Kester Brewin

I’ve a short piece on Alan Turing in this month’s Third Way. If you don’t already subscribe, you should.
One of the key strands of Turing’s thinking was on whether a machine could think like a human. After World War 1, where men had been treated like disposable fighting machines, and World War 2, where millions [...]

[Cartoon by Dave Walker.]
In the last couple of posts I’ve been thinking about what the form of texts add to their meaning, springboarding from a book reviewing experiment in The Believer in which the reviewer was given a novel to read which had been stripped of its cover and all meta-data about the author.
I’ve also [...]

Last year was about writing the book, due out in June. There’ll be more of that here in good time. But I think it’s clearer now what this year’s focus could be.
From some of the embers of Vaux a few of us began Apple, a series of conversations around ideas of technology and theology. We [...]

Excellent time at Apple2 last night. Alistair Duncan from The Garden kick-started proceedings with an introduction to Heidegger’s philosophical framework, and how this impacted his thinking on technology later on in his life after the scandals surrounding Nazism had died down a little.
Though his later language is more poetry than hard logic, Heidegger is trying [...]

The 2nd Apple event is happening this coming Tuesday. You really should be there.
Apple is a Vaux production, a short series of conversations focused specifically on the interplay between theology and technology. This month we are really excited to have Alistair Duncan – an architect from IBM and member of The Garden in Brighton – [...]

The first Apple event went really well last night – thanks to everyone who came along and fertilized it with some great ideas. Looking good for the future. And thanks especially to Danny at Salt for giving us a great place to hold it. The next date is provisionally 15th October, so get it in [...]

Really excited that the a new Vaux production is getting off the ground this Thursday.
‘Apple’ is about two things: technology and theology. We make our tools, and our tools make us. As we head into this new-media networked age, we need to do some careful and radical thinking about the impact virtual presence and enhanced [...]

Just got back from Greenbelt yesterday, and rather shocked to have to go into work today after 7 or so weeks summer holiday. It was a fantastic festival, with an excellent mix of talks from all angles and eclectic music too. Good hang out a bit with Rob Bell, Roman Krznaric as well as old [...]

An interesting article here on ‘oiling the digital society’…
We are bootstrapping a new world, one in which information technology and computational systems are as deeply embedded in our society as the scientific method or religious belief seem to be, and the precise names of the gods we worship is less important than our presence in [...]

Exactly 40 years ago Apollo 11 began its mission to send the first human beings onto another body in space – perhaps the most important and profound achievement in the history of mankind. Only twelve men ever achieved this, but for the first time we had transcended, albeit momentarily, the physicality of the planet we [...]