The World Transparent

The World Transparent examines the spiritual themes that have populated our Western and Christian tradition for many centuries. From a sacramental standpoint, and using forty well-loved films as illustrations, The World Transparent endeavors to guide the reader through a process of formation and towards a mature understanding of the Christian faith; not only as an intellectual exploration, but as a spiritually lived experience. Its focus is on the virtues, as they help to form us to live purposeful lives and attain happiness; on conscience, as it directs our judgment and moral actions; on grace, as it lifts up our nature and works to perfect it; on the sacraments, as they confer the graces that enable us to meet life's struggles; and on the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, as they immerse us in the order of grace and direct us to the source of our redemption in Christ. Each of these sacred themes is augmented by beauty and by the sacramental qualities found in great art, in powerful stories, and shot through, eminently, by classic, masterful film.

The World Transparent examines the spiritual themes that have populated our Western and Christian tradition for many centuries. From a sacramental standpoint, and using forty well-loved films as illustrations, The World Transparent endeavors to guide the reader through a process of formation and towards a mature understanding of the Christian faith; not only as an intellectual exploration, but as a spiritually lived experience. Its focus is on the virtues, as they help to form us to live purposeful lives and attain happiness; on conscience, as it directs our judgment and moral actions; on grace, as it lifts up our nature and works to perfect it; on the sacraments, as they confer the graces that enable us to meet life’s struggles; and on the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, as they immerse us in the order of grace and direct us to the source of our redemption in Christ. Each of these sacred themes is augmented by beauty and by the sacramental qualities found in great art, in powerful stories, and shot through, eminently, by classic, masterful film.

The Transparent Becoming of World undertakes a penetrating inquiry into the quotidian world we take for granted and the brain that silently hoists our bubbles of world-thrownness. After critiquing the traditional views of direct realism, indirect realism and idealism, the continual becoming of world is explained by a novel integration of process dynamics, as formulated by Whitehead, Heidegger and Bohm, with the burgeoning field of quantum neurophilosophy. A rich ontological duality newly opened by quantum brain theory is exploited: the “between-two” of dual quantum modes. Existence as world-thrownness is between-two in waking and dreaming alike. This highly original interdisciplinary book may be of interest to philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, consciousness researchers, indeed anyone attracted to the enigma of their own lived existence. (Series A)

This compilation of work by Architect Gordon Gilbert explores the idea of transparency in architecture, ranging from an open physical transparency, to clarity of structure, to the dematerialization of the physical object, and further to evolving and expanding states of architectural awareness. This exploration is facilitated through a revealing juxtaposition of experimental drawing, subliminal texts, and constructed work.With essays by Michael Sorkin, Zvi Hecker, Lebbeus Woods, and Christian W. Thomsen.

-- from endorsements on back cover:"A valuable contribution to those who wrestle with enabling the tradition of faith to come alive within the pluriform, global community.""Scholarly, comprehensively sourced, grounded, readable, and life-addressing."

At the airport we line up, remove our shoes, empty our pockets, and hold still for three seconds in the body scanner. Deemed safe, we put ourselves back together and are free to buy the beverage we were prohibited from taking through security. In The Transparent Traveler Rachel Hall explains how the familiar routines of airport security choreograph passenger behavior to create submissive and docile travelers. The cultural performance of contemporary security practices mobilizes what Hall calls the "aesthetics of transparency." To appear transparent, a passenger must perform innocence and display a willingness to open their body to routine inspection and analysis. Those who cannot—whether because of race, immigration and citizenship status, disability, age, or religion—are deemed opaque, presumed to be a threat, and subject to search and detention. Analyzing everything from airport architecture, photography, and computer-generated imagery to full-body scanners and TSA behavior detection techniques, Hall theorizes the transparent traveler as the embodiment of a cultural ideal of submission to surveillance.

In New York and Baltimore, police cameras scan public areas twenty-four hours a day. Huge commercial databases track you finances and sell that information to anyone willing to pay. Host sites on the World Wide Web record every page you view, and “smart” toll roads know where you drive. Every day, new technology nibbles at our privacy.Does that make you nervous? David Brin is worried, but not just about privacy. He fears that society will overreact to these technologies by restricting the flow of information, frantically enforcing a reign of secrecy. Such measures, he warns, won't really preserve our privacy. Governments, the wealthy, criminals, and the techno-elite will still find ways to watch us. But we'll have fewer ways to watch them. We'll lose the key to a free society: accountability.The Transparent Society is a call for “reciprocal transparency.” If police cameras watch us, shouldn't we be able to watch police stations? If credit bureaus sell our data, shouldn't we know who buys it? Rather than cling to an illusion of anonymity-a historical anomaly, given our origins in close-knit villages-we should focus on guarding the most important forms of privacy and preserving mutual accountability. The biggest threat to our freedom, Brin warns, is that surveillance technology will be used by too few people, now by too many.A society of glass houses may seem too fragile. Fearing technology-aided crime, governments seek to restrict online anonymity; fearing technology-aided tyranny, citizens call for encrypting all data. Brins shows how, contrary to both approaches, windows offer us much better protection than walls; after all, the strongest deterrent against snooping has always been the fear of being spotted. Furthermore, Brin argues, Western culture now encourages eccentricity-we're programmed to rebel! That gives our society a natural protection against error and wrong-doing, like a body's immune system. But “social T-cells” need openness to spot trouble and get the word out. The Transparent Society is full of such provocative and far-reaching analysis.The inescapable rush of technology is forcing us to make new choices about how we want to live. This daring book reminds us that an open society is more robust and flexible than one where secrecy reigns. In an era of gnat-sized cameras, universal databases, and clothes-penetrating radar, it will be more vital than ever for us to be able to watch the watchers. With reciprocal transparency we can detect dangers early and expose wrong-doers. We can gauge the credibility of pundits and politicians. We can share technological advances and news. But all of these benefits depend on the free, two-way flow of information.