The story of a human retreat from this world, either to the stars above or the virtual realm within, can mask a disregard for or resignation about what is done with the world we do have, both in terms of the structures of human societies and the non-human world within which they are rooted. Get full access to The Convivial Society at theconvivialsociety.substack.com/subscribe

A set of 41 questions drafted with a view to helping us draw out the moral or ethical implications of our tools. Get full access to The Convivial Society at theconvivialsociety.substack.com/subscribe

Attending to the world is an embodied practice involving our senses, and how we experience our senses has a history. The upshot is that we might be able to meet the some of the challenges of the age by cultivating an askesis of perception.  Get full access to The Convivial Society at theconvivialsociety.substack.com/subscribe

My point turns out to be relatively straightforward: may be you and I don’t need more information. And, if we think that the key to navigating uncertainty and mitigating anxiety is simply more information, then we are probably going to make matters worse for ourselves.  Get full access to The Convivial Society at theconvivialsociety.substack.com/subscribe

Here is a proposition for you to consider: you and I have exactly as much attention as we need. In fact, I’d invite you to do more than consider it. Take it out for a spin in the world. See if proceeding on this assumption doesn’t change how you experience life, maybe not radically, but perhaps for the better. Get full access to The Convivial Society at theconvivialsociety.substack.com/subscribe

In this installment, I reflect on the challenge of speaking online in the absence of meaningful silences. The point is not, in this case, to complain about social media but rather to speak a good word for silence and its place in human communication.  Get full access to The Convivial Society at theconvivialsociety.substack.com/subscribe

Exploring the paradox of control, which is the subject of German sociologist Hartmut Rosa’s recent book, The Uncontrollability of the World. It’s a short book, coming in at just over 100 pages, but it develops what is, in my view, an essential insight into one of the key assumptions structuring modern society.  Get full access to The Convivial Society at theconvivialsociety.substack.com/subscribe

This installment is the latest in a series of conversations with colleagues and friends of Ivan Illich. For over thirty years, David Cayley worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Company, producing numerous interview and documentary programs, including two programs devoted to Illich’s work.  Get full access to The Convivial Society at theconvivialsociety.substack.com/subscribe

Just as for Peter Berger the sociological structures of modern society generated the heretical imperative, so, too, I would like to propose, the technological structures of digital media generate the hermeneutical imperative.  Get full access to The Convivial Society at theconvivialsociety.substack.com/subscribe

Starlink is a point of departure to consider the costs of the unrelenting drive toward artificial illumination, a technological development most of us now take for granted.  Get full access to The Convivial Society at theconvivialsociety.substack.com/subscribe

It’s hard to know where to begin, of course; the situation has many interlocking layers. The most notable and disturbing elements have been well covered, and we continue to learn more about the event each day. The picture, it seems, only grows darker. For my part, I’ve been especially interested in thinking through the role of digital media in these events and what it portends for the future. Here, then, are a few reflections for your consideration along those lines.  Get full access to The...

“Existence in a society that has become a system finds the senses useless precisely because of the very instruments designed for their extension. One is prevented from touching and embracing reality. Further, one is programmed for interactive communication, one's whole being is sucked into the system. It is this radical subversion of sensation that humiliates and then replaces perception.” Get full access to The Convivial Society at theconvivialsociety.substack.com/subscribe

“All technical progress exacts a price. We cannot believe that Technique brings us nothing; but we must not think that what it brings it brings free of charge.”— Jacques Ellul Get full access to The Convivial Society at theconvivialsociety.substack.com/subscribe

Reflections on Jane Jacobs, sidewalks, digital media, and our common civic life. Get full access to The Convivial Society at theconvivialsociety.substack.com/subscribe

Tending to our information ecosystem, if we attempt it at all, requires a striking degree of vigilance and discipline. There is no given balance between place and speed, no natural context of relative meaningfulness to regulate the pace and quality of information for us. It’s on us to do so, daily, often minute by minute. We exist in a state of continuous and conscious attention triage, which can be exhausting, disorienting, and demoralizing. Get full access to The Convivial Society at...

I’ve been thinking about tables of late, literally and figuratively. Chiefly, what I’ve had in mind is the table as an emblem of hospitality, and, relatedly, as an example of the material infrastructure of our social lives or the stuff of life that sustains and mediates human relationships ... Thinking about the table has drawn me back to Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition, first published in 1958.  Get full access to The Convivial Society at theconvivialsociety.substack.com/subscribe

Listen now | Gov. Jerry Brown, a longtime friend of Ivan Illich's and student of his work sat down to talk to me about his friendship with Illich and the value of his work.  Get full access to The Convivial Society at theconvivialsociety.substack.com/subscribe

We have an opportunity to examine more carefully some of the assumptions that have informed the way we think about the nature of a good life. And I would suggest that we do well to start, as Simone Weil did, with a consideration of the full range of human needs, clarified by Ivan Illich’s searching critique of the needs engendered in us by industrial (and now digital) institutions, and oriented toward a more robust vision of a good society as Albert Borgmann urged us to imagine.  This is a...

It was my pleasure back in June to enjoy a conversation with Carl Mitcham about the life and work of Ivan Illich. A couple of weeks ago, I had the similar pleasure of speaking with Gustavo Esteva, an activist and scholar who, despite having earlier rejected Illich as a “reactionary priest,” went on to become Illich’s close friend and collaborator in the early 1980s. Gustavo is also the founder of the Universidad del la Tierra in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. My thanks to Dana Stuchul and...

“People can change, but only within bounds. In contrast, the present industrial system is dynamically unstable. It is organized for indefinite expansion and the concurrent unlimited creation of new needs, which in an industrial environment soon become basic necessities … Such growth makes the incongruous demand that man seek his satisfaction by submitting to the logic of his tools. The demands made by tools on people become increasingly costly … Increasing manipulation of man becomes...

“There are two ranges in the growth of tools: the range within which machines are used to extend human capability and the range in which they are used to contract, eliminate, or replace human functions. In the first, man as an individual can exercise authority on his own behalf and therefore assume responsibility. In the second, the machine takes over—first reducing the range of choice and motivation in both the operator and the client, and second imposing its own logic and demand on both....

“I believe that a desirable future depends on our deliberately choosing a life of action over a life of consumption, on our engendering a lifestyle which will enable us to be spontaneous, independent, yet related to each other, rather than maintaining a lifestyle which only allows to make and unmake, produce and consume – a style of life which is merely a way station on the road to the depletion and pollution of the environment. The future depends more upon our choice of institutions which...

We are presently in the midst of another wave of free speech/cancellation discourse, this one prompted by an open letter published in Harper’s warning against a rising tide of illiberal constraints on free expression. While debates about free speech are as old as the idea of free speech, a case could be made that they have taken on a different character in recent years. This may be a matter of frequency and intensity, but I suspect that the nature of the debate has shifted substantively as...

In addition to my scribblings here and elsewhere, I occasionally give talks about the role technology plays in our private and social lives. If there’s a Q&A time afterwards, one of the questions I’m most likely to get will be about how parents should regulate their kid’s use of digital devices. Sometimes the underlying anxiety and frustration is palpable. For a long time, I was hesitant to address these sorts of questions because I wasn’t a parent myself, and I had enough good sense to...

“Never has the individual been so completely delivered up to a blind collectivity, and never have men been less capable, not only of subordinating their actions to their thoughts, but even of thinking. Such terms as oppressors and oppressed, the idea of classes–all that sort of thing is near to losing all meaning, so obvious are the impotence and distress of all men in face of the social machine, which has become a machine for breaking hearts and crushing spirits, a machine for manufacturing...