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Happily, Borgmann's diagnosis is also a prescription. Real life is still available even in a device-saturated world. On the baseball diamond or on the hiking trail, in the kitchen or in the workshop, we still encounter creation's humbling resistance to quick fixes. We cultivate the disciplines—concentration, patience, practice—that focal things require. When we swing the bat, clamber up the rocks, mix the batter just enough, plane the wood, we join the community of those who have done these things before us and those who will do them after us—those who taught us and those whom we will teach. We learn new stories and a new language. We encounter something that is not merely made to serve us, something older and bigger than ourselves.

Which is why I went back outside, that February morning, to pray.

Copyright © 2002 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Albert Borgmann's Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry is available at Amazon.com.

Among the Borgmann essays available online are "Is There Hope for Technology," and "Information and Inhabitation."

Borgmann appeared on the Mars Hill Audio Journal (a kind of Christian NPR) in 1999.

Crouch is editor-in-chief of re:generation quarterly.

Many of Crouch's other writings are available at his and his wife's website.

Earlier Andy Crouch columns for Christianity Today include:

Interstate NationThe national highway system is a lesson in how to transform a nation. (June 21, 2002)

Amplified VersionsWorship wars come down to music and a power plug. (April 17, 2002)

Thou Shalt Be CoolThis enduring American slang leaves plenty out in the cold. (March 18, 2002)

Borrowing Against TimeWe live in a fallen world. We will die. We need to face that. (Jan. 17, 2002)

GroundedOur technologies give us an illusion of omnipresence—most of the time. (Nov. 15, 2001)

Zarathustra ShruggedWhat apologetics should look like in a skeptical age. (Sept. 5, 2001)

Consuming PassionsOne man's "testimony" from the First Great Mammon Awakening. (July 10, 2001)

Generation MisinformationForget the latest PowerPoint seminars on Generations X-Z. (May 16, 01)

Dead Authors SocietyWe're no longer interested in tasting death but only little morsels of cheer. (Mar. 28, 2001)

Promises, PromisesOur technology works. But all idols do at first. (Feb. 21, 2001)

A Testimony in ReverseI have discovered how inconvenient it can be when God actually does speak. (Feb. 5, 2001)

Crunching the NumbersA modest proposal for measuring what really matters in church life. (Dec. 20, 2000)

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August 5 2002, Vol. 46, No. 9