How do we all act as protestants online? L.M. Sacasas joins Henry (4th time!?) to chat about material/digital culture, how we compensate for natural affordances in new digital interfaces, our inability to account for non-measurable losses, texture vs. frictionlessness, lofi, roguelikes, reality tv, ambient data capture, extracting our private life for gain, how digital space is more of a past rather a place. (Recorded August 2022) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/protestant

• [00:00] Introduction
• [04:15] The Everyday Texture of Material Culture
• [07:11] Translated Affordances of Digital Interfaces
• [09:11] The Burden of Note-Taking Systems
• [10:36] No Accounting for Loss
• [11:48] The Added Texture of Lofi
• [14:54] Anchors of the Material World
• [16:02] The Frictionless Life
• [18:03] The Internal Motivation of Roguelikes
• [19:42] The Language of Needs
• [21:52] Liturgies and Mediums
• [22:47] No Material Trace
• [24:41] Compensating for the Losses of the Digital
• [27:28] You can't capture me!
• [29:11] Reality TV prepped us for the Very Online Life
• [31:23] Ambient Capture and Surveillance Culture
• [33:41] On the Terms of the Medium
• [35:41] Extraction of Private Life into Public Benefit
• [38:28] On Loneliness and Making a Living
• [41:45] Negotiating The Terms of Technology
• [43:45] The Gradience of Relationality in Sidewalk Life
• [45:12] Artificially Reconstituting Our Being in a Built Environment
• [48:07] A Gaze Turned Pastward

Where can hope be found? Alex Kim joins again to open up questions of responsibility, and our place in relation to times of weariness. He speaks out his experiences growing up and also shepherding a local church body as a youth pastor. We speak amidst the burnout on notions of time, the work of Charles Taylor through Andrew Root, work/play, and living out in hope. Maybe it's what this podcast is attempting to work towards! (Recorded June 2022) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/hope

Sections:

• [00:00] La Fatigue d'être soi (Weariness of the Self)
• [04:32] These Churches have Five Year Plans
• [06:30] The Dynamics of a Pastor
• [08:49] Intimate Moments > Big Programs
• [11:38] Notions of Time
• [14:36] Having a Proper Sense of Efficiency
• [16:32] Work in Order to Play
• [17:58] Trapped in Itineraries
• [22:23] Where is Hope?
• [25:41] On Shepherding
• [27:36] Against Walls and Fences of Hopelessness
• [31:08] Dual Causality
• [33:09] Church as Wirecutters
• [36:02] Living Out a Seen Hope
• [39:24] Hope for Life and Life to Hope

Can our digitally mediated environment be spiritual? Nick Ripatrazone takes us through the lens of the Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan, focusing on his not well-known Catholic faith. McLuhan himself describes his testimony into the Church as, "I came in on my knees. That is the only way in." We discuss the topics around inter-textuality, the complexity of life, on form/function within mediums like poetry, concept/percept, ambiguity and paradox, and McLuhan's famous phrase "the medium is the message". (Recorded April 2022) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/communion

- Digital Communion (book)
- Nick's site

Sections:

• [00:00] Layers of Language Meaning
• [04:26] Bible as Hypertextual Medium
• [08:47] Embracing the Messiness of Everything
• [12:57] Incarnational Poetry
• [17:41] 'Coming on my Knees'
• [20:28] From Tech to Philosophy
• [24:14] In Art, Faith is Perception
• [30:42] Art as the Boundaries of Language
• [33:20] Satan as a Great Electrical Engineer
• [37:23] Authentic Religion is Full of Ambiguity
• [39:52] What is Sin Really?
• [42:34] Understanding McLuhan
• [47:06] Living is Lengthening the Narrative