Restless Devices - by Felicia Wu Song (Paperback)

About the Book

We're being formed by our devices. Unpacking the soft tyranny of the digital age, Felicia Wu Song combines insights from psychology, neuroscience, sociology, and theology as she considers digital practices through the lens of "liturgy" and formation. Exploring pathways of meaningful resistance found in Christian tradition, this resource offers practical experiments for individual and communal change.

Book Synopsis

We're being formed by our devices. Today's digital technologies are designed to captivate our attention and encroach on our boundaries, shaping how we relate to time and space, to ourselves and others, even to God. Our natural longing for relationship makes us vulnerable to the "industrializing" effects of social media. While we enjoy the benefits of digital tech, many of us feel troubled with its power and exhausted by its demands for permanent connectivity. Yet even as we grow disenchanted, attempting to resist the digital "powers that be" might seem like a losing battle.

Sociologist Felicia Wu Song has spent years considering the personal and collective dynamics of digital ecosystems. She combines psychological, neurological, and sociological insights with theological reflection to explore two major questions:

• What kind of people are we becoming with personal technologies in hand?
• And who do we really want to be?

Song unpacks the soft tyranny of the digital age, including the values embedded in our apps and the economic systems that drive our habits. She then explores pathways of meaningful resistance that can be found in Christian tradition--especially counter-narratives about human worth, embodiment, relationality, and time--and offers practical experiments for individual and communal change.

In our current digital ecologies, small behavioral shifts are not enough to give us freedom. We need a sober and motivating vision of our prospects to help us imagine what kind of life we hope to live--and how we can get there.

Review Quotes

"Combining her expertise in sociology and theology, Felicia Wu Song searingly diagnoses the structural problems of the digital world within our culture that idolizes productivity. Restless Devices sparks our imagination in order to free us from our slavery to technology into deeper communion with God and each other. Full of fresh insights and practical experiments, this book helps increase our appetite for being fully human."

--Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals

"Digital media has shaped our spiritual lives and churches in profound ways, yet we have few guides to navigate this new terrain. I have longed for a book like Restless Devices to be written. Felicia Wu Song compellingly examines the addictive qualities of digital media--its ubiquity and totalizing power. But her depth of expertise and profound Christian imagination allow her to go further than mere critique. She offers us practical hope in the 'counterliturgies' of the Christian faith. I highly recommend this powerful work of spiritual formation to all who seek to live humanely and faithfully in our digital age."

--Tish Harrison Warren, Anglican priest and author of Liturgy of the Ordinary and Prayer in the Night

"Good sociology spurs relevant theological inquiry. Sound theology has powerful sociological implications. Restless Devices has both good sociology and sound theology, making it a prophetic book for our times. I am grateful for Dr. Song's work, which shares how we can move from permanent connectivity with our devices to abiding with Jesus in an attuned, embodied, and collective manner."

--Russell Jeung, professor of Asian American studies and author of At Home in Exile: Finding Jesus Among My Ancestors and Refugee Neighbors

About the Author

Felicia Wu Song (PhD, University of Virginia) is a sociologist and author of Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence and Place in the Digital Age and Virtual Communities: Bowling Alone, Online Together. With almost twenty years' experience serving as faculty at Louisiana State University and Westmont College, she combines her training in history, communication studies, and sociology with a personal interest in theology to speak and teach on matters of spiritual formation and well-being in a digitally-saturated society. Living in the Pacific Northwest, she enjoys discovering a good food truck with her husband and two teenaged children. For her latest activities, see http: //feliciawusong.com.