February 28th, 2006 | Published in Education, Life, Quotes
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854), p. 12
February 27th, 2006 | Published in Education, Quotes, Technology, Writing
A computer, I am told, offers a kind of help that you can’t get from other humans; a computer will help you write faster, easier, and more. For a while, it seemed to me that every university professor I met told me this. Do I, then, want to write faster, easier, and more? No. My standards are not speed, ease, and quantity. I have already left behind too much evidence that, writing with a pencil, I have written too fast, too easily, and too much. I would like to be a better writer, and for that I need help from other humans, not a machine.
—Wendell Berry, “Feminism, The Body, and the Machine” in The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry (2002), p. 74
February 25th, 2006 | Published in Culture, Life, Quotes
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854), p. 12
February 24th, 2006 | Published in Agrarianism, Culture, Quotes
The higher aims of “technological progress” are money and ease. And this exalted greed for money and ease is disguised and justified by an obscure, cultish faith in “the future.” We do as we do, we say, “for the sake of the future” or “to make a better future for our children.” How we can hope to make a good future by doing badly in the present, we do not say…. We do not need to plan or devise a “world of the future”; if we take care of the world of the present, the future will have received full justice from us.
—Wendell Berry, “Feminism, The Body, and the Machine” in The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry (2002), p. 73
February 23rd, 2006 | Published in Life, Quotes
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854), p. 7
February 22nd, 2006 | Published in Culture, Religion, Technology
The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society has put up an article by Doug Groothuis entitled “Christian Scholarship and the Philosophical Analysis of Cyberspace Technologies” (PDF) from the December 1998 edition.
February 22nd, 2006 | Published in Agrarianism, Culture, Education, History, Quotes
When else in history would you find “educated” people who know more about sports than about the history of their country, or uneducated people who do not know the stories of their families and communities?
—Wendell Berry, “Feminism, The Body, and the Machine” in The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry (2002), p. 73
February 21st, 2006 | Published in Culture, Technology
GPS Nav May Be Dangerous Distraction
A British auto insurance company said on Tuesday that in-car GPS navigation systems might be doing more harm than good by distracting drivers. Even more surprising, the company’s findings suggest that navigation systems could be more disruptive than trying to read a map at the wheel.
Next thing you know they’ll be saying in-car video games, televisions, and dvd players are distracting and dangerous. Perhaps at some point the question will be asked “Is this really necessary?” But by then, I suppose, we’ll have moved on to XL-Transparent-Windshield-GPS VI, which will be factory installed in Hummers. Pedestrian deaths will only rise 5%, and that will be seen as an acceptable consequence for progress—although progress from what will yet to be determined.