WallBuilders and Media Ecology

I met an interesting, globe-trotting conservative Pentecostal technology wonk at a conference I recently attended. A sharp guy who has done significant thinking and speaking about the problems created in our brains by the overuse and misuse of technology, particularly among teens. I dropped in to one of his break-out sessions and found myself asking the Lord for grace to heed this wonk’s wisdom. I have especially been thinking about his suggestion that toggling back and forth among tasks is not best; we are not as capable of multi-tasking as we think, and we should try to work linearly.

I suggested to him that he might get some real benefit from the field of media ecology. He asked for some links, and I failed to get his e-mail address. So I am posting the links here, and I’ll get the info to him through his contact page.

Here are some links to recommended resources in media ecology:

• Neil Postman’s Technopoly
• Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death
• T. David Gordon’s Why Johnny Can’t Preach and Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns
• The new Second Nature e-journal/blog, which is dedicated to media ecology
• A little off topic, but still so good: Ken Myers’ All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes

I also promised him some links concerning David Barton’s WallBuilders organization:

1. Here’s Greg Frazer of the Master’s College (John MacArthur’s school).
2. Here’s Greg Frazer’s book, The Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders, which one of the most prominent evangelical historians, Mark Noll, said this about: “Sophisticated, well-documented, and forcefully argued. Extreme partisans who champion ‘Christian America’ or complete secularism will not like this book, but all other readers should come away much better informed about the past and also much better situated to adjudicate religious-political debates today.”
3. Here’s an article by Noll I have found helpful: “America’s Two Foundings.”
4. For good measure, here’s Thomas S. Kidd, an evangelical American historian at Baylor, and here’s Warren Throckmorton of Grove City College, a conservative school, linking to a bunch of other critiques (I haven’t read any of them, so I can’t vouch for them).