Michael Sacasas has been thinking, writing and talking about the meaning of technology for over 10 years. He is the associate director of the Christian Study Center of Gainesville, Florida and author of The Convivial Society, a newsletter about technology and society. In this episode, Michael and I will be talking about his New Atlantis essay, “ The Analog City and the Digital City - How online life breaks the old political order”

In the essay, Sacasas contends that civilization at large is in the midst of an interregnum. The dieing hand of the past (analog culture) clings to the present while the future (digital culture) struggles to be born. We are in the place between.

Once stable societies have devolved into “hyper-pluralistic” places of ceaseless and irresolvable conflict. In the midst of this strife and confusion, computational algorithms - mysterious to all but a select few - manage the increasingly digital worlds that we inhabit. We revolt in response. We demand to be managed. Is it time for emerging digital societies to revivify analog public and private virtues?