Greenflame

Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture, photography and faith from the Aotearoa New Zealand

Category: Technology

  • Westie power lines and the suburban landscape

    One of the dominant features of West Auckland are the series of high tension power lines that run from pylon to pylon across the suburbs – across rivers and creeks, over residential properties and schools, alongside motorways, and through commercial and light industrial areas. Taking electricity generated down south to the north of the North…

  • Robot Theology (2)

    Way back four years ago, I posted the first part of what I thought would be a series on robots, artificial, and theology. I guess life got in the way of that but given I’m doing some writing on AI at the moment and that things like ChatGPT and Bard are all the rage, it’s…

  • COVID Comics

    Over the past few months I’ve started to collect comics and graphic novels that document the experience of COVID-19 in various communities. Most of these books are anthologies – collections drawing together vignettes of life from the perspective of people from all walks of life. There is something about how COVID-19 has permeated the everydayness…

  • An interesting post over at Michael Sacasas’ “The Frailest Thing” on what he names the myth around the relationship between technology and Protestant Christianity, which he describes like this: The myth, briefly stated in intentionally anachronistic terms, runs something like this. Marin Luther’s success was owed to his visionary embrace of a cutting edge media technology,…

  • This article is a little old now, but it does point out how the learning management systems we choose to use (or have thrust upon us by our institutions) shape how we actually teach, rather than being shaped by pedagogy that is appropriate to the topic and material being covered. And to which, I’d add…

  • One of my tasks for getting the blog back up and going is to look at how software for the Mac, Windows and iOS has progressed over the past few years. I like using a client to write blog posts, rather than sitting in the WordPress editor in the web browser. It allows me to…

  • From TidBITS: Thoughts Prompted by Google Reader’s Demise, which came through in the email digest today. Just as email isn’t broken, RSS readers aren’t broken, and social networking services aren’t broken. We’re broken, because we’re both finite and hardwired to be interested in a wide variety of things: other people, tribes, power, sex, social position,…

  • Following on from The Technium: Technophilia a few weeks back, Kevin Kelly reflects on the place of appropriate technology – minimalism that gives rise to freedom and options in life. See The Technium: Why Technology Can’t Fulfill. I wonder if at some point these ‘mini-essays’ might be collated in some way.

  • Andii at Nouslife points to this nice summary list of questions Letters from a Skeptic by Gregory A. Boyd: 76 Reasonable Questions to ask about any technology by Jacques Ellul.

  • MONDOLITHIC STUDIOS – EcoHome – Artist’s impression (and accompanying text) on sustainable dwellings produced for National Geographic Kids. MONDOLITHIC STUDIOS – An Earth Without Us – Again, artistic representation (& text) about how our technologized landscape might change if all human beings suddenly disappeared.