All right. And with that opening benediction, my name is Jonathan Zittrain, and I am so pleased to welcome you all to our event today, our being a joint effort of the Brickman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and the Harvard Law School Library for a conversation with professors John Palfrey and Urs Gasser on the occasion of the release of their new book, The Connected Parent, an expert guide to parenting in a digital world. And it will be moderated by our dear colleague, Professor Leah Plunkett. So we're so pleased to have everybody here. And I think my role is simply to do a little bit of introduction of everybody and then let the hounds be released. And I couldn't be more pleased to be doing those introductions since these are truly three of my favorite people together in one place. Urs Gasser is somebody who has stood for connectivity and interoperability among people, places, and things across culture, language, and national boundary. Among many other things, he has started a network of Internet and Society Research Centers for which the Brickman Klein Center is but one. I think we're now up to over a hundred, which is extremely exciting. And maybe one of us will have the presence of mind to put a link to that network into the chat room if it can reach beyond the panelists to those attending. Urs is someone who, among other things, has been a law professor at the University of St. Gallen and for 10 years has been on the faculty and the executive director of the Brickman Klein Center and has been someone with John Palfrey thinking so much about what the Internet is doing with four and two are children and what is drawing from them. And both he and John have now been thinking about it long enough that the kids they were thinking about 10 years ago are now adults who can look back and see how much they were right. And it's been such a pleasure to see their thinking evolve from books such as Born Digital, then a successor volume of Born Digital and now this one, the expert guide to kids in a digital world. So thank you so much Urs for being willing to be here today and for talking about your work with John. And John Palfrey, hard to summarize in a tweet or a single sentence, one would begin with his commitment to open knowledge, to seeing an educated, thoughtful, kindly world, himself educated at Harvard University and the University of Cambridge. Also a pivotal era of time as the executive director of the Brickman Klein Center and as the head of the Harvard Law School Library and as one of the founders of the Digital Public Library of America looking to see what new institutions and institutional relationships might be able to come together in the name of open knowledge. John also served as head of school at Phillips Andover Academy, chair of the Knight Foundation or I think it's called Chair of Knight Foundation and is currently president of the MacArthur Foundation. And as I said, open knowledge is one of John's things but so too is kindness, looking for a world, how to build it and how to introduce our kids to it that is not just a world of threats and worries but a world of building and of opportunity and of connection with one another. And I think that's what we might hear some of today. And finally, our moderator and question asker in the first instance extraordinaire, Leah Plunkett, a scholar, author, mentor and civic actor and in the author category, Leah herself wrote a book, Sharon Tood on the behavior of parents online in relation to their kids. So it's really under one roof virtually we have such a bumper crop of expertise on exactly the topics we're gonna talk about today. Leah's a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School has done work around the rights of children and other citizens including board service on the ACLU of New Hampshire serves on the Harvard Law School and UNH law faculties. And if I'm remembering correctly has a background in improvisational comedy. So not to set expectations too high for your questions today, but Leah, we're so grateful and glad that you're here to serve as emcee. And with that, I turn it over to you to do just that. Thank you all so much for being here. Thank you so much, Jonathan. It is such a pleasure and a privilege to be in the company of three such towering figures in this field and even more important, three such extraordinary human beings, superb teachers, superb scholars and world-class mentors. So with that, I'm gonna launch into a discussion of the connected parent, which I have read with enthusiasm from cover to cover. And I have lots of questions starting with, you are pioneering scholars in understanding youth and digital life. You are also world-class educators of young people. What made you decide, Ors and John, to shift your audience a bit and write a guide for all of us parents of which I am one about navigating digital life for our children. Thank you so much for this very warm introduction, Jonathan and Leah, and for many years of collaboration, excuse me. And John, it's great to see you. I wish we could be together in one space, not virtually, but physically, but wait for that moment. Month or less, just a wonderful gift to be together today and share a few experiences and thoughts. I would also like to thank our team, the youth and media team, who's been instrumental in the research behind the book. So why did you write the book address to parents when usually we have different audiences? Good question. My personal answer is I've been struggling translating stuff we've learned about youth and digital technology and research to my life as a parent. I have two children, age 16 and 19, and it's been just really hard to make sense of, you know, issues like screen time, when should they get like laptops and iPhones to all the way how much worry should I be about the excessive gaming in my view that my son is doing. And so we thought that, you know, our struggle in making sense of the best data that's available, some of which we've contributed ourselves with the team, how that is applicable to actual parenting, which is a whole other level of decision-making where you usually can pick up the phone and first ask a researcher what's the right thing to do. And that was a big part of the motivation at a very personal level to share that insight. Maybe one other thought is also we care a lot about young people, about children and to enable a good use of technology in a very maybe optimistic version. We thought it's helpful to work with parents who are closest, quite often closest to children and give them some sound advice how they can empower their children as they navigate together this increasingly connected, interconnected world, speaking of intro. Now, would you, John, if you want to add your sense of motivation? Sure, thank you. But first, let me thank Leah, of course, for moderating and Jonathan for such a nice introduction and all our colleagues for coming together. Leah, I have read cover to cover this fabulous book as well, Sharon Hood. I also got to read it earlier in a draft form and then in the printed version, that's MIT Press and a great volume for parents and takes up a topic that we do in part, which is privacy, but relative to the way we as parents act related to our kids' information, which is just the best and most deep book on that topic. So I hope everybody will read it. And, yeah, exactly. And if I can also just say a few thank yous to the team that helped us in producing The Connected Parent. No book that anybody's written a book knows that you do not do it alone. You do it as a team, no matter what. And the key members of that team were at the Youth and Media Lab in Sandra Cortesi and Alexa Hasse for sure. And I never do anything anyway without a fabulous librarian at my side, Gosha Sturges, who has been involved in the Harvard Libraries, the Berkman Klein Center, and also at Phelps Academy Library, was a great guide in this book, too. So, Gosha, if you're out there or Alexa or Sandra, please know you have our love and gratitude for your support on this book. And Leah, to your good question, part of it, of course, is doing our homework in public as parents and trying to be better at it, which we all know we make mistakes. And Urs's kids and my kids grew up together in the Cambridge Public Schools. My kids are 18 and 15, so just slightly off in age, but essentially the same as Urs's. And it's been fun to see them grow up together, even sometimes at a distance because of the Swiss US divide. But part of it is, of course, how we try to do our work as well as we can relative to those kids. But I'd say the other category of people that prompted at least my interest in writing this particular book was that in doing book talks, and Leah, you'll recognize this experience. When you go out to a school or you go out to a group of parents, if you're presenting research, the first question and the last question, most of the questions in between are about advice, right? So what should we do? And after writing Born Digital, and I think doing two full rewrites of between 2008 and 2016 and various iterations, consistently, I would try to say, well, I'm a researcher, I could tell you what I did as a parent, but not really in the advice-giving business. It just seemed like that was inadequate. And then we ought to try at least to put the advice. So what's different about this book is on every topic, we take a stand. And we say, here's what we think you ought to do based on our best experience, the best research we've had out there. We know it's not perfect. We know every parent is different and particularly in this very broad, increasingly divided world that there are lots of experiences, but doing the best we can with the data and with a consistent philosophy, which is this idea of connected parenting. So that's really what we've been trying to do is to translate all of that learning over a period of time and experience into something that could be usable, sort of on a take it or leave it basis, not saying we're definitely right. So that was the idea. And now I have a law professor question because I just can't help myself. I'm going to zoom in on some terminology. You use the term connected parent and to what are you referring? The ways in which digital technology creates connection, the ways in which family members create emotional connection unmediated by devices or a more multifaceted concept. And I'm not afraid to cold call gentlemen. Well, I think we have taken a common law approach to this definition of question and actually a rather pragmatic one. So the idea behind this connected parent concept or philosophy is relatively straightforward. The first and most important dimension of it is to keep communication lines open with our children. That sounds very trivial, but as we all know as parents, also observers of young people in our families, that's not always a given. And it's a real effort and requires a lot of trust building. And it's also an investment overall. The second dimension is some sort of, not only have communication lines open, but specifically talk about digital technologies and the use of technologies, the experiences. And when I say talk, then I don't mean just talk at kids, but importantly, even more important in our experience is actually to listen to young people, what their lived experiences online are as they use cell phones and navigate all these platforms. So, and there is one tweak to it that that is that parents ideally, not only