This site takes part of its inspiration from an essay by Alan Jacobs, “A Commonplace Book,” in which Jacobs parallels the evolution of early modern commonplace books to the rise of contemporary blogs. Early modern readers began to find themselves overwhelmed by the volume of reading material suddenly made available by the advent of cheap paper:
One Adrien Baillet wrote, “We have reason to fear that the multitude of books which grows every day in a prodigious fashion will make the following centuries fall into a state as barbarous as that of the centuries that followed the fall of the Roman Empire.”
Thus,
… in the sixteenth century, the relatively wealthy and those who lived in large cities found themselves with access to more books than they could read, or at any rate read with care. Thus the need to select the best and wisest passages from those books—passages that were commonplace in an etymological sense, from locus communis, the “communal place,” the thing of general use and value—in short, the kind of writing that you expect will repay repeated consideration.
Hadrian’s Wall, Scotland
A commonplace book would be “a means of mastering or at least fighting off this multitude of books,” and it is not too hard to guess where Jacobs goes with this. The flood of information generated on the Internet daily overwhelms us, and a blog, like the commonplace book, can be a tool for managing the flow, a place to make note of the “things of general use and value.” So then, what you have stumbled upon is my effort to navigate and channel the torrential flow of information that we encounter everyday.
I am currently a graduate student in a PhD program vaguely titled Texts and Technology, so much of what will pass through these pages will relate in some way or another to the interaction between technology and culture. My aim in thinking and writing about technology is to achieve a critical distance from technology, so far as that is possible, in order to make use of technology toward human ends rather than bending human experience to serve technological ends. Neither unbridled optimism nor thoughtless pessimism regarding technology foster the sort of critical distance required to live wisely with technology.
I have also been a teacher for all of my professional career. I am the sort of person that cannot imagine doing anything other than teaching. Consequently, a good portion of what you will find here reflects on the role of technology in the classroom. Much can be said about the place of technology in education, but my contention is that we need to move beyond merely imparting computer skills to students. We must help our students become meta-critically savvy about technology, both in and out of school.
Before beginning my present track of study, I earned an MA in Theological Studies. And so another theme you will find running through this blog is the exploration of technology’s influence on communities of faith and practice, particularly within the Christian tradition. Ultimately, I am interested not only in living wisely with technology, but also in living faithfully with technology.
For representative posts on these major themes and a few others see the “Themes” page.
Finally, I should note that I agree with G. K. Chesterton when he wrote that, “There is no such thing as an uninteresting subject – only uninterested people.” In other words, I am also an unapologetic generalist and that too will be reflected, perhaps mostly in the form of posts on baseball and wine.
So, welcome. Thank you for reading, come back often, and comment frequently.
Cheers,
Michael Sacasas
Email: lmsacasas at gmail dot com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/frailestthing
Google+: “Michael Sacasas”
