Do we depend too much on the Internet?

This Is Your Brain on Google

Google engineer predicted, "We'll be uploading our entire minds to computers by 2045, and our bodies will be replaced by machines within 90 years." In response, some Christians warned that offloading our minds to computers and bolstering our own bodies with technology presents us with a high-tech sense of Gnosticism.

At the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting in June, Russell Moore briefly mentioned, in a list of future challenges for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the question of whether artificially intelligent cyborgs should be baptized.

Given a trajectory that seems straight out of sci-fi, I'm worried about the future—specifically what technological advancements mean for our embodied, thinking, knowing, feeling human minds. Keep reading

15 percent of American adults do not use the Internet, study finds

To most Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, Foursquare, Skype, Instagram, YouTube, Vine and/or Pinterest users, this may sound crazy, but there are actually people who do not use the Internet.

According to a study released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project, some 15 percent of American adults aged 18 and older do not use the Internet. Among those non-Internet users, about a third (34 percent) say they are "not interested, do not want to use it, or have no need for it." Another third (32 percent) say it is "difficult or frustrating" to go online, that they are physically unable or they are worried about security issues "such as spam, spyware, and hackers." About 1 in five people who do not use the Internet say it's too expensive, and 7 percent lack physical access.

“A lot of people are surprised to discover that not everyone is online,” Pew's Kathryn Zickuhr said in a release accompanying the findings. “Most offline adults either don’t see the internet as relevant to them, or feel that it would not be worth the effort."

According to the survey of 2,252 adults conducted earlier this year, 44 percent of Americans aged 65 and older do not use the Internet. And the 65-plus set make up nearly half of non-Internet users overall, Pew found. Keep reading