some sort of listen and learn, but also try out themselves the different technologies that their children are so deeply immersed in. So we encourage parents not only to browse the web, but also to play games, to figure out how TikTok works or to understand what is this hype about Instagram and social media. And then the last element of the connected parent approach is not only to look at technology, but really at the reality and the context of young people themselves. What's happening around them? What do they care about? What are moved by? What they're struggling with? And it's these sorts of connections, connection between the parent and the young person, the connection between the parent and the technology and some sort of a networked approach to parent, the young person and the world around it that's at the core of this connected parent approach. Thank you. John, anything to add or should I jump to my next question? I think go to the next one. Otherwise, we'll just talk all day on the first ones. And if I, the courses always do thorough and good. So you propose that the connected parent should apply what you call the Goldilocks principle to screen time. I have a five and a nine year old. So this is a reference that resonates with me. Please unpack that Goldilocks principle further and offer some examples of its application. Absolutely, thank you. And screen time, of course, is one of the things we put right up in front of the books. We know lots of parents have a concern about it. I think it's an overplayed concern and we make that perfectly plain in the book, but it is one that certainly is quickly on parents' mind. The Goldilocks principle, of course, comes from a children's book. If you are not of a culture that reads about Goldilocks basic idea, of course, being not too hot and not too cold and having a nice warm balance there. And I think that we make this argument throughout the book in a number of ways, which is that I think it is neither a good idea to demonize the technology or give, in fact, the technology too much agency itself, nor to fetishize it and just assume that because we have internet, everybody's now brilliantly educated or whatever. And we know from decades of studying this that neither of those is true, but trying to find something that's not kind of a weak synthesis in the middle, but actually some clear pathway through is I think what we're aiming for in the book. And so what we do is break down what we think is the best advice on screen time by age. So I do think that if you're talking about a child who's just born through a child who's in their first couple of years, there's no real argument saying that it's a good idea to have them exposed to screens a lot. Now, during COVID to have them connect for the first time with their grandparents just as one, of course, that makes sense of like you shouldn't keep them off screens for that reason, and neither should you buy into the baby Einstein marketing strategy that says if you're not having them exposed to certain videos that they will never catch up academically, that's baloney. Now, as you go older, you get to the other end of that spectrum and you get to kids who are in their later teens as Orson, my kids are. And the idea of having technological controls on their computer is just simply not gonna work, right? It's A, they're gonna route around it and B, it will undermine the trust that they have with you as parents. And it's just a bad idea. But between those two poles, there's actually a lot you can do and it's gonna vary depending upon your family's circumstance. We are highly aware that there are single parent households out there where people are working multiple jobs. And certainly during this time of COVID that you really need to be more flexible in that way. We certainly know that during this period kids are learning a lot of their schoolwork in addition to the out of school work through these kinds of devices. I think it's sort of blown up the screen time debate in that way as well. And we can come back to that, Leah, that's an area of your expertise. We should flip it back to you for a sense. As well as to say, we really, really, really think that it is more important to think about the quality of what kids do online rather than the quantity of time. So we know they spend a lot of time online and it would be good that that were time spent in reasonably productive ways and there are less productive ways so they can also spend time. That is just true in life in general. And we think it applies in the internet era as well as before that. So anyway, that would be a version of the Goldilocks principle. We do have a handy chart and the kind of thing that says the different ages is where we think the research shows but it's much more important I think to come up with a plan for your family and then be as consistent as you can. So building on the notion that there are always ways in all areas of life and at all ages to use time more or less responsibly. And I mean, I think your book concluded that all of us parents always use our digital devices responsibly, right? Just kidding. So next question throughout your book you encourage all of us parents to be honest and forthcoming with our children about our own evolving relationship with digital life. For instance, you suggest that we parents use our own struggles to limit our tech use as a conversation starter with our children about screen time and that all of us adults whether in our roles as parents, educators or otherwise become comfortable saying oops and sorry when we inadvertently offend in our digital discourse. In taking this advice we adults would make ourselves more vulnerable more vulnerable than might be comfortable for all of us. So what is your advice for how we might get comfortable with a greater level of personal vulnerability? Well, I think being truly connected means to be vulnerable and particularly in the sense that I feel when having open communication channels whether it's with friends or coworkers or in this case with a family member with a young person my assumption is always that I may get it wrong that I may have one perspective but not the only one and that I can learn something from the person I'm talking to that I don't have all the answers sometimes more just concerns or questions or ideas and it's that sort of I think vulnerability that is a prerequisite to have meaningful connections not only with our children but with other human beings and that's almost like a lifestyle choice. I would say, are we willing to listen? Are we willing to go into even difficult conversations with this acknowledgement that I may be wrong but still being true to your own perspective some concerns as well. And now I understand that's perhaps a privileged position to have this ability to go into conversations like that and it's perhaps also a little bit more of a Western idea of parenting if you go into different cultures as we do you see that parents may not have a cultural setup where it's okay to not have the answers but they're expected to have the answers but we still think there are ways how you can be a connected parent, not the less. So for instance, there are ways to structure conversations where you start by listening what the young person is sharing about an issue they care about or you can start with a more kind of a topic but say privacy issues and understand and share what you know about it and try to empower the young person by sharing your skills and your ideas and then vice versa being conversation to hear and learn how that sounds from the other perspective. So I think there are ways to some sort of manage with vulnerabilities across cultural contexts and parenting styles and still being a connected parent but my default is yes, connectedness comes with vulnerability. I love the sense of humility that comes through your comments I think it is a big part of what we are urging in this approach and Leah, you mentioned the oops as a strategy and I think that's one that might take us into a slightly different direction as well which is the diversity chapter that we wrote about and in that particular case, that's an oops, a mistake that I made that I will own up to it but one I think that was least helpful for me to reflect on and part of what we are thinking about with these topics is how do we bring our kids into different conversations that are important for us as parents. So to the extent we as parents feel that diversity, equity and inclusion are important things to talk about at our dinner table, that's true in our household and I know in nurses as well and I suspect in yours too, we thought this was a good entree and some of that actually is playing out online. So in the particular example we use in the book was one where when I was head of school, I was writing about our policies relative to transgender students and we ended up creating a dormitory for students who were non-gender binary. So it was the idea was to have a dormitory that was neither for boys nor girls necessarily but were for what we called an all gender dormitory was in the context of that. And in something I typed probably too quickly on Facebook or Twitter, I can't remember, I used the term transgender ED, transgendered and very quickly got some notes back saying that was an inappropriate term and why and so at that time there was a fair amount of discussion about what the desired and appropriate terms would be that to my mind was a really good example to say, oops, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to give offence. I'm wading into something that's an important and complex topic but obviously don't have all the answers or the right terms and to go from there. And so using those kinds of moments where we inevitably make mistakes as I did in that case, both as a learning experience for yourself but I think as an entree for a mode of hopefully learning and connecting to others but also to into importance and occasionally, tricky topics as diversity equity inclusion can be. So building off of the wonderful openness, I'm gonna bring in a question from our Q&A tool. We have a media scholar from Eastern Europe who is focused on the generational aspects of media use. And this question asks if you could unpack a little bit more what parents can learn from children, teens and tweens when it comes to technology. So John, wonderful example of an equity educational moment that you had and so sort of building on that. Are there some other areas in which both of you either in your capacity as parents or as scholars have learned things about technology use from the kids, tweens and teens in your personal life or in your research life? An awesome question. And at the end of it there's a thing that kids would so much talk about which is if you wanted to get the other person to the speaker at the terms you throw them a popcorn. So I'm gonna send a popcorn over to Urs because he is really, I think, along with Sandra and others emphasized it exactly this point in terms of how they've run the youth and media lab at the Berkman Klein Center. So Urs, maybe you should have the lead on this one. I mean, there is so much I've learned. We've learned from young people but maybe just kind of one overarching theme is I still remember when I sent the first email. So the way some sort of I got into the digital technology space is by drawing a sharp distinction between what's offline at the real world and what's online and some sort of cyberspace that's term