collins -- francis collins headed up, to what degree is the information that we have in our bodies sort of a reflection? are we sort of wired or encoded in an organized fashion, and what role, again, does god maybe the technologist play in all of that? >> host: are you worried about how much time we're spending with technology? >> guest: well, yeah -- >> host: from a christian point of view? >> guest: well, as a parent of a 14-year-old and a 12-year-old, we deal with a lot of technology in our household. and the day that my kids said i want a cell phone, i had to sort of think, well, what does putting a smartphone with access to all the world's information via the internet, what does that do, you know? and what kinds of filters might we need to help them understand how to deal with that onslaught? i think all of us are feeling the effects of too much information. and so, you know, how do we

sport new all of -- sort through all of the prompts, all of the interruptions, all of the things tugging at our attention, and how do we sort out what's urgent perhaps from what matters? >> host: you write: jesus was more than a carpenter, he was a techie. [laughter] >> guest: indeed. well, it's funny, you know, everybody knows in a sense that jesus was the son of a carpenter. they don't realize that that greek word for carpenter is actually the word tecton. so it could be, you know, as we enter this new century that we will come to think of jesus as more than maybe somebody, you know, good with his hands, a handyman type of person, but was he more of a builder? was he more of a designer? was he more of an engineer? maybe if we want to understand what jesus looks like, we maybe need to look not to the front of the auditorium, but to the back of the auditorium. maybe he's that person with a flashlighting and always figuring out how to tweak things

and fix things. >> host: are are we idolizing technology? >> guest: ooh, do we idolize technology? i think when i allow it to be the first thing that i interact with in the morning and the last thing that i do at night, i've allowed it to order my day. you know, the monks actually invented the clock as a way of -- the mechanical clock as a way of ordering our days so that we would understand there's a time for work, and there's a time for prayer, and there's a time for food, and i feel like now we're allowing our smartphones to sort of dictate the hours of our day. and i wonder if our relationship is a little too intense? it's our closest companion, and do we need to turn it off occasionally? to take back the power in our lives, perhaps to power down in order to power up? >> host: do you power down?

>> guest: yes. you know, our family, i think, loves to leave our phones behind. i mean, we live here in california, and so the temptation might be to take that phone to the beach. but isn't that supposed to be time away, time apart? you know, time to think, time to not be interrupted? time to wander? isn't there a need for space in our lives to, i guess, make room, to be surprised by what's in front of us rather than this thing that's sort of telling us what's next. >> host: is that tough to do? >> guest: oh, it's very hard to separate ourselves from technology. you know, i have an assignment in class where i ask the students to put it away for 24 hours, to have no, you know, no cell phone use, put away their computers, their laptops, even their television set. and it almost drives them crazy. they're like how can i possibly

do this? my parents are panic, they'll wonder what am i doing, where wm i? they might begin that activity feeling very haired, but they -- harried, but they might do a week's worth of homework in one afternoon because they suddenly are able to concentrate on one thing rather than being fragmented and distracted by many things. >> host: are there students who can't do it? [laughter] >> guest: well, all the students are supposed to do it. i don't know -- some of them confess how hard it is, you know, and that they might have speak -- sneaked a peek and kind of, you know, picked up a little bit of update when they heard that click. but what i find is they end up kind of remarkably relieved, a little bit freed by this thing that is always beckoning them. and i think they start to wonder if it was, if it's the possibility of recovering a bit of an electronic sabbath, you

know? putting a pause on our lives on a regular basis. >> host: craig detweiler, is it possible to be a good christian and still very tech-focused? >> guest: oh, i certainly hope so. i mean, i am. i mean, i'm on facebook, i'm on twitter, you know? nobody sort of interacts with social media more than i do. and yet i'm just trying to help us to refocus, to appreciate the genius of the igods, of people like steve jobs and the engineers at google and mark zuckerberg. they have redefined our world in amazing ways. they've helped us solve the problems of abundance, of too much information, of too many songs, of too many friends, you know? they've helped us, you know, bring order to the chaos of our world. and be -- and yet life still feels a little chaotic. so i guess i'm trying to

challenge all people -- not necessarily just people of faith, but all people -- to question what degree would make technology an idol and perhaps realize the limits of what it can and can't do for us. >> host: you point out in here, and i just want to know the significance that both steve jobs and jeff bezos didn't though their real fathers. why do you bring that up? >> guest: yeah. it's an interesting thing, you know, you have such talented n a sense superior and driven people behind these companies, you know? why is it that apple and that amazon, you know, the visionaries behind those companies were so relentless and restless in their pursuit? and, yeah, it's interesting that both besos and jobs didn't know their -- b with ezos and jobs didn't know their fathers. i feel like, in a sense, they've become our fathers now, the

fathers of technology, and just had this relentless pursuit to be at the top, to be number one. i respect them, but i also wonder at what point they'll be satisfied, at what point will they be happy. >> host: you have a subchapter in here called "the problem with like, the facebook like." what is the problem? >> guest: well, one thing with the facebook like is that there's really not a dislike button. so all the time even if you have bad news to share, people's only option is to sort of like it and say, yes, i agree, you lost your job. hey, i like -- no, not supposed to like that. what do i do, you know? it sort of forces you to headache all your -- to make all your news positive, you know? even if it's something bad, you have to frame it in a way that people say, oh, i like that. and i think that's a little bit of a problem when you sort of limit human emotions and possibilities in a certain kind of way. perhaps that's the power of the hashtag that allows us to, you

