By: Bill Dobrenen on April 11, 2014
My post this week is out of character for me, so please be patient and forgiving with my seemingly negative attitude for what begins with judgment ends with appreciation and grace. This week’s reading and writing led me down a very unexpected path, one that I hope, will also be an encouragement to my readers.…
By: Liz Linssen on April 11, 2014
Modern societies are facing a profound crisis in their inability to make moral sense of their technological capacities, a crisis which, according to Jardine, is a manifestation of a more fundamental issue: the ability for humans to positively change their environment. Until now, individual freedom has been the prized goal and way of modern liberal…
By: Michael Badriaki on April 11, 2014
Jardine starts his book, The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society by directly launching into the concerns he has about the state of American and Western society. He notes: My essential argument is very straightforward. First, present-day Western societies are in the grip of a profound moral crisis, and this crisis lies in the inability…
By: Julie Dodge on April 11, 2014
I was grading papers earlier this week – it’s something I do a lot of this time of the semester. These particular papers were about each student’s cultural identity. One paper in particular stood out. At first, as I was reading it from my linear, academic, and western perspective, I was frustrated. Instead of directly…
By: Chris Ellis on April 11, 2014
This week’s assigned reading for my D.Min. was 12 Books That Changed the World written by Melvyn Bragg. In the book Bragg highlights 12 books he thinks changed the world. They are: Principia Mathematica (1687) — Isaac Newton Married Love (1918) — Marie Stopes Magna Carta (1215) Book of Rules of Association Football (1863) On the Origin of Species (1859)…
By: Phil Smart on April 11, 2014
The way to write a book in which displeases everyone.…would be accomplished by creating a list of your favorites, such as 12 Books that Changed the World by Melvyn Bragg. We are in an age of lists. The trend began with the first US nationwide popular newspaper, USA Today. All types of lists began showing…
By: David Toth on April 10, 2014
The title of this week’s reading is 12 Books That Changed The World by Melvyn Bragg and the title he chose made me think about books I have read that had a significant influence on my life. Mutiny on The Bounty impacted me and also Richard Baxter’s The Reformed Pastor. The introduction of Bragg’s book is important as it explains…
By: Ashley Goad on April 10, 2014
I will be honest; when I picked up this book I had a preconceived notion from the title that the pages would discuss how technology and media have cultivated hyper-connectivity, and thus how the hyper-connected generation is redefining community. I was hoping for a sequel to the highly-solution-oriented The Church of Facebook by Jesse Rice.[1]…
By: Sandy Bils on April 10, 2014
“sHiFt” “12 Books that Changed the World” by Melvyn Bragg includes summaries and narratives about books that caused major historical shifts in thinking. He explains that his choices were to include, “…books that I could prove had changed, rootedly, the lives of people all over the land…” (321) The topics include science, women’s writes, slavery,…
By: Deve Persad on April 10, 2014
There’s really not much that I enjoy about reading the centuries old versions of the Bible. However, there is at least one verse that has always stood out to me more than others as I read the King James Version. It’s found in Matthew 5:2, it’s the introduction to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Matthew…
By: Fred Fay on April 9, 2014
Could a book change your life? Many popular books promise that. “Read this book and it will change your life.” Millions of books have been written. Few endure. But some books have changed society. They have changed the world we live in. This week I have read 12 Books That Changed The World: How words and…
By: Sandy Bils on April 9, 2014
We are used to polls and votes, where we are asked to tell our favorite books, favorite Italian restaurant in town, favorite politician. Our opinion and experience seems to be interesting to others. Some apps and channels on social media like foursquare, qype or yelp are mainly designed to satisfy our curiosity, what others like…
By: Garrick Roegner on April 9, 2014
Groucho Marx once said, “Outside of a dog, the book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it is too dark to read.” Books, or written communication of some sort, essentially make the world go around. They are the stuff of big ideas, paradigm shifts, and the basic core of life. Whether story,…
By: Stefania Tarasut on April 9, 2014
Two things happened last week. The first was that World Vision made a bold decision in recognizing same-sex marriages among their employees. The second important thing that happened was that what seemed to be hours later, World Vision changed their minds and retracted their support. Now, there is a lot to be said about their…
By: Stefania Tarasut on April 9, 2014
To Change The World By: James Davison Hunter I’m an introvert. I like to be alone. I like to do things alone, so most of the time I’m incredibly thankful that we live in a very individualistic society. It works really well with my personality and it allows me to remain comfortable. It’s easy for…
By: Sam Stephens on April 6, 2014
The last reading, for my current D.Min program: New Media,1740-1915 edited by Lisa Gittleman and Geoffrey Pingree brought back memories of my childhood days and my enchantment and captivation with the dozen or so stills that ran at a single time through the Bioscope. The Bioscope man came through the streets on weekends singing the…
By: rhbaker275 on April 5, 2014
I am intrigued and encouraged by the willingness of people to give. A Midwest City recently did a survey to determine how city resources might be best used for the benefit of the community.[1] The survey revealed a surprising underlying resource. The greatest resource was not in facilities and programs but rather the “community” itself.…
By: Mark Steele on April 5, 2014
Last week, my company had another update and debate about engaging in social media. We talked about engaging social media two years ago and decided we would ignore face book and yelp comments. We reasoned we did not know that much about social media and if we did begin to respond to comments, we would…
By: Mitch Arbelaez on April 5, 2014
I began reading To change the world by James Hunter back in 2010 shortly after it was published, but like most books I start and seldom finish, Hunter’s book experienced the same fate. My modus operandi is to see another title that catches my interest and I move on to other pastures. As I once…
By: Garrick Roegner on April 5, 2014
Zygmunt Bauman has posited that contemporary (or postmodern) society is characterized by “the growing conviction that change is the only permanence and uncertainty the only certainty (Liquid Modernity, loc 75).” We live in thus a liquid time, where structures and societal solids must be flexible, changeable, and ultimately liquid. Furthermore for Bauman this all is…
