A few years ago, The Atlantic ran a controversial article entitled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr, the author of the article, argued that the type of reading and thinking used on the Internet actually harms our ability to do deep, meditative reading and thinking. Personally, I think Carr makes a persuasive point: I have found in my own life that the more I surf the Internet, the less able I am to concentrate on deeper reading/thinking. I was able to write my own book by giving myself disciplined times in which I avoided the Internet; it was the only way I could focus and concentrate on the subject at hand. I have written here about my fears of (especially Internet-enabled) e-books harming our ability to understand the Bible (and I was also interviewed on Son Rise Morning Show about this topic).

But I recently saw a headline entitled “Google Probably Not Making Us Stupid, Pew Study Says” and I was very interested to see what the study results were. In fact, I was prepared to admit that perhaps my (and Carr’s) anecdotal evidence would prove to be wrong in light of the cold, hard facts. However, after reading the article, I’ll stick to my original agreement with Carr that Google IS making us stupid. Basically, here are the results of the study:

The organization interviewed 895 technology stakeholders and critics via online survey about their expectations of social, political, and economic change by 2020, and one of those questions dealt with the effect of search engines like Google.

About 76 percent of respondents said that Google will not make us stupid.

In other words, they asked a bunch of experts their opinion and most of them disagreed with Carr. But there was absolutely no actual study done on the effects on the brain by these new ways to access information. It ended up just being their opinion based on their own anecdotal evidence. If anyone thinks that this “study” actually proves anything, I’d say they have been on Google too long.

Recently, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference issued some protocols (PDF) for bishops, members of religious communities and all Church officials for the proper use of social networking sites. They contain good advice, which basically boils down to one maxim:

Don’t do anything online you wouldn’t do in person.

Really, it is that simple, although putting it into practice seems to be difficult for many people.

They also remind Catholics that real, live communication has priority over Internet communication, and if we overemphasis the latter at the expense of the former, we will be forgetting some very important people:

Great care must be taken by all Church entities, particularly those engaged in Youth Ministry, not to rely exclusively on social networking as a means of communication. To do this could be to exclude the poor – those who cannot afford a computer, who live in remote localities with poor internet connectivity, who struggle with illiteracy or who face other challenges which place them outside of the online world. Going to Church and hearing others talk about their social networking experiences can be profoundly isolating for those unable to take part. Social networking should only ever be one of a range of communication methods that we use to invite people into closer relationship with Jesus Christ.

This is a good reminder to those of us for whom modern technology has become second-nature. Not everyone can access the Internet with the ease in which most of us can, and we cannot forget that the Good News must be preached to them just as much as everyone with a Twitter account.

For my own Rules for using the Internet, click here.

Most practicing Catholics recognize the dangers of pornography on the spiritual life. Perhaps nothing in our society is better able to lead one away from God than this terrible evil. And, sadly, viewing pornography has become socially acceptable, thus leading many people astray.

Marcel LeJeune over at Aggie Catholics has written often about the plague of pornography, and he recently put up a very good post that shows that pornography’s destructiveness is not only spiritual, but it actually messes with your brain. He writes:

We have known for years that porn is destructive to marriages, families, individuals, and society.  We also know that is is addictive - more so than crack or heroin.  Science is just now finding out just how destructive it is to the brain.  Using pornography radically changes the neuro-pathways in the brain by causing the body to inject strong neuro-stimulants directly into the pleasure center of the brain.  Repeatedly doing this means the structure of the brain itself is altered and the effects are devastating.  As one psychologist puts it, “pornography hijacks the proper functioning of their (men in particular) brains.”

Go read Marcel’s whole article, and then redouble your prayers for all people who are ensnared by the evil of pornography.

St. Maria Goretti, pray for us!

Some regular readers of my blog might wonder why I often write negatively about technology. After all, this is a blog, right? Isn’t that the epitome of modern technology? And don’t we regularly hear about the Pope encouraging both the clergy and the laity to embrace technology to further the Gospel?

Yes, all this is true. And I’m not anti-technology. I use the Internet for an average of 8 hours each weekday (for both work and leisure), I have worked in the technology field for over 15 years, I have six computers in my house, I own an iPhone, I am on Facebook, and I maintain a blog (I draw the line at Twitter). Clearly I’m not a Luddite. Yet I am also not a technology evangelist. Why? I have seen first-hand the dangers too much dependence on technology can have on the spiritual life.