used back then, believe it or not. And of course we all know and experience ourselves today during COVID that the lines are blurring between not only online and offline but between spaces more generally is home and office space. These boundaries are blurring, work and play. There are blurring boundaries and so forth. And my feeling is that young people have often a more sophisticated, more tacit knowledge maybe the right term way of approaching these highly interconnected spaces where yes, there may be an online component to it. Yes, there may be an offline component to it. And they're not the same but they're integrated yet follow different norms and rules of sharing for instance or of connecting and managing audiences and the reach of a message. And that's an unbelievable skill and wealth of experience. Now I would hasten to add there are also blind spots. You can talk more about that too but I feel this to what it means to live these highly integrated lives where technology plays such a vital role in almost anything you do whether it's looking up news or whether deciding to wear a mask outside or not or whatever it is online and offline play hand in hand. I had to grow into that and I think young people have more some sort of greater sensibility also to some of the nuances. Now, last caveat of course, I also acknowledge that in many parts of the world we have huge access barriers and participation gaps. So I want to acknowledge that for sure. So I was talking a little bit about my own experience being again privileged and having access to technologies. So I'm going to shift us a little bit from the wonderful insights that we can get from our kids and tweens and teens and talk a little bit about those fears where you recommend that parents take the lead. So I have sort of a question that I had and then I'm just going to add in a couple of popcorns, John, if I'm using that term correctly that are coming in through the Q&A tool. So the question I had was that you are encouraging parents to take up issues of online safety with our kids the same way that we should have the talk in quotes with them about sex and drugs. So when we have this talk, what should we say? Don't we run the risk of coming across as anti-tech or out of touch if we frame guidance on digital safety the same way we would sex and drugs and a related time to threads that have come in from the question tool, specifically how might we talk in this talk to our kids, tweens and teens about what questioners are calling the addictive aspect of social media, the power that the YouTube algorithm has and also sensitizing their consciences so that they are engaging online in ways that are safe, both for them physically but also in terms of being an ethical and virtuous connected citizen themselves. Well, Leah, that's incredible and great synthesis of questions and a hard set of them. So one thing that happens in pandemics I learned is that one watches more television than one otherwise does and I have not been a big TV watcher but in my household modern family has been very popular and I've seen most of them now with my daughter which has been fun and one of the scenes that keeps coming up in modern family is the two dads Cam and Mitch often will zip into the room of their daughter Lilly to have some form of the talk. She'll say, do we really have to? They say no and they leave and so I've been thinking a lot about the talk and the form it takes and I think to very clearly having one version of the talk one time obviously is not gonna work and so in this field like others, Urs and I are arguing in favor of this connected approach which means you're gonna have lots of conversations of this sort and ultimately on internet safety as in the case of these attendant issues you are not basically giving one lecture one time but you rather you are engaged in an unfolding of conversations over the life of your kid and at the end they're so sick of having heard it before that they're repeating it back to you and say, yeah, yeah, dad, right? Or yeah, yeah, mom, that would be good. So I think that's the first thing is it should be a connected series of conversations specifically on safety, just a couple of facts which I think have really held up during internet era time that are important for parents to bear in mind. So if you just were to watch the TV and you were to see to catch a predator that show that used to run you might think that since the internet came online that kids are more likely to be abducted by somebody they meet since the internet came along and then harmed outside. It turns out that that's simply not true. So I think the best research comes out of UNH, Leah up near you where David Finkelhor and his team have looked at the fact that really over the last couple of decades the likelihood of that happening is actually down, not up. So it is not the case that because the kids use the internet or social media that they are more at risk of abduction. Now, of course it's every parent's worst nightmare for it to happen. And it is the case and particularly so during COVID, right? Where else can people meet, right? They do meet up in dark corners of the internet or versus word cyberspace. And so that does happen. It just happens in ways that we can prepare kids for. So most of what we've seen in the research is that when kids are in a circumstance like that they know that they are involved in a conversation for instance about sex. So they are looking for it in one way, shape or form. They're not really wanting of course to be abducted and harmed but they are in a conversation that they know is edgy. It is very infrequent that somebody that they don't know at all comes up to them and totally fools them. And then all of a sudden, oh my gosh, they're talking about sex. They tend to be in a chat environment of some sort that's either devoted to that topic or it's within a game and so forth. So part of it is I think for to give kids the sense of what is likely in fact going on and making sure that they have someone to reach out to to get help from. So whether that is somebody in a crisis either on their own or with somebody else that they know about crisis text line just one particular example or they would come to you Leah as their mom or they would go to a teacher or guidance counselor figuring out the experiences that people would have and the ways in which they can get help. If they find themselves in that circumstance they've made a mistake, now they need to get out. How do they do that? What are the kinds of specific skills? But again, that can't be one conversation that's got to play out over a period of time. Let me take briefly the addiction topic and then Urs can pick up on some of the other elements. One of the topics that comes up constantly with parents and I'm not surprised to see it appropriately in our chat is whether it's possible for kids to be addicted to using new media. And there's a raging debate on this and neither Urs nor I are psychiatrists or psychologists. So we can't answer it as doctors do. The data really seem to suggest that there are disorders around using lots of technology but maybe not an addiction at least in the way we use that term in the United States if you were to go to China or to South Korea the term addiction is more generally used. So we sort of adopt the fact that yes it can be a disorder but we see it almost always connected to some other underlying thing going on with the child. So it could be that a child is, they are exploring their gender identity or they are having a struggle with anxiety or depression or they are feeling some other kind of pain that they're expressing through using technology so, so much. So very often I think what we urge parents to do of course is to connect with the child first and then the technological use if that makes sense and really to go to what those sort of underlying concerns are and then if that's something that you can't handle directly as a family then to get help. So I saw in the chat a question about treatment options. There are particular places that you can go and we reference a few in the book. Of course it depends where you are and what your means are. If you are in Boston where some people are children's hospital in Boston happens to have a guy named Michael Rich. Dr. Rich is the mediatrician and he has a particular practice in this area. There may be you might be in Philadelphia near the Children's Hospital there and you could find some. So there may be specialists in your area but really ultimately I think it is important to note that it's about the underlying concern. The underlying issues the child might have and very rarely is actually about the technology per se. But of course there are many things to clean up there or improve on I'm sure. This is so great that I don't know what to add. Leah, you tell me in what direction you want to take the conversation. So I'd like to build a little bit on some of the questions that have been coming in that are at this nexus of child protection and privacy. So we have had some questions come through the Q&A tool that's asked about really sort of two distinct but also related scenarios related in terms of what are the boundaries for parents in terms of mediating children's access to devices or to apps or to programs on those devices in the name of protecting privacy. So one thread is that some parents for different reasons perhaps socioeconomic limitations could share their phones with their children.  And of course during the pandemic when we are trying to do all the things online those of us who are fortunate enough to work from home keep our kids safe learning at home and so on there may be few devices to go around and what might be some of the privacy considerations within a family if you're device sharing and then on a related thread what is an appropriate balance of a parent going into a child's device or to a program or an app? So what is the line between respecting their autonomy and their engagement but also when this questioner said when you might infringe on a youth's privacy to see what is really going on? So reflections on those two threads are more generally about how you draw privacy boundaries within a family space. Yeah, I wonder if we could use the popcorn and on the first topic send it over to you since we have the author of Share Into It here I wonder how you would answer the device sharing question from your purchase expert on the privacy topic. I will accept the popcorn and I will say that parents very often with the best of intentions or inadvertently do compromise children's privacy whether it is handing over a phone that even a very young child can navigate very quickly to all of a sudden post something to the world you don't want them to see or when a parent is taking a picture and posting it on social media or letting a child engage in a whole number of apps that may be tracking the child through the parent's phone. So I do think that completely understanding and respecting that there may be real device limitations particularly in pandemic operation that parents would be very wise to first of all when it comes to taking information about their kids and affirmatively putting it out into the world use a little bit of what I sometimes call holiday card rule of thumb and not put something on social media or broadcast it broadly if it is not something that they would feel comfortable putting in one of those old fashioned hard copy newsletters and sending to everybody