Internet technology is perhaps the defining issue of our time. And being so utterly crucial a small book or at least an extended essay is needed to even begin to explore it. In the space I’ve been allotted here all I can do is sketch the broad outlines of a few of the issues we must come to grips with leaving further elaboration for coming occasions.
How we conceptualize what we’re facing in technology’s onslaught is critical. We need to think of this in precisely the terms that three gedolei harabbanim used at the Agudath Israel convention plenary in November: As simply stated war. Not metaphorical but real and fierce. No paintball frolic this but a firefight with live ammunition.
That characterization is important because it enables us to learn lessons from other wars. The West’s regnant political correctness insists we are at war against “terrorism” not Islamic fascism. But one can’t wage war on a tactic like terrorism only on real people and ideas like radical Islamists and their Wahhabist ideology.
Rav Elya Brudny’s address at that convention session was so important because he identified the enemy by name. He put this conflict into a classical Jewish context of the war the yetzer hara in its manifold guises has waged against us ever since First Man’s fall in the opening skirmish mere hours after his creation.
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