One thing I often notice is whenever the Pope or other church official makes a “pro-technology” comment, it makes headlines on Catholic blogs and tweets, yet the warnings that usually follow the comment are left out. A case in point is the pope’s recent comments encouraging involvement on the Internet. Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, followed those comments with some words of caution:

“The believer who ventures with enthusiasm and with courage into the world of social communications — boiling over every day with extraordinary technological novelties, from the iPod to the iPhone to the iPad — must know well the goal that guides him so that he is not taken captive by fascination for the means and thus loses his way.”

“And the goal,” the spokesman recalled, “is encountering God, who is the ultimate meaning of the relationships of dialogue, friendship and sharing that the Web makes possible today.”

“The traps that fill the pathways of cyberspace are countless,” Father Lombardi acknowledged, “from superficiality to falsehood to perversion. But there are also many users who seek friendship, truth and goodness.”

“Taken captive”: strong words which, I believe, accurately describe the pull of modern technology on many people. Technology has changed from a means to an end, and we can see an example of this in the fascination with Apple’s new iPad. For months people waited with bated breath for its release and rumors flew as to what capabilities it would have. Most of the discussion did not center as much around how it would help one to do certain tasks better, but instead on how cool it would be to have a device that can do [fill in the blank]. And in the end, the primary focus of the iPad was not productivity, but passive leisure. Now you can surf the web from your couch!

Note that I am not saying that the iPad, or owing an iPad, is immoral. But the inordinate fascination with it and all new technology is spiritually unhealthy. One of the things an over-emphasis on technology does is that it dehumanizes us. When our primary contact with the outside world is through a screen, we begin to lose a certain sense of the sacredness of each human person. Consuming a steady diet of violence, sex, and disasters via TV, video games or the Internet desensitizes us to the human reality behind it. We can see the extreme form of this desensitization in this news story:

Inventor unveils $7,000 talking sex robot

This technological marvel is considered a breakthrough because it can “interact”, through artificial intelligence, with its owner. We see this and are rightly disgusted, but how far away is it from someone who spends every waking hour interacting with Facebook “friends”? Is it not in both cases someone who is filling the need for human interaction with technology instead of real, physical human interaction?

Simply calling modern technology a “tool” whose morality is wholly dependent on its use (or abuse) is not the answer, either. We need to recognize that many modern technologies are more ripe for abuse than older ones. Yes, a knife can be used to cut carrots or cut a child’s neck, but nothing in the knife itself gears you to one action over the other. Many of the technologies today, however, actually lead one to spiritually unhealthy lifestyles by their very nature. Thus, we must be on guard at all times that, as Fr. Lombardi stated, “the goal is encountering God, who is the ultimate meaning of the relationships of dialogue, friendship and sharing that the Web makes possible today.”

St. Isadore, pray for us!

It seems that every Catholic blog and news outlet is reporting that Pope Benedict recently encouraged priests to be involved with online media in order to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I’ve seen headlines to the effect “Pope to priests: get a blog!” and “Pope urges priests to go online”. It is true that the Pope made such remarks, but I think we would do well to also see in what context the Pope made this recommendation (emphasis added):

The Pope added, however, that “priests present in the world of digital communications should be less notable for their media savvy than for their priestly heart, their closeness to Christ.”

“Thanks to the new communications media,” he said, “the Lord can walk the streets of our cities and, stopping before the threshold of our homes and our hearts.”

“With the Gospels in our hands and in our hearts,” the Pontiff noted, “we must reaffirm the need to continue preparing ways that lead to the Word of God, while being at the same time constantly attentive to those who continue to seek.”

“Indeed,” he added, “we should encourage their seeking as a first step of evangelization.”

The Holy Father affirmed that “no door can or should be closed to those who, in the name of the risen Christ, are committed to drawing near to others.”

He pointed out that “the ultimate fruitfulness” of ministry “comes from Christ himself, encountered and listened to in prayer; proclaimed in preaching and lived witness; and known, loved and celebrated in the sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist and Reconciliation.“

The online world is a wonderful way for priests and all Catholics to preach the good news. But we must always remember that it is but the first step in evangelization. No one can become Catholic or follow the Catholic Faith entirely online: he must directly interact with priests and other Catholics in order to grow in his faith and live it in the way Jesus commanded.

It is vitally important that priests are involved in online work, but I’d rather have a technologically-clueless holy priest than a web-saavy but spiritually immature priest any day. Let us pray that our priests are first holy and only then adept in the online world.

The rise of the Internet over the past two decades has challenged one of the sacred cows of modern American life: the “right” to privacy. This “right”, which was unheard of in previous generations and cultures, is one of the fundamental presuppositions of our society; we all just blithely assume that we are allowed to dictate what information about us is revealed to the public. This “right” received legal backing in our country with the famous “Griswold v. Connecticut” Supreme Court decision which declared that a “right” to privacy was a constitutional right.

However, another, more recent, desire of Americans is conflicting with this desire for privacy: the desire to be famous. It seems that many Americans today crave fame, and technology is making it possible to become well-known – at least in a small circle – much easier than in previous times. With a blog, a Facebook page or a YouTube video, you can let the world know about yourself, your views, even your shoe size (mine is 9 1/2, by the way). Yet everyone also wants to strictly control what information is available to what people; they want to maintain their “privacy”.

The latest battleground in this conflict between fame and privacy has been Facebook. The social networking giant has been repeatedly changing their privacy settings for users, and recently the head of Facebook admitted that he would like to see less privacy, not more, on the web. This has caused no end of protests from people declaring that they should have strict control over the information they put on their Facebook page.

I can’t help but chuckle, however, at these complaints. These are people who are putting their most intimate life details on a distant computer server they neither own nor operate and which is run by a company whose sole purpose is to display that information to others. Yet they somehow expect it to remain “private”.

As an Internet professional, let me tell you a secret: nothing on the Internet is private. If you want something about yourself to remain private, then don’t tell anyone about it, and for God’s sake don’t put it on a computer. I worked in the web hosting industry for over 10 years, and I know first-hand that nothing that is stored on an Internet server is truly private. Data put on the Internet is transmitted through various computers before reaching its true destination, is stored on a computer which many people have access to, and is tracked to the minutest detail (what time it was entered, where it came from, etc.). Furthermore, all data is copied to multiple machines (for backup purposes), so even if you delete something after you enter it, most likely it will remain on a backup device somewhere, possibly indefinitely. By putting anything in an email, a blog, a Facebook page, or a YouTube video you have made it public and available to anyone who really wants to discover it, no matter what “privacy” settings you might apply. To think such information can somehow remain private is simply delusional.

So if you really want to keep something private, be quiet.

Recently, Pope Benedict in his World Day of Peace message stated the following: “Technologically advanced societies must be prepared to encourage more sober lifestyles, while reducing their energy consumption and improving its efficiency” (emphasis added). Instead of actually contemplating the Pope’s words, many Americans immediately tried to push the Pope into our political categories, with the following results:

- Those who are politically conservative either ignored the Pope’s words completely or wrote it off as an European eccentricity of Pope Benedict, despite the fact that Pope Benedict has clearly shown he is not beholden to any European “conventional wisdom”.

- Those who are politically liberal hailed this prophetic statement of the Pope as a defense of any and every government response intended to protect the environment.

However, both responses are faulty, as it tries to put the Pope into categories which he resolutely refuses to fall into. B16’s advice is not primarily political, but instead spiritual, as he understands that every political problem has underlying spiritual roots. The pope desires true solutions; in other words, he desires to see everyone strive to live as saints. Living a “more sober lifestyle” is another way of saying that our modern consumerist lifestyle, which is lived equally by both conservatives or liberals, is antithetical to Gospel living.

What people often don’t realize is that striving to live as a saint will actually make you more environmentally-friendly as well. Just look at the three traditional practices of piety and their impact on the environment:

Prayer: Do you pray more than you watch TV every day? How about more than you play video games or mindlessly surf the Internet? Those other activities all require electrical power, whereas prayer’s power source is the Holy Spirit, which is an infinite, renewable source of (spiritual) energy. And you don’t even need electrical lights when you pray – candles are much more conducive to a contemplative mood.

Fasting: We Americans are anything but sober when it comes to eating. To put it simply, we are McFlabby. And all that food – most of it processed and shipped in from far-off lands – not only harms our waistline, but its production doesn’t do the planet much good either. Adding regular fasting to our spiritual lives will do wonders for our spiritual life, but it will also help the environment.

Almsgiving: How many of us have perfectly good clothes in our closets and dressers we never wear? Why not give them away to those less fortunate? Or how about not buying any new clothes this year and making do with the ones we have? Either way we reduce consumption. We could also look to cut deeper: by giving away more money to help the poor, we have less to spend (frivolously) on ourselves which will help our souls and our planet.

Our primary concern in life should be to be holy, but it is nice to know that by doing so, we also become better stewards of creation.

