Technology

“The Kodaji Temple, in a partnership with the robotics team at Osaka University, unveiled ‘Mindar’ earlier this year. The robot is a 6-foot tall android, made of silicon and aluminum and modeled after Kannon, the Buddhist deity of mercy who preaches what is called the ‘Heart Sutra’ in Japanese, with English and Chinese translations projected on a screen for tourists.” - Fox

“No other major institutions examined by Pew—colleges and universities, labor unions, banks and other financial institutions, large corporations, national news media, and churches and religious organizations—saw as severe a decline in support as tech brands.” - Christianity Today

“As your church member sits at the Department of Motor Vehicles waiting for their number to be called, they pull out their phone and look at their screen. Sitting between their social media app and some puzzle game is your church’s app. That app is a reminder of the mission, the church, the family they belong to.” - Church Leaders

“Custom church apps add another way to communicate. For some churches, that may be needed. For most, however, it’s just adding to the noise—creating more communication clutter. ” - Church Leaders

“Cars, light bulbs, telephones, and compact discs exist outside of us. When we engage with social media, however, when we take information from blogs and make it our own, we are merging our hearts and minds with a machine. Blithely, we continue apace in this transformation, most often unaware of the change we are undergoing.” - Intellectual Takeout

“I cannot count the number of times I have found myself staring at a computer screen, wondering where the last fifteen minutes have gone because I have started work without a clear goal in mind and allowed myself to get distracted.

“Our ancestors had different technology, but history professor Jamie Kreiner informs usthat even medieval monks faced the same problem of reigning in their mind.” - Intellectual Takeout

“At the dawn of the attention industries, then, religion was still, in a very real sense, the incumbent operation, the only large-scale human endeavor designed to capture attention and use it.

“In previous cultures, Marar argues, this need for justification was found chiefly in gods and traditions but in our secularizing age we can only find it in each other. Social media is just one more indication that this project is not working.” - Russel Moore