...MATTERS little remarked as the socially levelling effect of technology, especially information technology, yet it--for better or worse--is levelling society globally, except amongst the most desperately poor, and even amongst these wretched of the earth the levelling effects may sometimes be observed. For every young person in whatever country who has mastered the Internet, after all, there is probably another, in that country or some other, who has mastered the AK-47. All have profited from information technology, and each has used these new skills according to her or his personal pleasure and measure.

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Few questions have bothered devout Christian scholars so much as the Parable of the Unjust Steward, who fashioned himself a silk parachute in the face of imminent unemployment by colluding in the falsification of his master's financial records. Christ's apparent endorsement of this behaviour--that the steward had done wisely -seems quite at odds with Christian ideals, yet it is flatly stated:

And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.

LUKE 16:8

Yet it is not much observed that the steward was able to act as he did because he was literate in a largely illiterate society. His information technology skills got him the job in the first place, and provided him with a comfortable landing when the job was about to disappear and he had no other means of living. (1) Quite probably his master was illiterate, or barely literate, so the record falsification would likely go unnoticed. And in...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



More articles from Queen's Quarterly
On the other side of / prudence.(Essay), March 22, 2008
Spinning the Past: Prime Ministerial Memoirs, 2007.(Critical essay), March 22, 2008
Motive, fallout.(on political journalism)(Essay), March 22, 2008
Cerulean.(Short story), March 22, 2008
Against scaffolding.(Poem)(Brief article), March 22, 2008

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