Author: Benjamin Robertson

Benjamin Robertson is a co-founder and editor of Second Nature. He has worked in advertising for the Chicago Tribune and Gannett, and now is a web developer at Up&Up. He studied Communications and Media Studies under Dr. Read Schuchardt at Wheaton College in Illinois. He has presented papers on Marshall McLuhan, media ecology, and Christianity at the Media Ecology Association, National Communication Association, and the McLuhan's Philosophy of Media Centennial Conference in Brussels. He lives with his wife, Ruth, in Greenville, SC. His personal website is benjamingrobertson.com.

Social Engineering, Mobile Lovers, and Technologizing the Fertility Awareness Method

Happy Easter! Here’s a list of some of what we found interesting this week. If you missed it last week, check out the final entry in our Lenten blog series on technology and spirituality: Trappists, Technology, and the Dictatorship of Relativism. Banksy’s latest confirmed painting skewers modern cellphone addiction – Washington Post “Banksy’s latest confirmed […]

Trappists, Technology, and the Dictatorship of Relativism

Part seven in our Lenten series on technology and spirituality. This past weekend, I had the opportunity of leaving home for a retreat at a Trappist monastery, Mepkin Abbey. The monks, though they haven’t taken a vow of silence, speak only when necessary. They spend their time praying the liturgy of the hours, practicing lectio divina, […]

Derek Schuurman’s “Shaping a Digital World”: A Review

Writing about technology is difficult. Writing well about technology is more difficult and writing well about technology from an authentically Christian perspective is especially difficult. The problems are numerous: a multiplicity of definitions of technology, a lack of a robust vocabulary to dissect and explore technology, bad theology, an easy temptation to black and white […]

Atheism, Distributism, Digital Humanities, and Slow Reading

This week’s reading list is a little varied. We’ve got a look at the conflation of atheism and intellectual sophistication from the Atlantic, a piece on reading from the excellent new blog, “The Infernal Machine,” and a review of a ‘slow-reading’ manifesto from the Times Literary Supplement. Also, editorial board member Arthur Hunt has a […]

God’s Grandeur in the Media Environment

Part six in our Lenten series on technology and spirituality. At the beginning of Lent, we examined how time-saving technology often has the tendency to help us do more work in less time and then fill up our extra time with new kinds of work. I think we intuitively realize this and commit ourselves to media […]

Atheism and Transhumanism, Ethics and Automation

We’ve got a couple articles on ethics and automation this morning, with Aeon Magazine giving an large overview and Singularity Hub looking at robots writing news stories. Michael Sacasas covered this topic for us several weeks ago in his Conscience of a Machine. We’ve also got an article on the ethics of Twitter with a […]

McLuhan and Lent

This is a very special week for us. Here’s the tweet that started it all: Press Release: Introducing the new online journal, Second Nature http://t.co/90KXk629Jq #newmedia #christian #tech — SecondNature Journal (@SecondNatureJrn) April 1, 2013 We launched with five articles and a vision to become a place to encourage critical thinking about technology and new […]

On Noise and Meaning

Part four in our Lenten series on technology and spirituality. This year, I gave up the radio for Lent. It’s not the first time I’ve given it up, but I always find it to be a beneficial experience. Like most Americans, I spend a decent amount of time in my car alone and most of […]

Surveillance, Wearables, and Confirming Mediocrity

Yesterday morning, one of my favorite twitter acquaintances tweeted a quote from an article on the future of web publishing: “You are what you measure” — Will the sunset of the pageview change what we create for the web? http://t.co/esQyeHUDqb — Christopher Mims (@mims) March 23, 2014 “You are what you measure.” And while the […]

Facebook and the False Self

Part 3 of our Lenten reflections on technology and spirituality. I think it’s time for Christians to give up giving Facebook up for Lent. While I realize that the intention behind giving up Facebook–or any other digital social network–for Lent is good, I think that just deactivating or uninstalling Facebook for 40 days can be […]