Web curations: techy stuff (6 May)

All techy stuff this morning…

Alexander Graham Bell’s recorded voice heard 130 years on – This is a neat article showing how scientists coaxed his voice recording out of a wax-covered cardboard disc.

The Book That Isn’t Really There: Digital Texts, Declining Discipleship – John Bombaro makes a strong case for favouring the physical book over the digital. The “Reasons Why” section is very helpful. He says:

When we accommodate our Bible reading practices to the age of digital texts and the Internet, we may only be contributing to the biblical illiteracy, doctrinal ignorance, and sacramental neglect of the contemporary church.

I think he oversteps a bit with his enthusiasm for the physical text of Scripture (which in its earliest days due to lack of copies would have been shared verbally), but it’s food for thought.

I’m Back After Being Offline for A Year – What I found most interesting about Paul Miller’s account of  unplugging from the Internet for a year. Initially it uncluttered his head, improved his attention span, and more socially aware. But then he learned how  to make a new style of wrong choices off the internet, and replaced them with new offline vices (video games, social isolation etc). It’s a riveting read, and made me ponder on how prone my own heart would be to replace one obsession or vice with another.

The Decline of Western Civilization, 140 characters at a time – Matt LaBash really doesn’t like Twitter: the way it turns people into self-promotors, the fact that the content of most tweets are meaningless. Let him make his (slightly rant-like) case to you. (HT: Justin Taylor)

Google Glass Explorer Teaches Physics at CERN – This is a neat way to use Google Glass (the feel good music helps too doesn’t it…)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRrdeFh5-io

Technology difference in 20 years – This Reddit user-submitted photo shows the difference between 1993 and 2013. (HT: AppleInsider)

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