For Further Reading

If I were to suggest one book to take up after this one (if not before it), it would be Sherry Turkle’s Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age (Penguin, 2015). John Dyer’s From the Garden to the City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology (Kregel, 2011) is an especially wide-ranging and readable assessment of technology from a specifically Christian perspective. From the Fuller Youth Institute team, Right Click: Parenting Your Teenager in a Digital Media World  (by Art Bamford, Kara Powell, and Brad Griffin; Fuller Youth Institute, 2015) is a practical, levelheaded guide to life with teenagers in the age of connected devices.

This book is most influenced by the life work of Albert Borgmann, especially his 1987 book Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry (University of Chicago Press). Dr. Borgmann’s work is, entirely appropriately, far from light reading, so you may want to warm up with one book that influenced him and has delighted and directed our own family: Robert Farrar Capon’s The Supper of the Lamb (Modern Library, 2002; first published 1970). Though it was published nearly fifty years ago, Capon’s theological cookbook is still the ideal summons to something better than our technological shallows—in the kitchen and everywhere else. Bon appétit—and bon courage.