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NYTimes on Theodicy August 21, 2007

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It’s unsettling to think of the world being run by a futuristic computer geek, although we might at last dispose of that of classic theological question: How could God allow so much evil in the world? For the same reason there are plagues and earthquakes and battles in games like World of Warcraft. Peace is boring, Dude.
– NYTimes, Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch

What then is education? I had thought it was the curriculum the individual ran through in order to catch up with himself; and anyone who does not want to go through this curriculum will be little helped by being born into the most enlightened age.
– Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

A response to Billy on Bob’s thought experiment, part 2 April 23, 2007

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Part two of my response to some YouTubers on the subject of existentialism and religion. The webcam is ancient but I am making a few faltering steps towards a new way of thinking about religion. Click below for the transcript.
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A response to Billy on Bob’s thought experiment, part 1

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Part one of some low-tech observations about existentialism in the post-human age. Follow the link for the script if you can’t bear watching my lips flap about completely disconnected to the words that are coming from them.
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Even now the world-cities of the Western Civilization are far from having reached the peak of their development. I see, long after A.D. 2000, cities laid out for ten to twenty million inhabitants, spread over enormous areas of country-side, with buildings that will dwarf the biggest of to-day’s and notions of traffic and communication that we should regard as fantastic to the point of madness.
– Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol. 2, 1928

Nick Gisburne and YouTube: a new context for an old debate February 14, 2007

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This is a YouTube piece that excerpted from the article below. Unfortunately, I had to record it with a stone age camera, but I got the audio with my iBook speakers, so its fine. (Link)

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The debate over religion and free speech has erupted on YouTube. Nick Gisburne, an atheist on YouTube, recently published a video entitled “Islamic Teachings: Cruelty From The Qur’an.” This video was taken down by YouTube staff, at first citing its “inappropriate nature,” and both of Gisburne’s YouTube accounts were subsequently made unavailable to the public and permanently disabled. Until other users started to publish Nick’s work on their own account, it was impossible to find any of Nick’s videos, either his attacks on Christianity and Islam, or his videos speaking in defence of himself.

I have a huge interest in this debate, and believe it is an opportunity to examine the implications of “new media” for the old discussion over the tension between religious freedom and the freedom of speech. It also shows us a darker side of Web 2.0: in a world where “social networking” is the new mechanism for determining what content we do and do not see, there is the major danger of the whole enterprise devolving into “gang warfare,” as one YouTube member has so aptly put it.
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Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.
– Martin Heidegger, Building Dwelling Thinking

The simplistic life and the essence of technology January 5, 2007

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A friend sent me a link to an interview with Eric Brende, an MIT graduate who has written about his decision to forsake the hi-tech life and go live with the Amish.

My friend asked me for my response, and I gave it to him, in perhaps a slightly longer version than he expected. Nevertheless, I found this a great opportunity to consolidate my critique of the modern day luddite into three broad categories: historicism, romanticism and escapism. I thought I might post my observations here for all to enjoy.

The essence of technology… in no way confines us to a stultified compulsion to push on blindly with technology or, what comes to the same thing, to rebel helplessly against it and curse it as the work of the devil.
– Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology

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Machines and the mind September 10, 2006

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Less than a month before world chess champion Gary Kasparov was defeated by Deep Blue, Harper’s Magazine held a forum entitled “Our Machines, Ourselves.” The dialogue has been included in the coursepaq (Doede’s spelling) for a course I am taking entitled “Philosophy of the Mind.” Below are some excerpts:

“The only instinct that has proved more consistently human than our drive to invent tools has been our need to demonstrate our superiority over them.” (more…)