Can Good Fiction Deliver What Technology Can't? | Lecture 2

In the second installment of her Friday Night Lectures series, Dr. Cassandra Nelson picks up where the digital age's greatest sales pitch breaks down — and turns to Scripture, John Milton, and Philip Larkin to diagnose what's really going on. Beginning with the serpent's promise in Genesis 3, she traces a through-line from the Garden of Eden to Silicon Valley: the ancient temptation to become like God, now repackaged in pixels and subscription plans.

Drawing on Paradise Lost and Dr. Faustus, Dr. Nelson argues that the internet's culture of limitlessness, anonymity, and zero accountability mirrors Milton's vision of hell more closely than it does any heaven. She explores how technology pulls us away from the very toil, love, and embodied community that make human flourishing possible — and why that matters for faith in the 21st century.

The lecture also engages with Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation, the theology of exile and redemption, and the question of whether the Church should meet the culture online — or offer something radically different.

Closing with Philip Larkin's poem High Windows, Dr. Nelson offers a vision of genuine freedom: harder-won, less flashy, and far more real.