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Monday, December 02, 2013

Book Review: Shaping a Digital World


It’s rare to find a short work on the nature of technology that is at once well written, wisely documented, philosophically astute, and steeped in Scripture. While several noteworthy books on the philosophy of technology have appeared in fairly recent years—such as Quentin Schultz’s Habits of the High-Tech Heart (2002), Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows (2011), Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together (2011), and Tim Challies’s The Next Story (2011)—this work occupies its own felicitous category for several reasons. First, Schuurman is a practitioner, a computer scientist. Most books written by technical experts are theologically thin or secular; instrumental rather than interpretational; and naively optimistic about the cultural and personal effects of the technologies they attempt to master. Second, this is the first book on this often vexing topic that omits nothing of significance and treats every relevant question pertaining to the nature, function, direction, limits, and promise of technology. This analysis is neither dry nor jocular (the curse of so much contemporary writing, even on serious topics); neither pedantic nor cursory; neither long-winded nor short-sighted. Keep reading

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