Compact

"Noncommittal endorsement of Magnifica Humanitas may allow secular AI skeptics to put off clarifying their own answer to the question the encyclical addresses: What is the Good?" On Ivan Illich, Pope Leo, and the theological stakes of the AI debate: compactmag.com/article/the-th…

“Now the classics are buttressed by nothing. By the end of this summer, there is a good chance that there will be a substantial number of young Americans whose entire exposure to the Odysseywill be Christopher Nolan.@ @johnbyronkuhner in @compactmag compactmag.com/article/post-l…

Post-literacy has raised the stakes of film adaptations compactmag.com/article/post-l…

Ivan Illich, the renegade Catholic thinker, anticipated Pope Leo’s critique of AI compactmag.com/article/the-th…

“Screens are where the battle for the culture is taking place.” Read John Byron Kuhner’s @johnbyronkuhner piece in COMPACT: compactmag.com/article/post-l…

"It’s not Nolan’s Odyssey. It’s the Odyssey. It’s Homer. It’s all of Greek mythology. It’s Western civilization. The schools have failed, and people look to Hollywood to pick up the slack." @johnbyronkuhner on the Nolan Odyssey brouhaha: compactmag.com/article/post-l…

“The prophets of AI, as Leo seems to recognize, are driven by their own vision of the Good and of human transcendence that contests and competes with the one articulated by the Church.” @g_shullenberger in @compactmag compactmag.com/article/the-th…

“Modernity,” argued Ivan Illich, “can be studied as an extension of Church history.” For this reason, the AI debate is also a theological debate. I read Magnifica Humanitas in light of Illich's critique of technology: compactmag.com/article/the-th…

“Noncommittal endorsement of Magnifica Humanitas may allow secular AI skeptics to put off clarifying their own answers to the vital questions the encyclical addresses.” Read Geoff Shullenberger’s @g_shullenberger piece in COMPACT: compactmag.com/article/the-th…

“I can’t help but feel many young people are using faith as a Band-Aid of sorts to cover their inability to function in—or as an excuse to retreat from—the real world.” Read @stephengadubato’s piece in COMPACT: compactmag.com/article/gen-zs…

This is an excellent piece

"The kind of speech we want—safe, not human, speech—is also the kind of literature we are looking for: desensitized, correct, bias-affirming stories couched in the illusion of metaphor." @ErnestJesuyemi on l'affaire Jamir Nazir: compactmag.com/article/the-ai…

It doesn’t require more than a few seconds of reflection to recognize that the technologies Le Pogam promotes as the counterpoint to French Theory produce many of the things he attributes to the latter. Read @g_shullenberger's latest newsletter substackfwd.xyz/?url=https://c…

Gen Z’s Incompetent Converts compactmag.com/article/gen-zs…

When tech entrepreneurs peddling "AI clone" generators tell you French Theory destroyed Truth and Silicon Valley is going to restore it (with AI), we have entered a very weird phase of the culture war. I try to make sense of it over on S*bst*ck: tinyurl.com/3d9sx9de

“Yesteryear,” the bestselling novel, reflects progressive worries that the future belongs to traditional, patriarchal, and highly fertile families. New @againstthepod with @juliadyost patreon.com/posts/yesterye…

“We know the difference between AI slop and true literature by its faith.” @ErnestJesuyemi on the Granta scandal compactmag.com/article/the-ai…

While it’s only natural for some converts to treat their newfound faith as an excuse to hide from the world & treat the church as their “safe space,” they’ll eventually need communities that will help lead them out into the real world & “live the real intensely” as protagonists

As a professor of religion, I've seen signs of the "zoomer religious revival" in my classroom. While faith serves as a beacon of hope for many of them, it also functions as a mask for the problem of waning competence that plagues them. I'm in @compactmag compactmag.com/article/gen-zs…

We need more institutions like the College of St. Joseph the Worker to teach young people live their faith “in the flesh” by teaching them manual competence and to use their agency well @compactmag