the tindog coffeehouse

This is Part 6 of my chapter-by-chapter blog of From the Garden to the City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology by John Dyer.

In Chapter 5, Dyer focused on the “corrupting” part, examining how both Adam and Eve and their son Cain used technology as a way to separate themselves from God. But as Dyer illustrated, technology (“the human activity of using tools to transform God’s creation for practical purposes”) isn’t necessarily bad. It existed before the Fall, and even after the Fall, God continued to equip his people with more of it. Technology, then, must be neutral. Right?

Well, no.

We concluded in Chapter 1 that technology is, in fact, not neutral; as it changes, we change along with it. How and exactly why we change is the focus of this chapter.

Continue reading…

This is Part 4 of my chapter-by-chapter walk through From the Garden to the City by John Dyer.

We started out talking about how technology isn’t neutral, how it not only changes the world around us, but changes us as well. And we started to see how we approach technology as a sort-of mini-narrative, allowing us to bridge the gap between our current world and a better one. We then looked at Genesis and how technology really began in the Garden of Eden when God told Adam to cultivate and till the garden, taking God’s initial creation and making something new out of it. But what exactly is technology anyway? Is it the tools used to cultivate the garden, the product of that cultivation, or the know-how that guided the process along?

It seems odd that a book subtitled “The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology” would wait until Chapter 4 to define what the author means by “technology”. But better late than never, I suppose. As we’ll see, however, the definition isn’t as clear-cut as we think it is.

Continue reading…

This is the third part of my chapter-by-chapter analysis of From the Garden to the City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology by John Dyer, and I have to say this has been the most enlightening chapter thus far.

Reflection.

One thing I love about this book is that Dyer is just as qualified to talk about Christianity as he is about technology. He has a Masters in Theology from Dallas Theological Seminary but is also a highly regarded programmer and web developer, having done work for companies like Harley-Davidson, Apple, and Anheuser Busch. In short, he knows his stuff.

The reason why this is important is because most people who would write a book like this are either tech experts or theologians but not both. They either really know technology and only have a basic understanding of Scripture, or they really know Scripture but only have a basic understanding of technology. And in most cases that would be painfully obvious to the reader.

Continue reading…

I’m blogging my way through From the Garden to the City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology by John Dyer. Dyer began the book by trying to put technology in its proper perspective. Technology, he argues, isn’t neutral. As it changes over time, we change with it. What we view as new and futuristic today becomes normal (or “mythic”) to future generations, to the point where we no longer even think of it as technology.

Imagination.

In Chapter 2, he builds upon this point by looking at exactly what technology is, defining it in terms of a narrative:

Though we might not realize it, we compose these mininarratives whenever we encounter even the simplest gadget. If we happen to see a shovel, our minds can easily imagine the act of digging a hole, visualizing how the ground will look after we’re finished. This small effort of the imagination has a clear movement from beginning (the world before the shovel) to middle (the act of digging) to end (the world with a new hole)—the basic arc of any story. …

Technology, then, is the bridge from this world to the imagined one.

Continue reading…

I recently started reading From the Garden to the City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology by John Dyer. I’m only a chapter in, but I’m already intrigued by the premise and am eager to see where Dyer goes from here. As a Christian who has worked in the IT field for over ten years (and who has a History degree), I’m fascinated with the whole subject of the role of technology in the world and how it affects the Church.

I wasn’t intending to write a blog post about the first chapter. Maybe a post or two after I had finished the book. But apparently a lot of folks are blogging their way through it. (ChurchMag has a great chapter-by-chapter review with links to others’ blogs in the comments.) So I figured I would offer a few comments of my own. I should mention that at the moment I’m fighting a cold and am juiced up on tons of cold medicine, so this post will be brief (and probably nonsensical).

Continue reading…

As a Christian, your personality type (and subsequent political leanings) affect how you approach your relationship with God. No real surprise there. But Donald Miller recently expounded on this concept by looking at it through the spectrum of the Enneagram.

Continue reading…