dawkins can readily identify common features between South Pacific cargo cults and the Christian churches, he seems oblivious to the religious themes of the environmental movement. Just like evangelical Christians, environmentalists preach a ‘repent, the end is nigh’ message.” (Michael Fitzpatrick, Spiked)

Tue 02 Jan 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Why Democrats are losing the culture war: “By framing the debate as a choice between theology or science, Democrats essentially argued that anyone who has qualms about scientific progress is a troglodyte. That puts them on the losing side of the moral question, even as they win the specific policy debate.” (Amy Sullivan, USA Today)

Thu 26 Oct 2006 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments