The Digital Effect

Can any of us deny being affected to some extent as described below?

Here is one of the great dangers we face as Christians: With the ever-present distractions in our lives, we are quickly becoming a people of shallow thoughts, and shallow thoughts will lead to shallow living. There is a simple and inevitable progression at work here:

Distraction —> Shallow Thinking —> Shallow Living

All of this distraction is reshaping us in two dangerous ways. First, we are tempted to forsake quality for quantity, believing the lie that virtue comes through speed, productivity, and efficiency. We think that more must be better, and so we drive ourselves to do more, accomplish more, be more. And second, as this happens, we lose our ability to engage in deeper ways of thinking—concentrated, focused thought that requires time and cannot be rushed. Instead of focusing our efforts in a few directions, we give scant attention to many things, skimming instead of studying. We live rushed lives and forget how to move slowly, carefully, and thoughtfully through life.

The challenge facing us is clear. We need to relearn how to think, and we need to discipline ourselves to think deeply, conquering the distractions in our lives so that we can live deeply. We must rediscover how to be truly thoughtful Christians, as we seek to live with virtue in the aftermath of the digital explosion.

—Tim Challies, The Next Story: Life and Faith after the Digital Explosion (Zondervan,2011), 117.

Comment by James Robertson on December 17, 2011 at 11:18am

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Comment by James Robertson on December 18, 2011 at 3:34pm

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Comment by James Robertson on December 19, 2011 at 10:22am: The Emergence of Digital Childhood — Is This Really Wise?
November 30, 2011 - AlbertMohler.com

The easiest way to infuriate the young is to lean into nostalgia. Nevertheless, it’s hard not to be nostalgic for a childhood in which the basic equipment for elementary school was pretty much limited to notebooks, pencils, and an occasional ruler. Those days are long gone.

Verizon Wireless recently released a national survey of parents. The study revealed that the average age at which parents give their children their first cell phone is 11.6. Do sixth graders really need a cell phone?

Well, hold on. The same survey indicated that ten percent of parents give their children a cell phone between the ages of 7 and 9. A recent Nielsen Company study indicated that the average age for a first phone in many families may be as low as 9.7.

Most parents said that safety is their concern. But how many 7-9 year-olds are waiting on the curb at the mall for mom to pick them up? Maybe I don’t want to know the answer to that question. In reality, few second-graders need a cell phone for safety in that sense. Something else is going on here, and the net result is that children are being pushed into the digital world at ever-earlier ages.

The Verizon survey also revealed that many parents fail to set any rules or protections for their offspring’s use of the cell phone. The danger of this is increased when it is realized that many of these cell phones are actually smart phones with advanced Internet access and access to social media. This effectively puts a miniature computer with unrestricted Web access in the hands of very young children.

There can be no doubt that we are all now living in a digital world. The digital revolution has wrought wonders and unparalleled access. But it has also brought unprecedented dangers — and those dangers are magnified when it comes to children and teenagers. This Verizon survey should serve as a wake-up call to parents and to all those who care for the coming generation. Childhood is being left in the dust of the digital transformation.

One final observation: When parents did set rules for how a child was to use a cell phone, the most common rule was that the child had to answer the phone when a parent called. Now, that rule makes sense.

Comment by Dave Gosse on December 19, 2011 at 9:24pm: Senators Lee and…Kohl Rightly Call on the FTC to Thoroughly Investigate Google

Google is the Evil Empire. The Internet Search behemoth has long been using its monstrous power not for good, but for ill.

To give but a few examples:

Google was knowingly running illegal ads for Canadian pharmaceuticals – since 2003. And they just had to pay a $500 million fine for so doing.

Google has been – for their Google Books – scanning in their entirety tens of thousands of tomes – without the legal approval to do so. Myriad publishers are currently suing.

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Their serial illegal business practices are a natural extension of their Leftist ideology.

They are incessant violators of antitrust, privacy and private property law – it is a business ethos borne of a political one.

To give but one example, Google was long the Daddy Warbucks behind the push to Network Neutrality. Which mandates that Google have free, unlimited access to the Inter-networks that others spend hundreds of billions of dollars building and maintaining.

Google has been very busy, and very thorough.

Google has repeatedly been accused of violating privacy laws, facilitating copyright infringement and aiding online piracy.

Why?

Google and its political allies want to turn the Internet into an “information commons.” To that end, they seek to weaken copyright, trademark and patent protections.

Why?

This “what’s yours is mine” philosophy is used by Google to monetize others’ information and content without paying for it.

Behold the Socialist undermining of property rights. They want to illegally make money off of your stuff – at the expense of you legally making money off of your stuff. Hence their aforementioned Google Books massive private property heist.

However.

Ask them for access to their mystical Search algorithm – how they arrive at the Search results they do – and they go ballistic. Screaming “Proprietary!” – and steadfastly refusing to acquiesce to any degree.

For Google, it’s “what’s yours