Apple School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 1 Comment

Here is one more reason to bookmark Big Questions Online (despite the somewhat silly name), Alan Jacobs will be contributing a monthly column.  His first piece, “Steve Jobs:  Shaman and Sorcerer,” posted yesterday includes this observation:

To turn back the cultural clock, as it were, to take a set of technologies that Apple had already deployed in the iPhone and improve them, repackage and repurpose them in a way that functions with near-absolute smoothness: this is the goal of the iPad. It’s a device meant to mediate the web flawlessly, and to do so — and this is perhaps the most important thing — not primarily by altering what you see or hear but rather by giving you manual control. On the iPad you make things happen by moving your hands around, like a wizard, except you don’t need either a mouse or a wand. You don’t even need those funky gloves that Tom Cruise wore in Minority Report. You touch the Internet: you stroke it, swipe it, pinch it. And it responds precisely to your will. And only Apple can give you that.

I’m not exactly vested in the whole PC/Apple thing, but I thought this was an insightful and elegant observation by Jacobs.  Read the whole piece to get the full context for the analogy.

Given my current interest in embodiment, I found Jacobs’ emphasis on “manual control” and “touch” particularly intriguing.  Forgive the pun, but I think he has put his finger on an important source of the iPad’s appeal.  The iPad exercises its uncanny appeal despite the fact that many believe it is not much more than a glorified iTouch with little that is new or otherwise groundbreaking.  I suspect the uncanny appeal lies precisely in the way it engages the sense of touch to give the user seemingly immediate (without the mediation of keyboard, mouse, etc.) interaction with the Internet.  Or to look at it another way, it moves us closer to experiencing the Internet as a kind prosthesis which blurs the boundary between body and  information.

Random, Assorted, Miscellaneous, Etc.

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 3 Comments

A couple of items for your consideration.  Actually make that three.

First off, sociologist Peter Berger has recently begun blogging at The American Interest Online.  His blog, Religion and Other Curiosities, has been up since early July and features longer, less frequent and consistently thoughtful posts.

Secondly, two blogs I follow, Science and Religion Today and Rob Dreher’s old blog on Beliefnet, have both moved to Big Questions Online.  BQO, a publication of the John Templeton Foundation, just launched today and focuses on science, religion, market, and morals.  Check it out.  Already up today are pieces by a wide array of writers including David Bentley Hart (reviewing Marilynne Robinson’s Absence of Mind), Susan Jacoby, Roger Scruton, and Josef Joffe on topics ranging from freedom of conscience at Catholic hospitals, the significance of evolutionary theory for all disciplines, and Islam’s teaching on debt.  This promises to be a rich resource for serious thinking about several critical dimensions of society.  Make sure read to Hart’s review.

Lastly, we’ve commented a good bit on here about the impact of the Internet on our thinking.  Nicholas Carr and his critics have been the subject of more than a few posts.  Well, that being the case I’m a little embarrassed to report that I just recently came across this year’s World Question on The Edge.  The Edge, which is itself a mine of interesting material, solicits responses to its question of the year from leading thinkers, scientists, artists, writers, etc.  This year’s question:  How is the Internet Changing the Way You Think? Responses were posted in January.  I realize that in Internet time that might as well have been a lifetime ago, but there it is, better late than never.

Some of the usual suspects that we’ve noted here before have contributed responses including Nicholas Carr, Clay Shirky, and Steven Pinker.  You may also want to take a look at responses from Jaron Lanier, Richard Foreman, James O’Donnell, and Sherry Turkle.

Enjoy.  If you get through all that and still need to be intellectually stimulated you can check out 15 Google Interview Questions That Will Make You Feel Stupid.

Ebert on Architecture

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ Leave a comment

Yes, that Ebert.  Roger Ebert the film critic turns his attention to architecture.  The result is a lovely post on his blog, “The image of a man you do not see.” Here are a couple of excerpts:

Much modern architecture has grown tiresome to me. It does not gladden the heart. It doesn’t seem to spring from humans. It seems drawn from mathematical axioms rather than those learned for centuries from the earth, the organic origins of building materials, the reach of hands and arms, and that which is pleasing to the eye. It is not harmonious. It holds the same note indefinitely.

And,

One of the most intriguing classes I took at the University of Illinois was devoted to the Green Tradition in America. It was taught by Sherman Paul, a famous English professor, who identified a theme running through literature, architecture, design, art, music. He wasn’t using “Green” in the current sense. For him it was interchangeable with “Organic.” His starting point was Emerson. He taught us Thoreau, Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Edmund Wilson, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley.

