The Convivial Society
Activity Overview
Episode publication activity over the past year
Episodes
Secularization Comes For the Religion of Technology (Audio Version)
08 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Hello all, The audio version keep coming. Here you have the audio for Secularization Comes for the Religion of Technology. Below you’ll find a coupl...
Vision Con (Audio Version)
06 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
I continue to catch up on supplying audio versions of past essays. Here you have the audio for “Vision Con,” an essay about Apple’s mixed realit...
Learning to Receive the Day (Audio Version)
04 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Just before my unexpected hiatus during the latter part of last year, I had gotten back to the practice of recording audio version of my essays. Now t...
Embrace Your Crookedness (Audio Version)
01 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
At long last, the audio version of the Convivial Society returns. It’s been a long time, which I do regret. Going back to 2020, it had been my pract...
Year End Miscellany and "What You Get Is the World" (Audio Version)
31 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome back to the Convivial Society. In this installment, you’ll find the audio version of the latest essay, “What You Get Is the World.” I tr...
"Lonely Surfaces" (Audio Version)
14 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome again to the Convivial Society, a newsletter about technology and culture. This post features the audio version of the essay that went out in ...
"The Pathologies of the Attention Economy" (Audio), Links, Miscellany
07 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome back to the Convivial Society. In this installment, you’ll find the audio version of two recent posts: “The Pathologies of the Attention E...
Taking Stock of Our Technological Liturgies
15 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to the Convivial Society, a newsletter about technology and culture. In this installment, I explore a somewhat eccentric frame by which to con...
What Is To Be Done? Audio Version
02 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This is the audio version of the last essay posted a couple of days ago, “What Is To Be Done? — Fragments.” It was a long time between installme...
Audio Version: "LaMDA, Lemoine, and the Allures of Digital Re-enchantment"
01 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to the Convivial Society, a newsletter about technology and culture. This is the audio version of the last installment, which focused on the B...
The Meta-Positioning Habit of Mind
23 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to the Convivial Society, a newsletter exploring the relationship between technology and culture. This is what counts as a relatively short po...
The Myth of the Machine
19 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to the Convivial Society, a newsletter about technology and culture. I tend to think of my writing as way of clarify my thinking, or, alternat...
"The Face Stares Back" Audio + Links and Resources
08 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to the Convivial Society, a newsletter about technology, culture, and the moral life. In this installment you’ll find the audio version of t...
The Uncanny Gaze of the Machine
29 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to the Convivial Society, a newsletter about technology and culture. The pace of the newsletter has been slow of late, which I regret, but I t...
Attending to the World
20 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to the Convivial Society, a newsletter that is ostensibly about technology and culture but more like my effort to make some sense of the world...
"Dream of Virtual Reality" Audio Version AND Some Links For Your Consideration
28 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As promised, here is the audio version of the last installment, “The Dream of Virtual Reality.” To those of you who find the audio version helpful...
Understanding McLuhan: A Conversation with Andrew McLuhan
07 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to a special installment of the Convivial Society featuring my conversation with Andrew McLuhan. I can’t recall how or when I first encounte...
You Can't Optimize For Rest
01 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to the Convivial Society, a newsletter about technology and culture. In this installment I write a bit about burnout, exhaustion, and rest. It...
Pity, Power, and Presence
11 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome again to the Convivial Society. This installment follows relatively quickly on the last, and you may be forgiven for not having yet made your ...
A World Ordered Only By Search
07 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to the Convivial Society, a newsletter about technology and culture. It’s been a bit longer than usual since our last installment, but I’m...
Notes from the Metaverse (Audio Version)
13 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A week after the fact, here is the audio version of the last installment: “Notes from the Metaverse.” Ordinarily, the audio version accompanies th...
Nice Image You've Got There. Shame If It Got Memed.
26 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to The Convivial Society. In this installment, you’ll find some thoughts on the cultural consequences of digital media. A big chunk of new r...
Outsourcing Virtue
18 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
“What is fundamental to a convivial society is not the total absence of manipulative institutions and addictive goods and services, but the balance ...
Ill With Want (Audio Version)
20 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
I sent out an installment titled “Ill With Want” a couple of days ago, but was unable at the time to include the audio version. I know that many o...
Thresholds of Artificiality
06 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to the Convivial Society, a newsletter about technology and culture, broadly speaking. This post began as part of a recent feature I’ve t...