from their great aunt to their boss and in terms of the actual devices I think that having a family privacy plan doesn't have to be formal it can be on a post-it note but really taking stock a little bit the way a company does what devices are in the home who's using which device for what purpose are there any devices that are owned by an employer or by a school that may be picking up even more information? So I do think that of course making sure that parents can get into their work and people can get into telemedicine appointments and children can get into school really trying to take inventory and being very careful about whose devices they're going into which hands so those are some of my thoughts and I will pop corn it back over perhaps to either of you or both of you to talk about when as a parent it might be okay to kind of infringe or go into a device that a child or a tween or a teen has been working through whether that is a device owned by the parent or whether it is something that is in the child's custody and control or maybe it's never okay. Well, that's definitely more in the it's an arts and not a science category of giving advice. I think as a baseline we need to want to acknowledge that also young people and children have a right to privacy and that also applies to vis-a-vis their parents and that's something we want to respect and I think is important part of family life to negotiate these different boundaries. Of course it changes depending on age and experiences and context where we draw these boundaries at the given moment in time and I really agree very much with you Liao that having some sort of a family contract or at least a conversation around these issues is the way to go and also revisit these questions where does one's sphere of privacy at times the right to be a lone star again depends also on the circumstances of life and so forth. I would say that of course becomes more important the older the young person becomes teenager has different I think needs the right to so than a small toddler I'd say but it also highlights another I think important dimension what you were your earlier response Liao that is one question is whether you're dealing with an emergency situation or not, right? The things we're proposing here I think work very well if we take the longer view as John mentioned also in the safety context you have conversations over time how we think about privacy how we manage our own privacy what's my approach to your privacy in a household but then also talking about the world at large how we share information on social media about their family life or the like so that's the benefit if we are not in crisis mode and can really work through some of these issues and also disagree at times of course but it's a different story when you as a parent have to be concerned that something happened that there was an incident of identity fraud or identity theft or where you fear that someone put a device on your kid's smartphone that has surveillance capabilities to track every movement or activate the camera remotely I think in these emergency situations where you have a crisis I feel much more confident that the parent has not only a moral right but also actually an obligation to step in and intervene and of course you want to do it in a way where again you approach the young person and respect the autonomy of this young person as well but I do feel that's a different category now the last thing I want to say on this topic is I do think when it comes to privacy we focus now a lot of kind of relationship between parent and child the biggest challenge I think where we're also parenting is so difficult is when it comes to the larger question of our data world that we live in and that we're embedded in some call it surveillance capitalism as some sort of the larger context around us the business models that drive some of the tech firms that give us the services and hardware that we're using and our children are using and I think there we reach the limits what parents can do through parenting and what to connect the parent is up to I think the tools have to change I think we have to wear the hat as parents the hat of a citizen where we have to allocate for stronger privacy protections and privacy laws that also change some of these dynamics and the incentives that companies have and I just wanted to flag that in our book you will find several examples where frankly you can't leave it to the parents and their kids open conversations and being connected no, we need societal interventions we need policy changes we need better stronger policies not only to protect but also empower the next generation I concur completely and I'm going to keep us going in that space of how you balance being a connected parent or perhaps a connected educator when you are dealing with cyberbullying so behaviors that can exist in crisis mode as well as can exist in more of an ongoing systemic lower level but still can boil over into crisis and especially during remote or hybrid operations still for most K through 12 students in this country a questioner is asking how can parents and teachers work together to try to prevent cyberbullying during online classes as we have districts across the country that had previously not had nearly so many students in online classrooms now having these all or partially online setups? Lee, it's such a good question and it's also it points to a limitation of Zoom which is I note in our participant list in the Q&A that we have Samir here who is along with his colleague Justin Patchen one of the great experts on cyberbullying and if only we could just popcorn out to one of our participants you'd have a much better answer than we could offer but certainly point you to their research in the area of cyberbullying which I think is the most reliable out there over a long period of time. I think the notion of how parents and educators connect during this period is clearly emergent so we don't know all of the answers but I do think that one thing is crucial is for parents not just to recede too far in the background in the virtual schooling environment and to use the opportunities to stay connected to teachers and my sense is the teachers are exhausted and working very, very hard during this period and having to adapt in really tricky ways and administrators too and having a lot of them close friends in those roles and they want to continue to have this level of connectivity during this period because once it starts to fray once it starts to come apart you lose the contact entirely and so one of the concerns I hear from fellow educators has been actually that in some school districts they can even find kids and family so there really is such a falling apart of the fabric that makes some of the really acute issues around bullying or even other kinds of safety issues one of which came up in Chicago recently of a direct sexual assault that was seen on a Zoom there are really extraordinary issues that will be made much easier to deal with if there's a continuing connection so I think that and this is a silly thing or a basic thing to say but I think making sure that the connections don't fray and that the connectivity is there so that there can be that open back and forth as there are as their worry signs I would say the one big thing about bullying on the internet that we try to stress in this book is that separating it totally between cyberbullying and just bullying doesn't make a lot of sense and this is one of those great examples where to young people there's not kind of an offline life and then an online life it's just life there's a whole bunch of life and they've got conversations that are happening in different environments whether that's social media or in the temporary zones of things like Snapchat or it's when they actually meet up in person and so forth and they glide very effectively between them in different ways and I think we have to be as facile because a student who's being bullied is probably being bullied in multiple environments and the information and the experiences is flowing between them and I think being facile in that way as parents and educators is crucial so not a simple answer to a very hard question but when I think that points to a fundamental concern and error. Thank you very much. So I have a question that I had been wondering about and also dovetails with a question that has come in through the tool so in your book you fast forward to future generations and you predict that someday a person starting staring down into a phone will look the way a 1980s hairstyle does to a teenager in 2020. So when will that phone image right all this kind of going like this become the equivalent of the mullet or the perm and what types of digital technology do you envision displacing the phone or maybe we'll never be over the phone and a questioner has written in and said actually built on this question they didn't even know I was going to ask and said what are some ways that parents of the future might anticipate and plan for the new types of technology that might be here in a decade or so including things like developments and artificial intelligence, machine learning or similar and unexpected new and emerging technologies. That's definitely more the speculative part of the book. I mentioned already and it has come up throughout our conversation that of course it's unbelievable how fast-paced the changes are that we've seen even since we started working on youth and digital media issues as Jay-Z introduced us kindly. You know when we started smartphones weren't the main devices through which many young people are accessing the interconnected world. Back then Facebook wasn't the platform or Instagram and the like. So we really I think are shaped in our thinking by this experience of change and how fast technology has evolved how fast platforms have come about that we haven't heard of even 10 years ago. And also with these changes how users and particularly young people also come up with new ways how to make use of technology good and bad as we just discussed. And it's I think this theme of change that makes it very likely that yet again in the next 10 years will bring us technological innovations and applications that we can't even envision today. One you mentioned a few of them whether it's the power of AI and AI based technologies whether it's augmented and virtual reality applications. But I think there are other technologies too if we think about fabrics there there's so much innovation going on to think about innovation in building you know building smart technology into clothes. There is a big merger between the bio sciences and digital technologies that may have lead to very different interfaces. How information can be accessed, processed, stored, exchanged that we do believe slightly speculatively that the future will look different and is not necessarily symbolized by the looking at the cell phone. Now again big caveat honestly I also don't think that these changes will unfold in similar speed across all parts of the world. I mentioned already and we emphasize also in the book the digital divides. And so I wouldn't expect that you know this is some sort of a global parallel process of change but I do think we will be surprised and it's up to everyone's imagination to envision these futures and actually to help to shape these futures that to me is perhaps the most exciting part about our work that we together with young people in the next generation can do something about what directions these technologies develop, how we want to use it, where we draw red lines, where we don't want to rely on technology but on good old human interaction and help and kindness. I'm going to ask another forward-looking question now less about technology and more about sort of a broader civic space. So in the book you reject the proposition that our kids and teens engage in clicktivism or slacktivism such that they do not have a civic impact. What do those terms mean? Another law professor nerd question, sorry. And why do you push back on the notion that digital engagement fails to translate into broader social and civic engagement? Well, thank you, Leah, for taking us into the last chapter of the book, which is on kids and activism and clicktivism or slacktivism are either think derisive and silly terms and ones that are easy to kind of millennial shame or kid shame with the idea that just by clicking like on an Instagram, a blackout page or a hashtag BLM, whatever it might be would somehow be not a good thing to do or that it's insufficient or that it's lazy somehow, which I just think is sort of missing the bigger context. We see in the context of the technological space, the same dynamic that we see when we look offline in terms of activism, which is that young people are more active in civic life probably than any time in the last 50 years according to studies such as the ones that look at incoming college freshmen have studied them over a long time in terms of going out for protests in terms of the way in which they engage in volunteerism and various forms of civic action that are often not directly involved in big institutions. So the mistake is by saying if in a particular election and we may find out in this one that there this wasn't the case, but if in a particular election young people don't turn out to vote as much as we as adults might like them to and then we say they're apathetic and all they're doing is clicking like on Facebook. I think we are missing a whole lot of what they're actually doing. And it's often connected to these kinds of things that they do online. So one thing we track in born digital in the final chapter of that book and then again in the connected parent is look at various instances of networks of young people who across time and space are doing really interesting things. So climate is one example. Certainly Black Lives Matter is another example. We use a less known example of period.org which is a young woman Nadia Okamoto who grew up as a teenager was from time to time homeless and realized that having period products was not available equitably. So she networked a group of kids all around the world who create little chapters and make sure that people get the feminine products that they need at different times. So and that's something that you can't imagine that model possibly working but for this networked approach and all these cool skills that we've observed through our youth and media lab and other research of young people developing and pulling out I would point to the work of Cathy Cohen here in Chicago who does the Black Youth Project and BYP 100 as another example of looking at participatory politics slightly outside of what we might typically measure in terms of traditional institutions but which is really dynamic and interesting. So I guess what we try to do in this book is to shift the frame from the easy, you know, critical collectivism kinds of critiques of kids and then say let's look at what's really interesting and what's going on what's different what's powerful what's bringing people from the margins to the center in a variety of ways or amplifying what's happening on the margins in important ways. Thank you so much. And I recognize we are almost at the end of our time together. So I'd like to ask you both. You have shared a number of reflections this afternoon here in Eastern Standard Time I should say maybe other times for other folks. Are there any other valuable lessons that your students or your own children have taught you about youth and digital life that you just wanna make sure that the hundred plus folks joining us from all across the world are hearing as they think about the important topics covered in this book. I'd love to leave the last word for us. So I'll go really briefly and then pitch it back back to you too. But I think the principal one is really just to listen to and trust and learn from young people. And that's actually some of the fun. And so being able to do something you haven't done before and do it with a kid and listen to them, it's actually a really joyful thing. And so I deeply encourage it. And I think given how complex the world is and how many different apps there are, there's an endless opportunity for that kind of fun. Thank you, John. In that spirit, I think to me, young people are connection entrepreneurs. They teach me how we can stay connected, how we can make new connections. So we can have unexpected connections using technology but also integrate technology in a different way than I experienced it. And I learned that from the many young people we've talked to, but also from our students. And they helped me to think through what some of the challenges are, how we should perhaps have a still a critical perspective and a skeptical perspective when it comes to technology. And it's this ability to connect that I think is just a real gift for which I'm super grateful. And we are all super grateful for your years of leadership and empathy and vulnerability in the best sense of that term that is captured in the connected parent, which as a parent and a scholar, I cannot recommend highly enough. I hope that everyone will take a look and continue to engage in these important and ever evolving questions and discussions. Thank you both for sharing your time and your insights. And thank you so much to everyone from around the world who joined us tonight to share your interest and your energy and your insights.


15 seconds to make sure it's recording. Yep, looks like we are. So hopefully people can hear me OK. Otherwise, just feel free to type something on the chat window to get my attention. Also sharing my screen with the hackathon kickoff slide deck and quickly go through these. But please feel free to interrupt me and David as we go along. And after this session is done, we'll also be posted on our playlist on YouTube so other people can listen to the recording. So again, my name is Ray Peck. And I'm here with David Plinella. And I think we have the intro slide and a couple of slides as well. But just wanted to do a quick kickoff of the Q1 hackathon. So this is already a third edition since I joined the GitLab team. So this is a quick agenda for the kickoff. And just wanted to cover logistics and answer any questions people have. So a high level agenda, just wanted to remind people about the code of conduct that we have at GitLab. And we'll talk about schedule logistics, MRs, and also places to start. And make sure we answer all the questions you have. And in terms of code of conduct, I have a link here that you can take a look at. Go to about.gitlab.com. And then there's a code of conduct page. I won't necessarily read through the full text of what's there.  We want to treat each other with respect. Want to have a warm and welcoming environment for all community members. So just a good reminder. I mean, a hackathon or other events are a good opportunity to give people a reminder of our community code of conduct. I mean, this is something that we feel is very important. And if you have any questions or instances, feel free to contact us at conduct.gitlab.com if you have any questions. But that's there for, all right, so let me enlarge the screen so people can see the slide better. Sorry about that. Ray, I think if you just click on the Present button on the slide standing to a bit metaphorically, everyone. Yep. Thank you. All right, so yeah, thank you, David. So OK, so that's that on the quick reminder on community code of conduct. So next slide, quick get a glance. As we've done in the past couple of quarters, this is a two-day virtual event. I mean, kickoff is starting right now, but I've noticed that people have already been submitting MRs for the hackathon. And I'll talk about where all the MRs are being kept track during the two-day event. And we'll have a wrap-up session around 2300 UTC on, I'm sorry, this should say the days are wrong. It should say Tuesday and Wednesday I'll change the slides. But we'll end on around 2300 UTC on the 13th. And during the event, if you need any support or if you want to just have a conversation with community members during the event, go to our Gitter community room for support and questions. But either David and I will try to jump on any questions that people may have pretty promptly. We'll also have tutorial sessions. We actually managed to schedule all of them on to Tuesday. And what we did this time around was invite several product managers from four product teams at GitLab. We have product managers from Manage, Verify, Create, and Configure. And it's similar setting to this kickoff session. We'll be on Zoom and we'll be recorded. And that will be posted on our hackathon playlist that the link is provided below. And if you want to see a detailed list of all the presenters and links to the Zoom sessions, just feel free to go to the hackathon page and should all be listed there along with the prior DMRs that I'll talk about and also with prizes. Moving right along, I guess I should have put this slide earlier in the deck. But I mean, the host for this two-day event is myself and David. And we're spread out geographically, so we should be able to have decent coverage. Should people have any questions, I see that another person has joined the call. So either on GitLab or Twitter, feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions in addition to using Gitter. Be happy to answer any questions you have. Cool. And then in terms of logistics, like I noted, I mean, Gitter is sort of the channel that gets actively used over the hackathon period, so ping either David or myself. Or I mean, there are a number of other people that have been very good about answering people's questions during the hackathons. So if you post questions there, even if David or I aren't able to get back to you right away, somebody should be able to lend your hand. So let me pause here for a few seconds.  