Ed Brooks & Pete Nicholas

2015 IVP

 

Technology – some love it; others loathe it, we certainly can’t escape it. It shapes the way we interact and relate with each other. It shapes our commerce, our entertainment and our work. We live in a world of increasingly interconnected devices; a world where data is silently collected about our every activity; a world where words like the cloud and drone take on new meanings; a world where information is just a ‘google’ or a ‘Siri’ away.

 

With technology comes fear as new ways of doing evil appear but technology also brings joy and good as new cures happen and new delights are created. The questions that all of us face are, do we embrace technology, how much do we embrace technology, or do we bury our heads in an Amish style retreat into the safe and the familiar.

 

Brooks and Nicholas have written a book that will help us to grapple with these questions in the context of the Christian story. The book has two parts. In the first part the authors seek to outline the story of technology within a much bigger and more important story. They show us that the story of technology takes place within the story of God’s story and interactions with human history. In this section they seek to explore technology as a part of life where our experience is now both right and wrong, good and evil all at the same time.

 

Having set the scene in part 1 the authors seek to explore some specific areas where technology has introduced dramatic changes into life. They explore.

 

• Human identity where lives are exposed and public – lived online.
• Social media, community, loneliness and our need for love.
• Busyness, the future, time, anxiety, reflection and rest.
• Sexuality, sexting, liberty, commitment and freedom.
• Knowledge, data, Google, search engines and information.

 

This book is for anyone wanting to think about technology and its place in God’s story. It is for parents grappling with how to guide and influence their children through the morass of issues that technology presents. It is for people struggling with the quantity of time that technology takes. It is for anyone seeking to live a Christ filled life in a world of smartphones and cloud computing. The book is a helpful read and will stimulate good conversation. After each chapter there are questions for further conversation so that the book could be used in a small group setting about these matters.

 

Highly Recommended

 

Article written by Geoff Gertzen.