Over the past dozen years I have logged countless hours on the Internet. I have written Internet software, been involved in numerous online forums and blogs and now get almost all my news from the web. During that time I have developed a love/hate relationship with the Technology That Al Gore Invented (I am such a geek I already knew how it was really invented when he made that claim). In many ways, I consider myself a “technological Luddite”. Anyway, here are five things I love about the Internet, followed by five things I hate about it.

THINGS I LOVE ABOUT THE INTERNET

1) Its egalitarian nature.
I love the fact that a guy with a lame website like drudgereport.com can become one of the most influential media outlets in the world. The barrier to entry is now so low that literally anyone can start a website, and if they have something valuable to say, it will eventually get heard. This has many implications for evangelization.

2) The accountability it fosters in public life.
I love that public figures are held so accountable. When Dan Rather tried to make up stories about President Bush, he was called on it and the scandal reached the public almost immediately. (Obviously, this can get out of hand – do I really need to know how exactly many women Tiger Woods had an affair with?)

3) Its communications power.
The Internet was originally created to allow for communications between government organizations in the event of a war, and communications is still what the Internet does best. We no longer have to depend on Tom, Dan or Peter to tell us what the Pope said – we can just find out ourselves at the Vatican website.

4) Its power to unify.
This year we saw the power of the Internet in the Iranian elections. People who were oppressed by the government were able to let their voices be heard, and the whole world listened. I can’t imagine something like that happening before the advent of the Internet.

5) Its research capabilities.
I honestly don’t know how people used to research before the Internet was created. I don’t know how I did any research during my high school and college days in the late 80’s/early 90’s without Google. Every topic imaginable is available on the Internet, and the vast majority of it is free. Yes, you have to be careful about your sources, but in general, it is not too hard to find solid reliable information regarding just about anything in just a few minutes.

THINGS I HATE ABOUT THE INTERNET

1) Porn.
It is unbelievably ubiquitous. I did a Google image search recently for an ancient icon and one of the first images shown was a picture of a topless actress (I won’t explain the dubious connection between them). I have safe search on, but it must have gotten through the filter. The damage this easy access to porn does on our society in incalculable, and because of the Internet I started praying for the purity of my son on the day he was born.

2) Its addictive nature.
The interactivity of the Internet makes it much more addictive than TV. I have to work just to not be addictive to checking my email and other sites I frequently visit. Would Blackberries be called “Crackberries” if they didn’t have access to the Internet? This is why I take one day off a week from accessing the Internet.

3) Its deceptively impersonal nature.
There is no question that the Internet allows more ‘human’ contact than previous technologies such as the radio and TV. However, it is still impersonal. Right now I am sitting alone in my office staring at a computer screen. No matter how many people read this post, this is still an impersonal act. It can foster a false sense of community. I think the Internet is a powerful tool for evangelization (which is one of the most important personal acts we engage in), but it is foolish to think it is superior to old-fashioned offline friendships and communications. The Internet should be a tool which leads to real relationships, not a replacement of those relationships.

4) Its power to divide.
Yes, I realize this is the opposite of #4 under “Things I Love”, but that is the paradox of the Internet, isn’t it? Because of the Internet, one can live completely isolated from contrary views. And when this happens, we have a tendency to demonize those who disagree with us, instead of attempting to understand their presuppositions and worldview.

5) The death of the long form.
I realize that the Internet isn’t the origin of this (I would blame the television for that), but it surely accelerated its death. The very technology of the Internet works against the idea of long, in-depth writing. And it seems to get worse with each passing year: from web sites to blogs to twitter, it seems that no one can read anything of any length anymore. When I first started this blog, I read that you should keep your posts under 400 words or no one would read them. 400 words! Ents can’t even introduce themselves in under 400 words! (Imagine that for a minute: an Ent with a blog or, even better, a Twitter account). In fact, there is probably no one reading this sentence because it is well past the 400-word mark in this post. There is a time and place for short articles, but it seems like the Internet has eliminated lengthy works from our literary diet.

I’m sure I could think of more, but I’ll leave it to five each. Feel free to add your own likes/dislikes about the Internet in the comments.

The “must-have” gadget this Christmas season is clearly the e-reader. The Amazon Kindle appears to be flying off the shelves, and the Barnes and Noble Nook is back-ordered due to high demand. As a self-professed bibliophile, I have followed the development of e-books with great interest, and even with some concern. At first, my Luddite tendencies prevailed and I thought e-readers were a silly fad, but then for a while my geek side won out and I embraced the concept wholeheartedly. But then I began to question some of the outlandish statements made on their behalf, especially the belief that they will completely replace paper-bound books in the near future. This is not going to happen.

