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1 month ago | 
thedispatch.com | Clare Coffey |Jeffrey Bilbro |Stefanie Sanford |Will Rinehart
The Monday Essay The online oasis that is the YouTube comments section. Published March 3, 2025 Scroll to the comments section Audio versions are only available to subscribers of The Dispatch. Join Today! to listen to this post. The internet was probably never a net pleasant or edifying place.
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Jan 13, 2025 | 
frontporchrepublic.com | Jeffrey Bilbro
FPR’s own Jason Peters will be giving an Agrarian Voices Lecture later this month at the Berry Center. If you’re near New Castle on Jan. 23rd, consider going in person to heckle him. If not, rumor has it there may be a video recording posted at a later date.
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Jan 11, 2025 | 
frontporchrepublic.com | Jeffrey Bilbro
“AI and All Its Splendors.” I continue my mulling on AI and its underlying temptations in this lengthy essay for Christianity Today. I aim to craft a book proposal this summer that gathers together and brings some order to the various responses to AI I’ve been thinking about in recent years: “An encounter with God and his kingdom is necessarily slow and inefficient. The means of the Incarnation are its ends, and divine presence can’t be automated any more than human presence can be.
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Jan 8, 2025 | 
christianitytoday.com | Jeffrey Bilbro
Long before generative AI became a reality, its false promises of ease and justice appeared in science fiction-and the desert temptation of Christ. Every few weeks, it seems, another AI achievement sets the world abuzz. It speaks! It paints! It digests a whole book and spits out a 10-minute podcast! This is generative AI, the large computing models that dazzle and worry us with their humanlike output. We've become accustomed to hearing about AI, but have we considered what it really offers us?
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Nov 30, 2024 | 
frontporchrepublic.com | Jeffrey Bilbro
“An Education in Thanksgiving.” Rachel Alexander Cambre gives a very perceptive reading of Hannah Coulter: “Stories that bring the past to life, on the other hand, pass down memories of the blessings that have shaped our lives, and in doing so, they pass down gratitude. Rather than dismiss the past as irrelevant or mistaken, stories told ‘right,’ to quote Hannah, convey the true condition of man’s state, which is one of indebtedness.
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Nov 18, 2024 | 
thedispatch.com | Kevin Williamson |Yascha Mounk |Jeffrey Bilbro |Christian Gonzalez |Christian González
Where can you find policy agreement among this motley group: retired Adm. Mike Mullen, Brent Scowcroft, Madeleine Albright, Henry Kissinger, Robert Gates, Leon Panetta, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Michael Chertoff, Janet Napolitano, George Shultz, Paul Volcker, and Hank Paulson? Yes, I know that many of the people on that list are dead and have been for a bit, but the facts of the case have been obvious to a great many well-informed people for a very long time.
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Nov 18, 2024 | 
thedispatch.com | Jamie Weinstein |Yascha Mounk |Jeffrey Bilbro |Christian Gonzalez |Christian González
How worried should we be about the DOJ? Published November 18, 2024 National Review’s Andy McCarthy joins Jamie to defend his vote for Trump, discuss what we considers to be the weaponization of the Justice Department, and debate the implications of Rep. Matt Gaetz’s nomination as attorney general. Buckle in folks, we’re just getting started. The Agenda:—A binary choice—Will Gaetz be confirmed?
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Nov 17, 2024 | 
thedispatch.com | Michael Reneau |Jeffrey Bilbro |Christian Gonzalez |Christian González |Adrian Nguyen
Enslaved by technology. Published November 17, 2024 Michael Reneau interviews Jeffrey Bilbro about his latest book, Words for Conviviality: Media Technologies, and Practices of Hope. Their discussion delves into the evolution of media technologies, contrasting outlooks on those changes, and the power of metaphors in interpreting these shifts. The Agenda:—To be optimistic or to be pessimistic about the future?
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Nov 17, 2024 | 
thedispatch.com | Jeffrey Bilbro |Kevin Williamson |Michael Reneau |Terry Mattingly
Culture Metaphors from a previous communication revolution can help us in the present. Published November 17, 2024 As an English professor, I repeatedly tell my students that metaphors matter. In the context of media technologies, evocative metaphors may be the most potent way to raise our awareness regarding a technology’s hidden affordances and subtle nudges.
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Nov 16, 2024 | 
frontporchrepublic.com | Jeffrey Bilbro
“Left Behind in Grimsby.” Simon Cross narrates the tensions he experienced ministering in a neighborhood where he wasn’t stuck: “There’s a feeling of inadequacy that comes with knowing how little you can do to help people. Social pressures, lack of opportunities, chronic health conditions, and poor decisions made, or made for you, at formative stages of life represent huge, sometimes insurmountable, challenges.