The Questions Concerning Technology
05 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A few days ago, a handful of similar stories or anecdotes about technology came to my attention. While they came from different sectors and were of va...
Surviving the Show: Illich And The Case For An Askesis of Perception
27 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
“It appears to me that we cannot neglect the disciplined recovery, an asceticism, of a sensual praxis in a society of technogenic mirages. This recl...
The Answer Is Not More Information
28 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Some have argued that one benefit of the new newsletter ecosystem is a return to the older conventions of blogging in its halcyon days. I don’t know...
Your Attention Is Not a Resource
01 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
“Attention discourse” is how I usually refer to the proliferation of essays, articles, talks, and books around the problem of attention (or, alter...
Impossible Silences
23 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Over the years, I’ve thought on and off about silence in the context of digital media. Mostly, this has taken the form of commending what came to be...
The Paradox of Control
10 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Back in 2019, Colin Horgan published an essay discussing the role of convenience in shaping our techno-social order. “It’s convenience, and the wa...
Remembering Illich: A Conversation with David Cayley
08 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
If you’ve joined the Convivial Society over the past two or three months, this installment requires a brief introduction. I’m always ready to ackn...
The Hermeneutical Imperative
31 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to an unusually brief installment of the Convivial Society. An analogy came to mind, and you can tell me what you think. I vowed to keep it sh...
What Did We Lose When We Lost the Stars?
29 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
“To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,and i...
The Insurrection Will Be Live Streamed: Notes Toward a Theory of Digitization
15 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Last Wednesday, I was working on the draft of a newsletter I had intended to send out later in the week. Of course, that was before my Twitter feed wa...
The Disorders of our Collective Consciousness
31 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“Existence in a society that has become a system finds the senses useless precisely because of the very instruments designed for their extension. On...
Old Voices Shed New Light
18 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“All technical progress exacts a price. We cannot believe that Technique brings us nothing; but we must not think that what it brings it brings free...
When the Timeline Becomes Our Sidewalk
12 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
You can listen to an audio version of the essay by clicking Play above.Jane Jacobs opened her mid-twentieth century classic, The Death and Life of Gre...
Structurally Induced Acedia
05 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“To be sane in a mad timeis bad for the brain, or worsefor the heart.” — Wendell Berry, “The Mad Farmer Manifesto: The First Amendment”I’...
Common Worlds, Common Sense, and the Digital Realm
25 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“I do think that if I had to choose one word to which hope can be tied it is hospitality. A practice of hospitality— recovering threshold, table, ...
Remembering Illich: A Conversation with Gov. Jerry Brown
16 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This summer, as it became evident that the global pandemic was exposing the weaknesses of many of our institutions, it seemed like an auspicious time ...
What Do Human Beings Need?: Rethinking Technology and the Good Society
29 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“The substance of the good life must be taken into consideration if radical political reform is to become a live option.”— Albert Borgmann, Tec...
Remembering Illich: A Conversation with Gustavo Esteva
10 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It was my pleasure back in June to enjoy a conversation with Carl Mitcham about the life and work of Ivan Illich. A couple of weeks ago, I had the sim...
Human Interests and Technological Systems
02 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“People can change, but only within bounds. In contrast, the present industrial system is dynamically unstable. It is organized for indefinite expan...
Care, Friendship, Hospitality: Reflections on the Thought of Ivan Illich
26 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“There are two ranges in the growth of tools: the range within which machines are used to extend human capability and the range in which they are us...
The Digitized Culture Wars
24 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“I believe that a desirable future depends on our deliberately choosing a life of action over a life of consumption, on our engendering a lifestyle ...
The Material Sources of Free Speech Anxieties
09 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We are presently in the midst of another wave of free speech/cancellation discourse, this one prompted by an open letter published in Harper’s warni...
Children and Technology
07 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In addition to my scribblings here and elsewhere, I occasionally give talks about the role technology plays in our private and social lives. If there’...
Attention, Austerity, Freedom
03 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“Never has the individual been so completely delivered up to a blind collectivity, and never have men been less capable, not only of subordinating t...
Remembering Illich: A Conversation with Carl Mitcham
28 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Hello everyone, First off, that was a great first thread on Tools for Conviviality. Secondly, for session two, we’ll have our synchronous discussion...