The reason I don’t think e-readers will replace paper-bound books isn’t simply nostalgia; it is an opinion based on technology. And simply put, the paper-bound book is a vastly superior technology compared to the current e-readers. The e-reader is better at some specific tasks, but in most ways, the paper-bound book still offers the best way to read books.

Here are a few ways in which the paper-bound book is superior to the e-reader:

1) A common, lasting format. Currently, the e-reader market is in the classic “Beta vs. VHS” stage. Getting a book on a Kindle doesn’t mean that you could read it on a Nook. There is no clear-cut winner yet in the format wars, so the reader you get now may not be able to read any e-books in five or ten years. Even if the manufacturers of e-readers would agree on a common format, you still must possess an e-reader of some kind to read an e-book. Anyone can read a paper-bound book, however.

2) Easier to share. The Nook has a unique feature that allows you to “lend” your e-books to another e-reader for 14 days (and then, for some inexplicable reason, you can’t re-loan it to them). This is considered advanced in the e-reader field, but it is clearly far inferior to the paper-bound book world, where you can lend your books to anyone you want (they don’t need a compatible e-reader or any device, for that matter) and for as long as you want.

3) More resistance to damage. Ever thought about reading a book in the bath? Good luck if you have an e-reader. Also, if you run over a Kindle with your car, you have to purchase a whole new Kindle and re-download all your books. Running over a book with your car usually just puts a tire-mark on it, especially if it is a hard-back.

4) Longer-lasting. A paper-bound book can outlast the lifespan of a human being. The typical lifespan of a high-tech device is about 2-5 years. Once you are on the e-book track, you will need to constantly keep upgrading over the course of your life to maintain that lifestyle.

5) True ownership. If you buy a book, you own it. Forever. When you buy an e-book, you are just licensing the text from Amazon or the publisher or whoever truly owns the book. If they want, they can take away your e-book for any reason or no reason (which has already happened once with the Kindle).

6) Superior reading experience. This is not as subjective as it sounds. When you read a paper-bound book, you are using more than your sense of sight. You are also using your sense of touch. You know just by holding the book how far along you are – there is no need to check the page indicator at the bottom of a screen. Furthermore, if you need to go back a few pages to remember who a character is or review an important point made by the author, flipping back a few pages while skimming the text is quite easy – at least in comparison to doing the same on an e-reader. Studies have shown that paper allows people to process text better than text on a screen.

7) More focused reading. When you are reading a paper-bound book, there is nothing else you can do with that book. Your entire attention is focused on the text and on nothing else. With an e-reader, you can quickly change to another book or even on some readers decide to browse the web. (Some have noticed that this lack of focus with screen reading is changing how we think). The single-mindedness of the paper-bound book has been called a disadvantage by some, but it is clearly an advantage if you really want to engage the text of the book. Both this point and #6 above leads to a “deeper” reading experience: you can engage the text more closely and in a more focused manner than you can in an e-reader.

This is not to say that the e-reader is worthless; on the contrary, it has many positive features that make it useful for certain types of reading. For example, I often will print out long PDF’s I find online so that I can read them away from my computer. This has lead to piles of paper crammed throughout my office. I can see the benefit of just loading these on an e-reader. The same thing could be said for magazines – do we really need a bunch of paper magazines sitting around the house? Also, I can see much benefit to an e-reader for college students. Instead of lugging around 50 lbs of books that cost north of $500 – books that will probably never been read again by that student – just putting it all on an e-reader can be quite helpful.

But these are specific cases and don’t encompass the whole reading experience. At least for a while, the most “high-tech” way to read a book is the old-fashioned way: paper-bound books.

National Geographic has an interesting profile of Mount Athos, the “Holy Mountain” of Eastern Orthodoxy. Some excerpts:

The holy peninsula of Mount Athos reaches 31 miles out into the Aegean Sea like an appendage struggling to dislocate itself from the secular corpus of northeastern Greece. For the past thousand years or so, a community of Eastern Orthodox monks has dwelled here, purposefully removed from everything except God. They live only to become one with Jesus Christ. Their enclave—crashing waves, dense chestnut forests, the specter of snowy-veined Mount Athos, 6,670 feet high—is the very essence of isolation.

