Just Seen - Media, issues and events in the spotlight from Simon Burton-Jones

JUST SEEN
Media, issues and events in the spotlight

This Month's Article

Controlling China

There is a saying in the far east: killing the chicken to scare the monkeys. China’s authoritarian turn under President for life Xi Jinping has led to a modernising of the Cultural Revolution’s terrible show trials, where confessions are made on the state TV channel CCTV. The public shaming of dissidents, academics, lawyers, artists and journalists, among others, takes place after they have been broken in prison. One victim has been quoted as saying: Not only did they want to make you

Recent Topics You May Have Missed

When Two Truths Collide, Hushing Inconvenient Opinion, Lebanon, So Last Century, Children Fighting Adult Wars, The Light Sleeper,

Recent Topics You May Have Missed

The New Orthodoxy, The Loop, Of Gods And Men, Trust The Lord Of The market, Not The Masters Of The Universe, The Crime Of The Century, The Finger Of Blame And The hand Of God,

Common Humanity Politics

Of all the subjects to weigh in on, free speech in US universities provokes perhaps the most fervid

Can Those Who Minister For God Lose Form Like A Sports Player

Black Dog

What can the Church can do to help transform the mental health of a current generation of children and

Oslo's Outlier

Is there a case for dramatizing real-life terrorism? It was an old mantra of the UK government not to give

The Wall

Most generations are defined by an event or a year. For one cohort it is 1989 and the collapse of the

The Black Wave

What happens in a community when it is overwhelmed by natural disaster and the cameras have moved on?

Most Viewed September 2019

Silicon Valley Blues

Silicon Valley Blues
In giving more time and attention to bad things online, we attract algorithms which make us depressed and insecure. In thinking the rewards of social media outweigh the costs, we gamble this isn’t true.

Jaron Lanier, pioneer in the field of Virtual Reality, tech philosopher and scientist at Microsoft Research has undergone a conversion. Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (Penguin, 2018) is characteristically pithy and makes uncomfortable reading.
He is quick to say every person must decide for themselves how they engage with social media, if at all. Lanier is a liberal, and it shows: there is no sense that people should be coerced into giving up social media or made to feel bad for continuing. He is realistic enough to know that most will carry on, but if it lay in his power,
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