No, that sounds excellent. I mean, I'd say just everyone don't feel shy about pinging us on Gitter. You can also, if you submit a merge request, then feel free to use those same usernames to mention us on the merge request. Or if you're discussing something on an issue, same for an issue, feel free to ping either Diplonella myself or RPEG, which is great. And then, yeah, we'll be more than happy to help you. And then if necessary, then get you in touch with the right team members of GitLab who can further help with technical questions. Thank you, David. OK, so also some of the speakers that I mentioned earlier. So we have four product managers that will be talking to us or leading the tutorials. One of the things that I did in preparing for this hackathon was to I talked to all the product managers, not only to invite them to lead tutorial sessions, but also to identify some of the issues that really the community members help with. I mean, so that's sort of the inspiration where I got the inspiration to create what we call the priority MR. So these are some of the issues they wanted to list out to community members to seek out your help. So they'll have a chance to talk more about this in detail if you're available to join their sessions. And then they'll talk about those issues in other areas where they would more than welcome community members help. So I listed their talks in various time zones. So if you're not able to attend because of the time zone complex, the sessions will all be recorded and posted on the YouTube channel. So these are the four speakers. So we'll get to the MRs. And as David mentioned, when you submit MRs, I mean, feel free to mention both myself and David. We'll be happy to make sure that it gets reviewed by somebody on the right product team. So we'll be happy to do the triage. And we'll also be adding a hackathon label for your MRs that are coming during the hackathon period. And I opened an issue here that you can look at. This is where the issues will be tracked. So let me go in here really quick. So as I noted, I mean, the person from Japan already submitted a couple of MRs, and one of them actually already been merged on WWGetLab.com project. So this is where I'll be listing all the MRs that come in. So we're off to a decent start with the two that have already come in. But I hope to see this list definitely grow over the next couple of days. OK, back to the slides. So the prizes. So I mean, similar to last time around, anyone who has any MRs merged will receive a prize. And the following slide we'll show you the pictures of the prizes that we have ready for this hackathon. And the person with the most MRs will basically receive a grand prize. And the MRs must be merged by 2,300 UTC on Monday, February 25. So you have roughly 10 business days, I think, or roughly 10 business days from now to get your MRs merged. And like we did in the past for another typo, it will be notified by I'll create another issue to notify all the Q1 hackathon project winners. Oops, sorry, too fast. So what we did this time around, we definitely want to see the volume of MRs that have come in, as we've seen in the past couple of quarters. But we also wanted to highlight some of the issues that the product managers wanted community members help on. So I think like most of the product areas had identified issues, including documentation that we want to encourage community members to work on. The only ask is that, I mean, some of these may not be the easiest issues to work on. So we encourage you to just pick one of the issues that you're interested in and work on one of those only. If you try to tackle more than one of those, I'm not sure if you'll be able to complete them in a reasonable time frame. So if you're interested in working on one of these issues, you can just add a note to it in the comment, and we'll try to get that issue assigned to you. I believe two of the issues people have spoken for already. One is on a documentation, and the other is on, I believe on Verify, but let me go to that page here so people can see. Yeah, so I believe this documentation and this Verify issue that people have expressed interest in, but others are still wide open. As far as I know, I want to check a couple of hours ago. So feel free to go through these issues. And if you're interested, just express your interest and you can go from there. Let me go back here. And then I scroll through that on the webpage. So the prizes for anyone with the MRS marriage gets this, it's called a wallet ninja, but it's a handy tool. And this is actually TSA approved. So you can get it through airport security. And I can vouch for that because I had to carry this through security when I went to Pawsdam a couple of weeks ago and I didn't have any issues. I think somebody looked at it and see what it was, but she let me carry it on the plane. So it's a handy tool that was pretty popular at Pawsdam where we had the sand. And then people with priority MRS will get this insulated water bottle. It's gotten good reviews. And the grand prize get this nice duffel bag as a reward. So those are the prizes that's just listed on the hackathon page. And just want to recap quick stats from the past two hackathons because I got in some questions from community members. So just wanted to share a couple of data points. So if you look at the Q3 hackathon, the number of MRS that have come in were 22. And then if you compare that to the following quarter, I think the number almost tripled to 65. I mean, I definitely want to see a growth like this continue into Q1, but that's sort of the, I mean, this sort of indicates a level of interest that we've gotten from community members, which David and I were very excited to see. So those, the blue bar basically shows the MRS like a total number submitted over two hackathons. And the red bar basically shows for the grand prize winner how many MRS they had merged basically. So it went from like seven to 13, like we'll see what kind of numbers we see this quarter. But I mean, it's, you know, one of the questions I got from a couple of the community members just wanted to share the stats. Let me pause here real quick and make sure there are no questions or David, I'm not sure if I covered everything that we needed to cover. Sounds good. I mean, I would say something as well, even as we speak, we're updating the, some items on the GitLab hackathon page. So I'm thinking that we should probably add the presentation, right? Yeah. The kickoff at some point. I mean, I can do it during my day while you're sleeping. No, that's very sleeping. We're just in different time zones. Right. But yeah, I would say stay tuned to the main GitLab.com slash community slash hackathon page for other changes or notices that we do during the event. One thing that we're doing right now is we've noticed that the countdown needs fixed but we're working on essentially solving this as we speak. Cool. Yep. Yeah, definitely. Along with YouTube, presentations will get them posted on the hackathon page pretty quickly. Okay. I think I just have a couple of slides to go. So sorry, this slide is pretty busy but good places to start for newcomers. I mean, one of the things that you can do is just basically go to like a gitlab.com and do queries on like, for example, on CE. Look for issues that are accepting merge requests and has a backlog milestone. So you'll see a sample query there which I ran today and earlier this morning, my time in there I think there were about 12 issues. So let me click on that link. Yeah, it's the number still the same. So this is for community edition. So the reason why I picked these two labels and milestone is that with these labels and the milestone it's likely that somebody from the product team has sort of gone through the issue. Make sure that it's specced out in pretty good detail. And number of gitlab people have looked at this. So this should be like issues that are relatively easier for people to get started. And I also added a way to one. So this is like one is obviously easiest versus 10 which would be very difficult. So this is sort of one way to search for like issues for newcomers to get started on. And then going back to the slide, I also want to highlight a couple of issues that one of our core team members, Hanes, brought up as potentially good ones for first time contributors. I believe the first time is like a documentation fix. So I mean, if you are looking for ideas on where to get started, I mean, definitely look at these two issues or I mean, do a simple query like I did to look for issues that would be relatively straightforward for newcomers to get started with. So that's a quick recommendation. And the next slide. So I mean, this is basically a summary of what's captured in our contributing page. So if you go to about doc.gylab.com slash contributing, you'll have a lot more of these in detail but I kind of summarize depending on the area that you'd like to contribute in whether it's in development documentation or even UX design, you'll find links where you can get started. And like I said, these four different sections are in a lot more detail on the contributing page but I summarize them here and I'll get this slide posted, we'll get this slide posted pretty soon. And the next page also includes the information on the contributing page on where to get help. So we mentioned the Gitter community room number of times but there are a couple of other links here that can help you get started. And we also have Merge Request Coaches at Ready to lend your hand and basically details on how to find the Merge Request Coaches and how to get a hold of them. And it also reviews and maintainers of various projects. So if you ever get stuck and if for whatever reason David or I are able to get back to you in a timely fashion, there are other Git labbers that should be available to help you out during the hackathon period. So I believe that's my last slide. I noticed that there are several other people that had joined the call in the last 15 minutes or so. Are there any questions or comments? Let me see if I can read the question again. I see some on the chat Ray from Aaron who's asking which GitLab repos are part of the hackathon. I'm interested in GitLab charts and GitLab repo. I would say perhaps as a rule of thumb everything that's under the GitLab dashboard group that includes GitLab C, GitLab EE, GitLab Pages, GitLab Runner, I think the charts one is in there as well. Even if it's not out there, cool. So I think for your particular interest then that should be perfectly fine. In general, we put some more emphasis on triaging merge requests from GitLab C or GitLab EE just because we want to make sure that we don't spread ourselves too thin. Obviously, we'd like to look in detail at any merge request from the way the community throughout any repos. But yeah, for the hackathon, we're actually more aware that there are merge requests throughout GitLab dashboard. So yeah, if we don't happen to reply to you on a merge request after a few hours, feel free to go to PNAS or as we said, I mean, if you go to PNAS there are ideas, you write them on your request and go make sure that makes it to the hackathon. Cool. And then I see that question from Gokhan. Yeah, thank you. So I'll try to find your merge request on CE and make sure that's labeled as hackathonMR520. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, as David noted, like if it's, if you notice that it's not getting labeled and within reasonable timeframe, just feel free to ping us on Gitter. That's probably the quickest way to get ahold of us and then we'll make sure it happens. Cool. Any other questions or comments? David, are you trying to speak or? I'm sorry. It's okay. What else? I was just, that was just a question to Gokhan. Is that the URL from the merge request? I don't seem to find it just to make sure that we are looking into it before we wrap up the call. Oh, I bet the numbers are flipped. Five, two, one, nine, eight. I've been in chat. Oh, there we go. I see it. Yeah, I saw this earlier. I didn't realize this was for hackathon but let me just add that. Cool, thank you. And thanks for checking, David, before we signed off. Any other questions? Got six minutes left, but happy to end the meeting early. All right. Well, thanks for your time, everybody. Happy hackathon, happy hacking. And we'll see you guys online soon. Just feel free to ping us if you have any questions. Bye, everyone. Yep, bye.