Living in one of the peninsula’s 20 monasteries, dozen cloisters, or hundreds of cells, the monks are detached even from each other, reserving most of their time for prayer and solitude. In their heavy beards and black garb—worn to signify their death to the world—the monks seem to recede into a Byzantine fresco, an ageless brotherhood of ritual, acute simplicity, and constant worship, but also imperfection. There is an awareness, as one elder puts it, that “even on Mount Athos we are humans walking every day on the razor’s edge.”

…after two world wars and communism reduced the monastic population to 1,145 in 1971, the past decades have seen a rebirth. A steady influx of young men—often with college degrees, a number from the former Soviet bloc—has dramatically increased Mount Athos’s ranks to nearly 2,000 monks and novices, while Greece’s entrance into the European Union in 1981 made the peninsula eligible for EU preservation funds.

“There are 2,000 stories here—everyone has their own spiritual walk,” says Father Maximos, whose own walk began in Long Island as a teenage devotee of edgy musical artists like Lou Reed and Leonard Cohen, and who later became a theology professor at Harvard before resigning to “live my life closer to God.”

The following passage worries me, however:

Mount Athos has survived by bending where it must, though never without fretfulness. St. Athanasios, who founded the Megistis Lavras monastery in 963, infuriated the hermits by introducing audacious architecture into an otherwise rustic landscape. Roads and buses, then electricity, then cell phones have all been sources of angst. The latest encroachment is the Internet. A few monasteries have conducted ever so timid forays into cyberspace—ordering spare parts, communicating with lawyers, obtaining scholarly research. “It’s a great danger to be connected to the outside world,” cautions one monk. “Most of the monks weren’t even informed about 9/11.”

Not long ago I was talking to a friend who is a member of a (Catholic) religious order. He told me that they were considering the possibility of having the Internet available on one of their computers in their house. Some of the younger novices need it for their studies. I told him frankly: do everything you can to keep the Internet out of your houses! As I mention in my previous post, it is possible to be contemplative while in the world, but to me the Internet seems completely contrary to the religious life they are trying to lead. Hopefully the introduction of many of these modern conveniences to Mt. Athos will not harm their spiritual life.

I’m still trying to decide if I think this is funny or offensive:

If you are looking for the latest news about Hollywood celebrities, this blog is the last place to look. Frankly, I don’t understand our national obsession regarding the comings and goings and views of movie and TV actors. This obsession has infected Catholics as well: we too often obsess about whether or not this or that actor is Catholic, what actors think about Catholicism and whether or not a movie or show is pro- or anti-Catholic. We place an incredibly inordinate amount of importance on people whose main talent is playing make-believe.

That being said, I just read an interesting interview with actor Jim Caviezel regarding his latest endeavor (a “re-creation” of the 1960s show The Prisoner). Caviezel appears to be a fine chap and of course I enjoyed his work in The Passion of the Christ. But what struck me most about this interview was the following statement he made (emphasis added):

[I]t reflects on the economy, on the world lack of trust. People become so disconnected. There was a time when people would sit down and have dinner together and they would say, “How are you,” and they would have to deal with one another. They don’t have to deal with each other anymore. They deal with their iPods and their Blackberries. And they’re missing a lot of opportunities here, watching people that they could have met earlier who would have changed their life, that’s gone because their head is somewhere else. I’m in Manhattan, New York, and walking across the street with your Blackberry is kind of a death wish, don’t you think?

I find Caviezel’s connection between trust and technology to be very insightful, and I’m impressed that someone who most likely lives surrounded by this type of technology could see this so clearly.

Technology has supposedly “connected” us in new ways, but we are actually more disconnected than ever before. We don’t know our neighbors and we often don’t even know the members of our own family as we keep our eyes on our gadgets instead of on other people. Yet Christ calls us to make deep connections with others so that we can truly share God’s love with them. This can only be done on a limited level on the Internet, and it can never replace the deep connectivity that comes from true interpersonal relationships.

appear to be tomorrow’s cigarettes.

I strictly control the amount of time my children spend on the Internet, and I also strictly control what sites they can access and from whom my oldest daughter (the only one with email) can receive email (three cheers for Mac’s great parental control features!). I think this is just part of being a good parent. There is no question in my mind that, along with so much of the garbage to be found on the Internet, just using it can easily become addictive, especially for someone who is not yet mature enough to handle it.

However, in China, they seem to have taken things too far: they have “Internet boot camps” in which physical means such as beatings and electro-shock therapy are used to cure teenagers of Internet addiction. Fortunately, the government there has stepped in to ban these practices after a teenage died at such a bootcamp.