Kester Brewin

One of my favourite podcasts is Material World – a science review from the BBC. In a recent episode, Jaron Lanier discussed his recently published manifesto: You Are Not A Gadget. I’ve ordered it, but not read it yet, but was very much taken by one line of thought he introduced in the interview – [...]

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 [...]

Thanks for the comments on the post about happiness the other day. I’ve been mulling over the idea of happiness, and why we are perhaps the most unhappy society ever, and linking it to a new direction my thinking seems to be being drawn in.
As I’ve written before, I’m really interested in the charred remains [...]

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 [...]

I’m currently enjoying one of Zizek’s new books, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce – an allusion to Marx’s introduction to his Eighteenth Brumaire in which he wrote:
“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great events and characters of world history occur, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second [...]

Whenever we engage ‘the other’ we have to overcome our fear of doing so. Engagement that holds no such fear is not engagement with an ‘other’; it is easy to love what is lovely – we are called to overcome our fear and love that which is not.
As we consider the grounds of the divine [...]

There have been some heated exchanges on Pete Rollins’ blog and Mark Van Steenwyk’s ‘Jesus Manifesto‘ site, sparked off by Mark’s critique of Pete’s forthcoming ‘Insurrection’ pub tour. To summarise: Mark – who has now fully apologised – made some too-hasty remarks about Pete’s financials, and then had some pretty nasty responses shot at him for [...]

Interesting article from last year by Alain de Botton on the possibility of a ‘Religion for Atheists.’ De Botton is clear:
‘by getting rid of God, one would also be dispensing with a whole raft of very useful, if often peculiar and sometimes retrograde, notions that had held societies together since the beginning of time.’
So if [...]

One of the nice things I’m involved in is helping put together the Greenbelt talks programme, which means I’m always on the look out for good thinkers with good things to say.
Last year I came across an organisation called The School of Life, which aims to help people engage in practical philosophy and playful thinking [...]

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 [...]