In The terminator—The science fiction film by James Cameron with Arnold Schwarzenegger – The time travel robot was returned from 2029. The machine revolt could start any day now. Maybe.
Although the robots to travel in time are fictitious, it is worth thinking about how technology has changed our lives. We often celebrate the advantages of technology, such as air conditioning comfort, extension of life through medicine and personal communication through smartphones. However, there are always compromises. Air conditioning encourages social isolation, drugs sometimes cause reactions and smartphones can overestimate us.
Contributors to Scroll to death: recover life in the digital age Written to encourage people to fight with the effects of technology, especially smartphones. The title is a nod to the classic of Neil Postman Have fun to death: public speech in the era of show-businessWho was published 40 years ago in 1985. The aim of the book is to help Christians think carefully about how technology changes the way we think, often in a subtle way.
Scroll to death: recover life in the digital age
Brett McCracken and Ivan Mesa, publishers
Scroll to death: recover life in the digital age
Brett McCracken and Ivan Mesa, publishers
TGC / Crossway. 256 pp.
On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the prophetic book of Neil Postman Have fun to death (1985), Scroll to death Gather the most incisive writers today to critically think about the formatting of contemporary technology. This book explores the ideas of the factor, links them to the challenges facing Christians today and transforms difficult challenges into invigorating opportunities for the Church. Remove from their screens, readers will be equipped to live faithfully and grow spiritually, in a world “to scroll to death”.
TGC / Crossway. 256 pp.
Given the title of the book, it is not surprising that Amusing appears frequently in the notes. But many other books have also influenced the way contributors think of technology. I asked the contributors to the book for their recommendations for the most important books to understand how technology has shaped our culture.
Joe Carter
Lewis Dartnell, Knowledge: how to rebuild civilization the day after a cataclysm (Penguin, 2014)
Knowledge Offers an imaginative but practical exploration of the way technology shapes human civilization. Dartnell examines the essential skills and knowledge necessary to rebuild society from scratch, encouraging readers to think about our often not examined dependence on technology. This engaging book serves as a timely reminder of the ingenuity given by God of humanity – and our self -imposed vulnerability – of increasingly digital and disconnected age.
Collin Hansen
Nicholas Carr, Superbloom: how connection technologies tear us off (WW Norton, 2025)
False stories draw more attention to social networks than real. For what? Because they are more surprising. Then, when the truth comes out, no one seems to worry about it. Now consider what is happening when the machines create the content, choose who sees it and deliver it. Will they determine that real stories get better results than false? Yikes. Carr explains how social media transformed us into rivals by transforming us all into media personalities. He also encourages us to stop playing this destructive game.
Samuel James
Hartmut Rosa, World’s unconsciousness (Polity, 2020)
It is not, strictly speaking, a book on technology. It is rather a book on the way humans are moving towards the world. Rosa shows a convincing case that the approach of life from an optimization and control point of view hinders our experience of transcendent meaning and wonder. What Rosa creates is a paradigm to understand why digitization, conservation and constant connectivity does not make us feel the happiness that we expect. It is a reflected work of accessible Roman Catholic philosophy and (but not explicitly).
Brett McCracken
Christine Rosen, The extinction of experience: human being in a disembodied world (WW Norton, 2024)
In the disembodied digital world, we slide more and more, scroll, tap and exploit our way through life. Our relationships are increasingly via screens, applications and avatars. Our sense of the world comes more and more through media flows of virtual realities rather than by sensory experience and tangible interaction with the world in front of us. What is lost in a world like this? Rosen recounts the different dimensions of this massive passage of engagement embodied to virtual engagement with the world – and its many consequences for societal, relational and even spiritual health.
Ivan Mesa
Maryanne Wolf, Drive,, Come home: reading brain in a digital world (Harper, 2018)
A Reading and Brain researcher begins to realize how digital life has affected his ability to read, sympathize and think. Thanks to a series of letters, it examines what a “good reader” is (for example, we are supposed not only to download information, but to reflect and become wise), why “deep reading” is important (especially for our young children), and how the reading of the well protects a society from certain lowest instincts. The intermediate chapters (on children, screens and books) are particularly filled with insight. Although written in 2018, before the advent of generating AI, this book is still held on its own merits.
Jen Pollock Michel
Johann Hari, Focus stolen: why you cannot pay attention – and how to think deeply again (Crown, 2023)
This popular book records Hari’s experience of a three -month “detoxification” of his laptop and smartphone. In the first weeks of his experience, Hari felt the painful symptoms of withdrawal of a drug addict. Finally, however, he begins to recover the sustained capacity for attention, and he is thinking about what is won in a life of presence.
Patrick Miller
Cal Newport, Deep work: rules of concentration in a distracted world (Grand Central, 2016)
It is not a technological book. It is literature on wisdom. But here is the thing: a doctor who only knows how diagnose Problems are not a doctor who deserves to be visited. We must learn the appropriate treatment for our digital dependencies, and Newport’s book on states of flow and in -depth work is precisely that. Although this is not a Christian book, Newport’s ideas take place with the grain of reality that God has conceived, that is precisely why more Christians must adopt his approach to targeted work, prolonged non-contract periods and digital minimalism.
Keith Plummer
Sherry Turkle, Recovery of conversation: the power of conversation in the digital age (Penguin, 2016)
Turkle, better known for her Only setmaintains that we are only mistaken by thinking that communication with technological mediation is just as good as good as face -to -face interaction. After having discussed contributory factors in our flight since the conversation, she explains the victims of such an escape in the spheres of the family, friendship, romance, education, work and public life. Although it is not written in a Christian perspective, this well -documented and accessible work affirms the goodness of the incarnation and its vital element in communication.
Andrew Spencer
Neil Postman, Technopoly:: The surrender of culture to technology (Vintage, 1993)
Technopoly is an accessible and vital companion for Have fun to death Because he updates his analysis in the light of the beginning of the Internet era. Just as Amusing turned out to be surprisingly prophetic, therefore Technopoly Anticipates the disintegration of social institutions due to the thoughtless adoption of technology. While Amusing focuses on the effects of the media, Technopoly Explain how technology can dominate our culture silently if we do not resist it.