Welcome to The Commentaries, a podcast series from Tan in which you'll learn how to read and understand history's greatest Catholic works from today's greatest Catholic scholars. In every series of The Commentaries, your expert host will be your personal guide to not just read the book, but to live the book, shining the light of its eternal truths into our modern darkness. Visit tancommentaries.com to get your copy of the book and to subscribe for access to all the great reading plans, new episodes, bonus content and exclusive deals for listeners of The Commentaries. Hello and welcome once again. I'm Father Robert Nixon, a monk of the Order of St. Benedict and director of the Institute for Benedictine Studies at the Abbey of the Most Holy Trinity in New Norseo, Western Australia. This is the Commentaries series on The Imitation of Christ, The Great Masterpiece by Thomas A. Kemples. Today is Day 9 of our series of podcasts, and we're going to be covering today Book 3, chapters 13 to 12. Well, before we embark upon this journey, let's begin as we always do with a prayer to God, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Enlighten, Lord, our souls and hearts, and to our minds thy grace impart, lead us by thy gentle hand, teaching us to understand the wisdom of thine only Son, the humble, patient, holy One. Help us imitate Christ's ways and live His gospel all our days. Now today, as I mentioned, we're going to be dealing with Book 3, chapters 13 through to 22. This is actually a big number of chapters that we're going to be talking about today, and some of them we're going to skim over fairly briefly. As I noted before, one of the features of this book is that there is a degree of repetition that the same themes come back again, always expressed differently, with slightly different nuances and emphases. But nevertheless, we're going to focus on just a few of the chapters out of this multitude of chapters, which we're due to cover in today's brief session. Chapter 13 is entitled, The Abedience of a Humble Subject, after the example of Jesus Christ. And obedience is something which He's talked about before. Abedience is linked to humility because it means being prepared to step back from one's own will and preferences and to give way to someone else. And giving way to someone else is indirectly giving way to the will of God. If we believe that God has ordered things as they are, and of course God is omnipotent. So ultimately everything is ordained by the will of God. Chapter 14 is on the consideration of God's secret judgments, lest we be puffed up with our own good works. And this begins with the disciple speaking. And he says, You thunder forth over my head, Your judgments, O Lord, and You shake all my bones with fear and trembling, and my soul is terrified exceedingly. I stand astonished and consider that the heavens are not pure in Thy sight. If in the angels You have found sin, and have not spared even them, what will become of them, what will become of me? Stars have fallen from heaven, and I that embot dust, how can I presume? They whose works seemed praiseworthy have fallen to the very lowest, and such as before, fed upon the bread of the angels, I have seen delighted with the husks of swine. So in this case is reflecting upon the inscrutable judgments of God. God sees into the interior, into the reality. We see only the exterior. So for this reason we can never presume our innocence, our favorable judgment in the sight of God. Just as I said, as we read in the book of Job and so forth, even the angels had faults in his sight, and who are we compared to the angels? So we defer fully to the judgments of God to this ineffable judgment which wholly transcends all human comprehension. Chapter 15 is an important one. How we are to be disposed and what we are to say when we desire anything. When it begins with Christ speaking to the disciple, my son said thus on every occasion, Lord if it be pleasing to you, let this be done in this manner. Lord if it be to your honour, let it be done in your name. Lord if you see this is expedient and approve it as profitable unto me, then grant that I may use it to thine honour. But if you know that it will be hurtful to me and not expedient for the salvation of my soul, take away from me such a desire. For every desire is not from the Holy Ghost, though it seems to a man to be right and good. So we're given here instruction from Christ himself as to how we should pray, and it's following very closely what we hear in the Lord's prayer, Thy will be done. Everything we ask for from God, we should say, God if this is in accordance with your will, and your will is my salvation and my ultimate good. So if it's what you want, let it be done. There's a certain amount of humility in this, in giving up our own preferences, realising that sometimes we can be mistaken about what's good for us and what's actually bad for us. A lot of the time the things which our hearts seem to want might actually be for our own final destruction, and of course we have no way of knowing it at the time. So to preface all of our prayers with Thy will be done. And Jesus tells us at some point in the Gospel, whatever we ask in His name will be granted. But asking in His name means that we ask for the glory of His name. So we ask that it be done according to what He wants. And this is an important precondition of good petitionery prayer. Good prayer where we're actually asking for something. And if we've got nothing to ask for in prayer, in a way we should be thankful for that. But we should also always pray with the sentiment of the Lord's prayer. Lord, let Your will be done this day. Chapter 16 tells us that true comfort is to be sought in God alone. And this is so important. A recurrent thing. One of the things Thomas the Kempers frequently talks about is that the comfort which we find in this world, in the things of this world is temporary at best and often illusory and deceptive. And this chapter is in the form of the disciple speaking to Christ. He says, Whatever I can desire or imagine for my comfort, I look not for it in this life but for hereafter, for if I alone should have all the comforts of this world and might enjoy all its delights. It is certain that they would not last long. Wherefore you cannot, O my soul, be fully comforted, nor perfectly delighted but in God, the comforter of the poor and the support of the humble. Wait for a little while, my soul, wait for the divine promise, and you will have plenty of all that is good in heaven. If you desire too, inordinately, these present things, you will lose the things which are heavenly and everlasting. Let temporal things serve your use, but the eternal be the object of thy desire. For thou cannot be fully satisfied with any temporal thing, because you were not created for the enjoyment of such thing. And this is very profound. Even if we had every joy and blessing and good fortune in this world, it wouldn't lead us to true or lasting happiness or contentment. I mean, it might lead us to kind of passing contentment, passing joy, but ultimately it wouldn't last forever.  It seems to go for a long time when we're quite young, but once you reach adulthood, the years and the decades seem then just to fly by. And looking back, we think it's all been over so quickly. While human life also is limited by factors such as disease and old age, which means that our capacity to enjoy things in this world, even if we did have them, is itself strictly circumscribed and limited. So our true joy is to be sought in the things of heaven, in the things which lie beyond this world. As Saint Augustine says, we cannot find rest until we rest in God. So as long as we attach ourselves to things which are other than God, we're not going to find that rest for which our souls always long. Chapter 17 tells us that we ought to cast all our cares upon God. And it begins with Christ speaking, Son, permit me to do with you whatever I wish, for I know what is best for you. You think as a human being. You judge in many things as human affection suggests. So Christ is here telling us that we should follow His will. We should let Him do whatever seems best to Him. Our thoughts, our perceptions and so forth, always very limited. We judge as limited mortal human beings. God judges in the context of real truth. Yet often we protest against the judgments of God and we prefer that we get our own way. In this respect, we can think about the example of Christ. You know, when Christ was in the garden and He says, Lord, Father, take this chalice from me, but let it not be done according to my will, but according to your will. Of course, ultimately the will of Christ and the will of the Father were one, because they're both in substance the one true God. Yet there's this kind of conflict between the fleshly part of Christ and His divine Father, and He submits one to the other. We're also called to do the same. Whenever we face adversity or trial or difficulty, we should consciously resign ourselves to the will of God and say, God, let this work out according to your will and your judgment, not mine. We need to come to Him, as it says in the Gospel, as little children, which means giving this blind and unconditional trust and deference to His wisdom. In chapter 18, we're told that temporal miseries are to be born with patience, after the example of Jesus Christ. This word temporal, by the way, which has popped up quite a lot, is related to the word tempest, meaning time. It's normally used, though, to mean earthly things, passing things. So we need to bear with our passing miseries with patience, following the example of Christ who, of course, accepted the tremendous suffering of Calvary, knowing the glory of the resurrection which lay ahead of him. And in this chapter, Christ says, I came down from heaven for your salvation. I took upon me your miseries, not out of necessity, but moved there to by