Terms of our Times: Seven Words that Erode Our Humanity and Seven that Can Restore It
In our rapidly evolving digital landscape, our lives are changed in ways we frequently fail to notice. We work faster and longer, but at what cost? This book explores seven pivotal terms—Authenticity, Buzzfeed, Connectivity, Device, Environment, Instagram, and Productivity—that define our digital interactions and reshape our consciousness. But there’s hope. For each term, Cali introduces a counter-term—Accompaniment, Beauty, Communitas, Dasein, Encounter, Inscape, and Presence—that guides us toward a more balanced and meaningful existence. This journey is both a diagnosis of the digital age’s challenges and a practical guide for reclaiming our humanity amidst the noise.
What sets this book apart? It approaches these shifts sacramentally, revealing the sacred within our digital chaos while exploring how our devices influence our thoughts and culture. It weaves insights from philosophers, theologians, and media ecologists, offering a cohesive vision of our collective experience.
Join Cali in navigating the promises and perils of our digital landscape, and discover with him pathways to a more thoughtful, connected life.
Endorsements
Books like Cali’s help us to recuperate the sense of humanity in an increasingly mediated and digitized world. Terms of Our Times allows practitioners and academics to pause and reflect in a moment in which the pace and force of technology puts thinking aside and invites us just to act. The author’s reflection and analysis propose human answers to the deep problems posed by invasive technology. I consider it a highly recommended reading and intellectual source for those interested in media ecology studies.
—Daniel Arasa, Professor of Strategic Communications and Dean at the School of Church Communications, Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome
Dennis D. Cali offers a thoughtful response to the ways in which digital technologies have permeated nearly every aspect of the human experience. Drawing on the work of philosophers, theologians, and media ecology scholars, this book serves as an essential guide for recovering presence and authenticity in a media environment that so often challenges these humane ideals.
—Margaret M. Cassidy, President, New York Society for General Semantics and editor of Explorations in Media Ecology
It is with great pleasure that I endorse the approach of Dennis Cali in this book. This book is a must read! As a former collaborator and co-author of Marshall McLuhan, I am sure Marshall would have joined me in praising Cali’s approach, which is essential in navigating the challenges that the new media present us.
—Robert K. Logan, Department of Physics, University of Toronto, and founding editor of the journal New Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication
Dennis D. Cali’s work takes us on a thought-provoking journey across pop culture, philosophy, and religion to explore how our contemporary digital world shapes the way we think, feel, and act. Refreshingly, Cali not only diagnoses the problems we face through seven aptly chosen terms, but he also offers meaningful reorientations for both our culture and consciousness with a second set of carefully selected terms. In a sea of digital noise, this book is a signal worth following.
—Julia M. Hildebrand, Associate Professor of Communication, Eckerd College and winner of the 2024 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology
Terms of Our Times offers cultural meditations and practical guidelines with rich artistic, media ecological, theological, and philosophical references, ranging from Descartes to Foucault, from Weird Barbie to McLuhan, and from Snoop Dogg to Pope Francis. As a media ecologist, Cali acknowledges and admires the power of media, but this is not a book of resignation; it promotes resistance to digital conditioning and offers intellectual, spiritual, and artistic tools to reclaim humanity.
—Andrey Mir, author of The Digital Reversal
Cali expertly offers both a penetrating diagnosis of the cultural moment and a hopeful path forward. Through an examination of seven key words created or co-opted by the digital landscape, he invites readers to reflect on the profound cultural shifts shaping our thoughts, behaviors, and relationships. Drawing from philosophers, theologians, artists, and cultural commentators, Cali helps us examine the media ecology in light of the inherent dignity, value, and beauty of the human person in relationship with God and with others. Rather than leaving us resigned to the perils of a digital life, he proposes seven redemptive words that can help restore our humanity in an increasingly mediated world. Throughout this edition, Cali displays remarkable insight and dexterity in navigating the digital media ecology through a theological and sacramental framework.
—Sr. Nancy Usselman, Director of the Pauline Center for Media Studies
In Terms of Our Times, Cali probes important key words that define our lives on social media. In response to what those terms reveal about our culture and ourselves, he invites us to encounter ourselves, others, and God in deep, serious, and meaningful ways—encounters that are increasingly difficult in our digital landscape. He also synthesizes an impressive array of thinkers in philosophy, theology, media ecology, the Christian intellectual tradition, and his Catholic faith. In so doing, Cali invites readers to recover a way of seeing the ordinary as charged with significance, filled with genuine wholeness, and lived in flourishing relationship.
—Naaman Wood, Instructor of Speech Communication, Saint Paul College
About the author(s)
