Downtown Lectures
A Spiritual Manual for the Technological Age: A Discussion of Paul Kingsnorth’s Against the Machine
University Club of Chicago 76 E Monroe St Chicago, IL 60603, Downtown, ILWe all experience how the rapid advance of technology, especially AI, has affected the way we live, think, and experience the world. But has it also changed who we are? In his new book, Against the Machine: on the Unmaking of Humanity, Paul Kingsnorth explores the consequences of hyper-technologized society. With the deftness of an essayist who is also a poet, Kingsnorth takes us through the historical and theological roots of post-Industrial Revolution advancement. He ultimately suggests that the dangers we face have a spiritual cause, and spiritual consequences. “If you knock out the pillars of a sacred order,” he writes, “the universe itself will change shape.” This technological reshaping will lead man to become the machine—unless we can learn to transcend it.