Z/Web

Author: Shane Hipps

This is a remarkable book. The author is a former advertising executive who examines media at an unusual level, exploring how it shapes society and religious faith. As a technologist and a Christian (and amateur sociologist), I found this fascinating. The basic premise is the concept of “the medium is the message,” a phrase you’ve heard but probably not understood. Shane breaks it down to reveal things like how printing (and phonetic language) change the way people think. For example, printed material by its nature encourages linear thinking, and it creates a different culture than an oral society. Today we’re awash with new communication methods, from radio to TV to the Internet, email, blogs, podcasts, cell phones, instant messaging, Twitter, and who knows what to come. If the medium is the message, what is the message? And how does technology influence your faith? Great questions.

For answers, Shane shows how technology has influenced things in the past. For instance, the telegraph dramatically changed the speed of information, but that itself changed the value of it: instead of information’s value coming from its quality or depth, its timeliness became the most important thing. (You can see similar things happening today with blogs being valued over well-researched books.) There are profound lessons there.

I want to point out that while this is a book about the religious aspects of media, it’s not overly religious: I really appreciate that the author doesn’t come across as preachy. Instead he merely tells great stories and provides examples and information about his perspective. I would recommend this to anyone, even skeptics, because it’s all about how the medium influences your thinking and the lessons learned can be applied to anything in life.

My great-uncle sent this book to me and I started reading it the moment I got home from the post office this afternoon — I couldn’t put it down. I read it cover to cover in one sitting! I can’t remember the last time I’ve done that with a book (not since childhood, that’s for sure).

Author: Philip Margolin

This is a breezy read, a thriller about a President who might have committed several murders. While there’s not much depth here, and nothing truly surprising happens, it’s still quite compelling and very pleasant. The author, while not a master, is competent and puts together characters and scenes and action in such a way that you speed from one chapter to the next, eager to confirm what you think is going to happen. There are some twists, but nothing that dramatic, and though the book deals with grave topics, it doesn’t feel at all series. Fun.