The Machine Has No Tradition Academy
In 2022, along with my wonderful friends Jon Askonas and Mary Harrington, I launched the “Machine Has No Tradition: A Seminar on Technology, Revolution, and Apocalypse.” This unique summer seminar is directed at advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and young professionals grappling with the upheavals of the digital age. It’s run every summer since then.
On this page, I highlight the work of our growing cohort of thoughtful alumni, who are grappling with the most important questions of our age.
Stay tuned for updates for the location of MHNT 2025 and how to apply.
What is this Seminar?
The seminar’s readings and topics focus on understanding the political, social, and anthropological revolutions brought about by technology. The goal is to train a cohort who can bring this understanding to bear in their writings and practice, helping us preserve our humanity in a tumultuous time. The program has been hosted in Palo Alto, California and in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Tell me more.
The distinctive feature of life today is that our lives appear to be technologically liberated from nature. We live in human-made physical, social and virtual environments. The human condition is unbundled, disrupted, and made optional, even as supposed human distinctives like speech, creation, and rationality are automated, simulated, and replicated.
The spectre of technology raises afresh the question: what is a human being, and what does it take to stay one? In this immersive weeklong seminar, participants grapple with the essence of technology and life in a technological society. They explore how technology is reshaping our souls and our society and what a humanistic approach to technology might look like. They engage with the best that has been said and thought about technology, while also hearing from both technology creators and practitioners of endangered human traditions.
The seminar balances a focus on the increasing technological mediation of human consciousness on the one hand, and the shifting material foundations of social life on the other. Participants dive into the transformation of economy, psychology, politics, gender, religion and culture: in short, the transformation of humanity.
Readings include Martin Heidegger, René Girard, Ivan Illich, Karl Marx, Marshall McLuhan, and Carl Schmitt.
Past Faculty and Guest Speakers
Matthew Crawford
Andy Crouch
Jean-Pierre Dupuy
Danilo Petranovich
James Poulos
Zac Slayback
Peter Thiel
Our Alumni and their Work
Robert Bellafiore (Foundation for American Innovation)
Robert oversees the research at the Foundation for American Innovation, a think tank working to keep America at the forefront of tech innovation. He writes about technology, economics, political philosophy, and music for many publications, including the Wall Street Journal, the New Atlantis, and City Journal.
“Can AI Make Us Again a People of the Word?” Public Discourse
“Accelerating to Where?” The New Atlantis
Bethel McGrew, Ph.D.
Bethel writes at Further Up. Her articles have appeared in First Things, The Critic, and National Review, among other venues.
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