Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are virtual public squares, allowing individuals to communicate their views to wide audiences. At first, these platforms avoided regulating user-created content. But pressure from politicians, activist corporations, and users . . . . Continue Reading »
Andrea Long Chu, a biological male, explained in a 2018 op-ed for the New York Times why he desired radical surgery that would equip him with ersatz female genitalia. Chu was on estrogen and had already been castrated. He wrote: Next Thursday, I will get a vagina. The procedure will last . . . . Continue Reading »
Italian intellectual Augusto Del Noce wrote some of the best analysis anywhere of technology’s impact on Western politics, economics, and culture. Continue Reading »
When does a laudable desire to reduce healthcare costs become an obsession with controlling how we live our lives? Continue Reading »
The Star Wars prequels irreverently secularized the Force, making it a controllable entity, measurable and understandable, infinitely use-able. In Rogue One, the Force becomes spiritual once again. Continue Reading »
Thirty years ago, Lucy Suchman’s Plans and Situated Actions reminded us of the limits of our ability to control outcomes by careful, thoughtful planning. She analyzed the utter failure of early “smart” photocopiers to help people make copies. The designers and programmers of these “smart” . . . . Continue Reading »
No Authority As a practicing general pediatrician, I appreciated Dr. Leonard Sax’s article “Don’t Ask the Kids” in the October issue of First Things. Sax makes some very helpful suggestions for parents struggling to raise respectful children, but his emphasis is misplaced in advocating . . . . Continue Reading »
If there is hope to be found in this painful political year, it is in the fact that the spell which liberal modernity has long cast over the Christian imagination might finally be starting to dissolve even as technocracy tightens its grip on our everyday lives. Continue Reading »
It is part of the absurdity of American life that we decide questions of truth under the guise of settling contests of rights. Which means that we decide questions of truth without thinking deeply or even very honestly about them. Thus, while it is obvious to many that we are living through a . . . . Continue Reading »
Today is the most important day in European politics since the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Continue Reading »
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