"Internet Real Life": Join a kitchen table conversation with Peter Limberg, Tommy Dixon, and Peco & Ruth
Peco and I are completing a most splendid post on “Architecture for a Free Mind”. Thanks to everyone who contributed photos (and commentaries) for our gallery of low-screen/ screen-free homes, from living rooms and kitchens to libraries and workspaces. Stay tuned…
Last week we had the pleasure of sharing a meal with Peter Limberg from The Stoa, Tommy Dixon, and a whole host of neighbours, friends, and family from age six to eighty-five. Over a sumptuous potluck and engrossing conversation, followed by live fiddle and guitar music provided by the teens, we experienced the joy and aliveness of living against the stream in a digital age.
Next week on Saturday, May 17th at 1 p.m. EST we invite you to join us LIVE as we continue our three-way conversation, sharing our perspectives, challenges, and solutions to daily life in a digital age.
Our zoom meeting will not be recorded.
Tommy Dixon is a twenty-something writer (and professional), who many of you might remember via his viral essay the end of an extremely online era1:
I think the era of orbiting our daily existence around a device in our hands will be just that: an era. And it will go the way of smoking and top hats with monocles and communism. Once powerful and pervasive, impossible to imagine disappearing. Now, mostly dead. Receded into a mere memory.
…In the short term pessimists look smart, but optimists move the world.
Peter Limberg has interviewed hundreds of people on The Stoa, including Paul Kingsnorth in 2021 on The Virus and the Machine, Dougald Hine At Work in the Ruins, Katherine Dee on The Internet is a Stage, and Noam Chomsky on The Responsibility of Intellectuals.
Most recently he has published a series on The Pull, which was recommended by Mary Harrington in The Industrialisation of Thought as a practical approach to resisting the addictive lure of the internet.2
While we all write on the same platform, we come from different viewpoints and, interestingly, different life phases—young and unmarried (Tommy), young and married (Peter), and married with teenage kids (Ruth and Peco)—which will bring a generational dimension to the conversation.
We’d love you to be a part of it too, so please grab your favorite coffee or tea and join us for a lively, non-recorded exchange on living the good life in the digital age.
We look forward to seeing you then!
Do you have questions you would like us to address? Add them in the comments below!
Did you miss our “Camino curious” meeting? Peco, Dixie Dillon Lane, and me had an inspiring conversation about our Camino Pilgrimage from June 14th to 24th, talked about the places we will visit, how to prepare both physically and spiritually, and answered questions from our fellow travellers. I’ve created a summary of the highlights of our discussion (as well as a handy packing list:) that you can download below. You can access the recording here, enter passcode 30.MUc#9
There is still time to join us (but not much)! See this post for details and a complete itinerary to download the brochure, or register directly here.
Interesting reads of the week:
Can the Apple be Unbitten? AI, dependence, and thinking critically about tool adoption by Grant Martsolf
"My Carefully Crafted Anti-Tech Profile is Finally Gaining Traction Online!" by Ben Christenson
New to Substack:
On Absence and Artificial Intimacy - also read the accompanying short story The Glass Doors by Robert P. Moyer
The Real ‘Why’ Behind the Switch to a Flip Phone: My Kids by Chris Silva (a professional living in a new country, and thus would have a myriad of reasons why it is not possible to give up a smartphone, but he did. Check out his excellent first piece!)
Every time I read about your upcoming pilgrimage I warmly recall our four pilgrimages on the Camino de Santiago, the last in 2023 with three of our young adult grandchildren. Right before our second camino in 2015 Laudato Si had been released and I shouted Laudato Si after wishing follow pilgrims a buen camino.
May St. James guide you on the way to the Way!