I came across Tom Mahon's name when I was working on the digital Sabbath chapter of my book. In the 1990s, Tom was one of the first advocates of the digital Sabbath. Today, I saw that he has a new ebook, Reconnecting.calm:
How do we reclaim a human handle on systems that increasingly demand we adapt to them? How do we learn to Occupy Technology?
Reconnecting.calm… suggests a way to re-think and so reintegrate science, technology and faith (in living lives of composure and compassion), not to engineer more ‘cool stuff’ or ‘smart weapons,’ but rather to engage in building a more just and civil society.
As he puts it elsewhere, the digital Sabbath is a useful tool in this quest:
The point of the Sabbath since antiquity has been to shed the skin of complacency. To see, hear, feel the extra-ordinary-ness of the ordinary with renewed awe and vigor. For many now, the weekend is the time to shop after a physically and emotionally exhausting week. This isn’t healthy. We need to get our own signal-to-noise ratio in balance, to achieve composure enough that we can act compassionately to the people around us….
[So] turn off the appliances; stay away from stores, newspapers, TVs or anything with ads. Read a book, enjoy a massage, take a walk, look at photos from Hubble, eat a good meal, get reacquainted with the family and yourself. Shut off the digital and luxuriate in the analog. Don’t try to fit it in; fit the rest of the week around it.