On Technology and Silence

How does one prepare for a week of silence and inactivity? What will he do without a laptop, or I-Pad, or even a Blackberry? How many books might hold his attention, denying the reality of the place itself? What ingenious projects might still be accomplished for some practical goal? What will make the week at a Benedictine monastery "worthwhile" for this multitasking professor?

Today's readings, found while in catch-up mode cleaning piles off the desk, startle:

"I would not be surprised, however, if un-anticipated consequences followed from this value-laden race for precocious practical accomplishment. . . . We are already well on the way to being enslaved by gadgets, and America's second- and third-tier institutions of higher learning are being reduced to the level of trade schools for producing technicians to fix those gadgets. Home sapiens and Homo ludens have, in our time, beeen displaced by Homo faber." -- Historian Lewis Pyenson, from a speech given to the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge

"There is no greater serenity of mind than when one can shut the hectic noise and pace of the materialistic outside world, and seek inner peace within oneself." -- Malcolm X, from his Hajj travel diaries, as quoted in the new biography by Manning Marable