Chapter Two: The Engineering Enterprise Thomas Mahon When I was ten in the mid-1950s, I saw an incident that remains for me the gold standard of the engineering enterprise. One of the kids in our neighborhood had a red Radio Flyer wagon, and he let all the rest of us use it as common property. But after…

Chapter One: Technology Literacy Thomas Mahon Carpenters, surgeons, architects, bakers, software engineers and mystics…. all seek to impose mind on matter. And when mind is calm and focused, the results can be efficient, useful, and even elegant: the bicycle, the original Ford Mustang, Chartres cathedral, manhole covers, the Ode to Joy… But when the mind is…

Thomas Mahon As one steeped in the Catholic tradition before the reforms of Second Vatican in the 1960s, I think it best to give you some look at what a Catholic America will look like as it moves ahead to restore the old Church here in the USA, starting, but only starting…

Thomas Mahon The world, appropriately, is horrified at the terror inflicted on the Ukrainians as Putin and his oligarchs attempt to wipe the people, the place and even the memory of it off the earth. But this is not a war of the Russian people against the Ukrainians. …

Imagine Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone back in the mid-20th Century, introducing his newest project for the 21st Century: The Metaverse. “Picture if you will a place where the land is dying from abuse and inattention. The land and everything on it are owned by a small group…

When I was in film school in 1970, “Expanded Cinema” by Gene Youngblood was published. It became must-read for those many of us in film schools all over the world then, dazzled by “2001” and “Yellow Submarine,” among many other films. At the end of the book he discusses holograms…

It was my last day in college. I had finished my final final, and was in the library waiting for a friend to go celebrate. There was a copy of a Chemistry text book on the table, open to the Periodic Table of the Elements. I began to stare at…

I watched The Graduate on Turner Classic tonight. What a treat after 55 years, to see Ben and Elaine laugh at their successful escape, as the bus takes them down a Santa Barbara road and launches them on their destiny. …

The problem with this public relations wartime template is that when the truth seeps out, and it will with global comms now, the homefront gets split between those who finally see reality, and those who cannot ‘handle the truth.’ And with national morale gone the war is lost no matter…