In that class we read Louis Sullivan’s Kindergarten Chats, written for a younger generation of architects. Sullivan wrote it on a desk that still stands in the Cliff Dwellers Club of Chicago, where he lived some of his later years in bankruptcy. He imagined his Chats addressed to a recent university graduate who might come to him for study “of those natural, spontaneous powers which had been ignored during his academic training.” He began by telling this student: “Every building you see is the image of a man you do not see.”

That image is shaped by the man’s values, he said. If you want roses in your garden you must have them in your heart.

The post is also accompanied by a stunning set of images.

“Questionable Classrooms”

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ Leave a comment

It’s been awhile since Nicholas Carr has made an appearance, so here is Carr’s recent interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education.  Some highlights below.

On technology and teaching:

Q. Some professors are interested in integrating social technology—blogs, wikis, Twitter—into their teaching. Are you suggesting that is a misguided approach?

A. I’m suggesting that it would be wrong to assume that that path is always the best path. I’m certainly not suggesting that we take a Luddite view of technology and think it’s all bad. But I do think that the assumption that the more media, the more messaging, the more social networking you can bring in will lead to better educational outcomes is not only dubious but in many cases is probably just wrong. It has to be a very balanced approach. Educators need to familiarize themselves with the research and see that in fact one of the most debilitating things you can do to students is distract them.

On recovering one’s attention span:

Q. If the Internet is making us so distracted, how did you manage to write a 224-page book and read all the dense academic studies that much of it is based on?

A. It was hard. The reason I started writing it was because I noticed in myself this increasing inability to pay attention to stuff, whether it was reading or anything else. When I started to write the book, I found it very difficult to sit and write for a couple of hours on end or to sit down with a dense academic paper. One thing that happened at that time is I moved from outside of Boston, a really highly connected place, to renting a house in the mountains of Colorado. And I didn’t have any cellphone service. I had a very slow Internet connection. I dropped off of Facebook. I dropped out of Twitter. I basically stopped blogging for a while. And I fairly dramatically cut back on checking e-mail. After I got over the initial period of panic that I was missing out on information, my abilities to concentrate did seem to strengthen again. I felt in a weird way intellectually or mentally calmer. And I could sit down and write or read with a great deal of attentiveness for quite a long time.

And on “smart classrooms” in colleges:

Q. Colleges refer to a screen-equipped space as a “smart classroom.” What would you call it?

A. I would call it a classroom that in certain circumstances would be beneficial and in others would actually undermine the mission of the class itself. I would maybe call it a questionable classroom.

Hitchens and Prayer

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 2 Comments

I’ve come across a number of posts recently regarding prayer and Christopher Hitchens, an unlikely pairing.  Regrettably the pairing has been occasioned by Mr. Hitchens’ recent diagnosis with cancer.  Since the release of his 2007 book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, which among other accolades won an award for most subtle subtitle (admittedly, that was an award of my own devising of which Mr. Hitchens was never advised), Hitchens has earned a certain notoriety with the sorts of people that would be inclined to pray for those who are ill and who are now, in fact, offering their prayers on his behalf.  The whole situation has raised certain questions about the appropriateness of prayer for those who may not desire them and the ethics of making it publicly known that you are praying for a public figure.

Here’s a sampling:

On Thursday, I almost posted David Brog’s “Praying for Christopher Hitchens,” except that, on the whole,  Brog’s piece left me a bit uneasy.  It may be that Ross Douthat’s “Prayers for Christopher Hitchens” originated in the same sense of unease.  Douthat also includes a link to post on CNN’s religion blog, “My Take: Why Christians should pray for Christopher Hitchens,” which at the time I’m writing this had elicited over 1,200 comments.

Both Douthat and Rod Dreher mention an interview Hitchens gave Hugh Hewitt in which Hitchens addresses this matter of prayers offered in his behalf.  Here’s an excerpt of his rather appreciative response:

CH: Well look, I mean, I think that prayer and holy water, and things like that are all fine. They don’t do any good, but they don’t necessarily do any harm. It’s touching to be thought of in that way. It makes up for those who tell me that I’ve got my just desserts. It’s, I’m afraid to say it’s almost as well-founded an idea. I mean, I don’t, they don’t know whether prayer will work, and they don’t know whether I’ve come by this because I’m a sinner.

HH: Oh, I…has anyone actually said that to you?

CH: Yeah, oh yes.

HH: Oh, my gosh. Forgive them. Well…

CH: Well, I mean, I don’t mind. It doesn’t hurt me. But for the same reason, I wish it was more consoling. But I have to say there’s some extremely nice people, including people known to you, have said that I’m in their prayers, and I can only say that I’m touched by the thought.

Update (7/19):  More on the topic from Carlin Romano at The Chronicle of Higher Education:  “No One Left to Pray To?”