Summary
September 10, 2008
In Refusing to Hope in a God of Technology, Jeff Dietrich is basically saying that people accept technology to easily. He writes of the disadvantages of technology and concludes that there are just as many of these disadvantages as advantages. His fear is that after some time, people will not remember or take part in a “face-to-face” community but will instead rely on the web. He also talks about how he believes that this new age of technology will leave the poor people of the world behind. Dietrich realizes the necessity of technology and therefore his solution is to use the web: but he would like us to use it “confessionally” . What this means is, we need to remember what dangers the web potentially has. He ends with this quote, “We cannot look for happiness to any technological paradise or to any New Earth of outer space, but only to the world as it is, and as we have made it. The only life we may hope to live is here…We can only wait here, where we are, in the world, obedient to it’s processes, patient in its taking away, and all that we deserve of earthly Paradise will come to us.”
This is good. You hit all the main points and used some quotes. Good job.
You cover the main points of the article in a compentent way. A good chunk of the summary, though, is a quotation from the article. Especially with summaries, you want to avoid anything but minimal quoting. Instead, you want to use your own words to describe the ideas found in the essay.