TGC Podcast Article on Audio: AI Can’t Beat What We Learn in the School of Our Senses
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Mar 10, 2026 Brett McCracken, author and cultural commentator on faith and technology, reads his article about trusting embodied experience. He contrasts sensory grounding with the chaos of online feeds and AI-driven mediation. He urges prioritizing direct observation, local relationships, and embodied wisdom over mediated summaries.
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March 2020 Sensory Escape
- Brett McCracken recalls escaping online anxiety in March 2020 by spending hours outside, noticing orange blossoms, hummingbirds, and his two-year-old chasing butterflies.
- Those sensory experiences felt more grounding and predictable than the chaotic, screen-mediated narratives of the pandemic era.
Pandemic Highlighted Digital Epistemic Collapse
- McCracken diagnoses an informational disaster: algorithms amplifying extreme takes and eroding trust in expertise during COVID-19.
- He links this to a preexisting digital epistemological crisis that the pandemic accelerated.
Media Is Always A Mediated Secondhand Copy
- McCracken defines media as a secondhand re-presentation that inherently risks distortion, like the telephone game.
- He emphasizes media's usefulness but warns mediation often drifts far from original, tangible reality.
