I’m not a pastor. Consider what I say here to be the result of a layman’s study of the scriptures, which is exactly what it is. Please, don’t take spiritual advice from random people on the internet. Seek God in the scriptures and find a Godly Reformed pastor to give you counsel.
There is much to be gained by singing and praying the Psalms. Aldo Leon has compelling sermons on the benefits of doing so here and here. In short, the Psalms teach us how to pray, and how to sing. They are divinely inspired songs and hymns and prayers, serving as precise regulation of God on how his people are to sing and pray to Him.
There no more useful innovation to be done in the field of computing. If there is, almost nobody is working on it.
Computers are useful for processing data and communicating with others. Anything beyond that is useless at best, and harmful at worst. Our current computer infrastructure already solves the basic problems we want it to. We already have programs and protocols like email, and HTTP, and SMS, etc. which allow us to communicate with each others just fine. We already have programs that allow us to share documents and photos and videos and other files. We already have programs that allow us to do financial accounting, and banking, and currency transaction. We have programs to keep things cryptographically secure. Name any human function that we need computers for, and I claim it is already built. Useful computing needs only to be maintained at this point.
Acknowledging that modernity has many blessings is not an endorsement of everything that modernity does. That’s just like…basic logic, and it is my position. Neo-luddism as I have presented it is not an outright rejection of modernity or an arbitrary truncation of technological usage; it is a critical posture towards modernity in light of basic eternal truths of human nature.
Thus, even though modernity is full of blessings, it is not full of only blessings. We can logically throw out destructive and consumptive aspects of modernity that are not blessings, and still embrace the blessings. Modernity is not a monolith; modern technological advancements of the modern age are not all logically entailed in each other. Questioning whether we should really be carrying around these addictive mobile phones with us is not the same thing as questioning the use of penecillin in lieu of bloodletting.
The eccentric and highly competent Luke Smith is the quintessential Linux dude. I highly recommend checking out his website and his videos; he has a lot of tips and tricks and methods that are very useful to learn if you’re getting into Linux.
Luke believes (as do I) that you should own your own systems, especially for communication. Your technology should be yours, and work for you. Don’t use or buy products from people who hate you, or spy on you, or can shut you down via malice or incompetence, etc. Reasonable stuff.
I’ve recently worked on adding a fiat payment portal to this website. Being an independent writer/webmaster means sometimes you can’t justify sitting down to write or code in the midst of all your other obligations. So, if you like reading what I write, or want to send me feedback, please consider donating and participating over there!
I set up a poll to collect some feedback on what topics you would like me to write about next.