charity, that you might learn patience and might bear without repining the miseries of this life. For from the hour of my incarnation, whom I expiring on the cross, I was never without suffering. A very remarkable statement there, and perhaps some of us might wonder, you know, is that really true? Well, a traditional thinking is that Christ was always suffering during His incarnate life because of the fact that He knew full well all along what lay ahead of Him, and also because of the fact that as the divinity, the infinite God, just to be within a human body was a source of suffering, that He was somehow acutely more sensitive to all the pains of our mortal existence than a regular person was. And if we think about that, the capacity for suffering is linked to intelligence. I mean, things which have no intelligence at all, plants and jellyfish and so forth don't suffer that much. But as we rise in the scale of intelligence and wisdom, our capacity to suffer increases. Now Jesus Christ Himself was infinitely high in this scale of wisdom and intelligence, and therefore His suffering was infinitely beyond that which any human being can experience. We need to follow His example as best as we can. In chapter 19 we're told on supporting injuries and who is proved to be truly patient. Now this term injuries in this case is used as a synonym for injustices, so on supporting, on putting up with injustices and who is proved to be truly patient. So being truly patient consists not only in being ready to wait, but also being ready to put up with things, and not just put up with things which are incidental or unavoidable, but putting up with things which are actually unjust, and all of us have to do that from time to time. I mean, it's part of life, and when we think about Christ, He put up with the ultimate injustice of His condemnation, although He was truly the one innocent human being. Chapter 20 is on the confession of our own infirmity and the miseries of this life. You might recall that we've encountered another chapter on the miseries of human life. An important theme which people were quite open about in the late Middle Ages, which perhaps these days we tend not to want to talk about or look directly in the face. In chapter 21 we are to rest in God above all goods and gifts. In other words, to find our peace, our hope, our joy in God alone. This is a wonderful lesson which we've encountered before.  I who am filled, penetrated, and loaded with so many miseries, and irregular inclinations towards evil, and continual repugnance to the good. I who am every moment falling away from you to myself, and from myself into sin. I, in a word, who meet with so many obstacles within myself, which like a wall of separation would hinder me from being united with Him. But what, O Lord, is impossible to me, is easy for you. From Thy power and goodness I place all my hosts. A very wonderful sentiment there. A recognition of our inability to unite ourselves to God, because God is incomparably beyond who we are, but we rely entirely upon His goodness and mercy and grace towards us. Finally, chapter 22 of the remembrance of the manifold benefits of God, and this again is a summoning to gratitude, for God has given us everything. Everything which we possess and are, is a gift from God. And not only this, but all of our potentials. Our potentials include union with the eternal glory of God. Now this is the greatest gift which could possibly be given. Are we really grateful for that as we should be? So let's open our hearts to gratitude. I think we can be tempted to overlook the good things which we have and instead focus on what we don't have or focus on our adversities. We're told that no, the attitude which God wants of us is gratitude. So in a spirit of gratitude, we draw to the end of session 9 of this series of podcasts. It's been wonderful being with you today and exploring these great chapters of the imitation of Christ. Next time we'll be continuing with book 3, dealing with book 3 chapters 23 to 31. Until then, may Almighty God bless you, may Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, always be with you and may the Holy Spirit guide and protect you in all that you do. This has been an episode of The Commentaries, a podcast brought to you by Tan. To follow the show, study more of the greatest Catholic classics, and to support The Commentaries and other great free content from Tan, visit tancommentaries.com to subscribe and use coupon code COM25 to get 25% off your next order, including the imitation of Christ and countless more spiritual works to deepen your interior life and guide you to Heaven.


It's happened guys. I think we've reached the point now where running GNU slash Linux as your desktop operating system is Normal, I think Linux now can be considered a normie operating system It's no longer something for elites, you know No longer do you have to be some kind of rocket scientist to get Linux installed and actually customize it and configure it and all of that Now I think we're to the point where Linux is just another operating system And that wasn't the case years ago I remember when I started using desktop Linux 15 years ago, you know One of the things I used to tell people is Linux makes you a better person when you run Linux It makes you a better person because back then you had to really learn some stuff. You had to also Learn some stuff about you as far as resilience and stick to it. If this right because there were gonna be some things That didn't work right initially that you were gonna have to fix your problems And I really think that Linux made me a better person having used it way back then But now it's to the point again. I think Linux. It's just a normie operating system It's nothing special now anybody can use it your grandmother can get Linux installed, right? And then start using it right away when I review all of these distributions on the channel I never come across a Linux distro anymore that I take a look at and go. Oh my god This is bad, right? They're all great and when I say there's some bad distributions out there But they're typically one-man distributions that are you know, not necessarily serious projects They're just something somebody throws together, right? But I'm talking about the ones that have some development team, right? They've got a little bit of a community behind them or in some cases They have corporations behind them those distributions all fantastic Every time I take a look at a new release of whatever you name the major version of Linux You know the major distribution every new release is always great You know for having a bad releases the desktop environments that we have We have so many desktop environments available to us on Linux And I think all of them now when I take a look at these new versions of Genome for example Genome 42 is the best version of Genome ever I think right now that is the best version of Genome ever KDE Plasma the same thing You know the version of KDE Plasma that I just took a look at I think it's the best version of KDE ever our desktop environments are the best they've ever been And I know some people will probably disagree and say hey, you know KDE 3.5 way back in the day That was great or Genome too, you know 15 years ago. That was really fantastic But if we're being serious Our desktop environments are much better now as far as look feel customization functionality and it's just a good time to be a Linux user So I really think we've kind of crossed that bridge now. We're definitely We're seen as normal people now When somebody's running Linux on their computer or on their laptop You spot somebody running Linux on their laptop when you're standing in line at Starbucks or whatever That's no longer weird and no longer do you immediately assume that that person is some kind of hacker. I Had to pause the video there for a second a train was going by I live in just about a mile from a railroad track So it always makes these backyard boomer vlogs kind of interesting because trains go by you know every 15 minutes 30 minutes or so and then my house is also in the flight path for an airport That's not too far from my house as well So between the planes and the trains making these backyard videos is always a little tricky getting back to the point of our operating system our Linux operating system now being kind of a Normie operating system. It's nothing special. Is that a good thing? I think it is because 15 years ago when I started in Linux, I remember the Lance community We all talked about how far behind Linux was it needed so much work. We needed better Drivers we needed better desktop environments. We needed more software companies actually developing for Linux And we're getting all of that like everything we've ever wanted. We've kind of gotten it None of us would have guessed we would get there, but now that we're there Does it make some in the community a little worried? Maybe a little sad? Well for the elitist out there probably because there are some arrogant elitist a-holes In the Linux community and some of them are probably getting to the point now with that They're getting fed up because you know now that Linux is so easy. It's not really a challenge to use You know, they're gonna move to BSD or haiku or some other operating system One of the various flavors of Unix. They'll move to something else just so they can feel like they're a special snowflake But that's not That's not what I want. I want a new slash Linux to be so fantastic and so user-friendly That it is the dominant operating system as far as desktop computers That's what I want. I don't think we're that far away from it. If you had asked me five years ago I'd said no way but now The way I'm seeing things going forward and the more I see things like the success of the steam deck I think we're on the right path. I think The future is bright. Everything is just up from here guys peace