know, comment on this thing that might be bad and to to sort of, you know, play with it a little bit. but it's interesting, yeah, the software of facebook itself sort of forces you to be positive and share something that deserving a thumb's up, it deserves a like. >> host: as a college professor here at pepperdine, is technology interfering with teaching? >> guest: every teacher, i think, wrestles with what to do with technology in their classrooms. i mean, the students, if they're taking notes on their laptops, they're also getting those updates, they're getting that twitter feed, you know? and so you are constantly competing for their attention. even in an exam type of situation, right? the possibility of students, you know, accessing their information via their cell phone maybe under their desk, it's very high. the temptation to cheat, i think, is ever present. so one way i've dealt with it, i'm teaching media and yet i

allow no media in the classroom, you know? no laptops, no cell phones. they have to be fully present both to the discussion and to each other. so i might use media on the scream, right? i might have a laptop that's bringing up powerpoints and slides and showing videos, but i don't want them fragmenting themselves out there. and yet when it comes time for exams, they're allowed to have all media access possible. >> host: why? >> guest: because there'll never be a time in their workplace where they're cut off from those resources. and so to test them by saying what can you remember from your head or what have you memorized is not actually a real test. the moment kids are in, they have access to all questions. so how can you sort through too many options in a limited time frame? isn't that the challenge of a workplace now, right? given all the options, how do you sort through thing, how do you read carefully, how do you

analyze, how do you make wise decisions given almost too many options? >> host: craig detweiler, you close "igods" with the question, is technology enslaving us? what's the answer? >> guest: i guess we will come to see technology as, like smartphones, as something every day. it's already moving into glass, right? google glass. i think we'll come to see it like a fork, like a spoon, like a pair of glasses. it won't be anything special, but at this point it's so captivating, it's so magical that i think we can give ourselves to it a little too boldly and up critically. and so my book "igods" is an effort to push pause long enough to just think and gain a little perspective, gain a little distance, make sure that those tools designed to serve us are not enslaving us. >> host: so the book's kind of a

warping shot across the bow? is that a fair way of putting it? >> guest: i think "igods" is a deep appreciation for the people who have created these technologies. i appreciate how they've helped us to manage abundance and too much, but it's a chance to say be careful that you haven't placed too much faith in technology and ascribed too much magic to something that is really meant to serve us rather than to drive us. >> host: "igods" is the name of the book, "how technology shapes our spiritual and social lives." craig detweiler of pepperdine is the author. >> visit booktv.org to watch any of the programs you see here online. type the author or book title in the search bar on the upper left side of the page and click search. you can also share anything you see on booktv.org easily by clicking share on the upper left side of the page and selecting the format. booktv streams live online for

48 hours every weekend with top nonfiction books and authors. booktv.org. >> the help of our cable partner, media come, booktv also spoke with bill friedricks in des moines about "real deal." >> bill knapp won the highest civilian award in the state of iowa. other iowans include grant wood, norman borlaug, so it's a huge award in iowa. it was a long day for bill, and after the award there was a reception for him at terrace hill, the governor's house. and bill sat down in a chair -- this is an old house, right? bill sat down in this antique chair, and the first lady, christy vilsack, came over and said, bill, do you know whose chair you're sitting in? that's f.m. hubbel estuary. i happened to be talking to him,

and it seemed to me the perfect statement, right? it was the 19th, 20th century businessman tipping his hat to the 20th, 31st century -- 21st century man. bill knapp he's had a huge impact on des moines in several ways. first of all, bill knapp -- probably better than anyone, better than anyone i've heard of -- can envision a piece of land and imagine what its future can be. with that he also seems to have this amazing sense obviously where development is moving, which direction the city is moving. so over the last 40 years, bill has been buying land on the periphery of the city, and as development moves that way, he develops that land or sells it and makes a lot of money. he's been very significant on the periphery of the city in doing that since the 1960s. he became very interested in downtown des moines in 1977 when he bought the hotel savory which

was a dilapidated hotel down here in downtown des moines. he spent millions remodeling and refurbishing it, and that tied him into the downtown des moines community with a group of businessmen in the des moines development organization who realize that the only way to encourage more development downtown was to put together other parcels of land and encourage other developers. so they began buying up land and selling that to developers. and bill knapp was probably the leading purchaser for that organization, so he played a big, big role in bringing capital square, which is a big building down across from the savory. he played a big, big role in bringing downtown housing into the area in the 1980s on when there wasn't much downtown housing. so bill brought in the civic center court apartments, he was responsible for bringing in the plaza condominiums, a high-rise

luxury development. he's played a big, big role downtown. and recently there's been a new organization called the des moines redevelopment company which has been doing the same thing, buying up properties, trying to get developers to come in and redevelop those properties. that des moines redevelopment company, which was pretty much bill's idea, is now involved with the new ymca, it's involved adding on the courthouse annex, and it's involved in a big convention hotel in downtown des moines. bill knapp was this kid on the farm in southern iowa who hated farming, couldn't wait to get off the farm. he joined the navy at 17 right when he graduated in 1944. he taught in the pacific for two years. he actually was a landing craft pilot that took troops back and forth to oak that withdraw in '45 -- okinawa in '45. came back to