Articles on the Down Side of Technology

Here are a couple articles I saw recently related to technology and the church.

Why I Object to Screen Preaching - This gets into some good and bad reasons to object to preaching via screen, particularly the "multi-campus" model you see now.

Is Our Trust in Technology Trumping Our Natural Instincts? - Short, but makes you think about how interesting mistakes and spontaneity can be lost when we rely on our gadgets.

When We Hate What We Love - The title doesn't really match the point, which is our technology only draws out what was already in us.  More technology or less don't really change the core of who we are.

Scholars Sound the Alert From the 'Dark Side' of Tech Innovation - Though it rambles a bit, this article covers a conference this past May about the downsides of current technological innovations.

Why Does a Lack of Technology Surprise Us?

Recently my son asked me what online games I played when I was young.  I wish I had a picture of his face when I told him that such a thing didn't exist when I was growing up.  He had a mixture of surprise and amazement to think someone lived without this experience.  I explained I had stand-alone games (and got nostalgic for Sierra on-line and Lucasarts) like Minecraft, so I wasn't completely deprived.

This made me think about how I react to hearing stories of people with less technology than I have.  You might think of the Amish who choose this path, or stories from missionaries in far-flung places where even clean drinking water is scarce, or just back to the 1960's when we went to the moon on computers that are colossally out of date compared to a modern laptop.  I react the same way my son did: surprise, perhaps a bit of shock that whole groups of people do without the technology I have.

Why is that?  Why surprise?  I'd like to suggest two reasons.

One may be our cultural immersion.  We're so immersed in our own culture and the technology in it that we have difficulty even seeing the technology - it becomes invisible.  Most people in our culture have refrigerators and cell phones, so we don't think about it.  However, when they're gone we're surprised by the things that are suddenly visible by their absence.

Another, related reason may be our assumption of necessity of a particular technology.  We assume that we need a car, a grocery store, a refrigerator, etc. to be able to have eggs.  Not really.  A family in our church has a chicken coop and they have to give away eggs they get so many.  Or think of GPS systems in cars.  Maps and street signs lasted us several decades for navigation on the road.  If we haven't thought it through or seen otherwise, we may not realize that a certain technology isn't necessary and the same task can be done in another way.  Or, maybe that task isn't even necessary!

What about you?  Do you have a different reaction to a lack of technology?  Why?

Feel the need for digital detox?

I saw this article that describes a Digital Detox camp for adults. No cell phones, tablets, etc. and no talking about work.  Instead, the campers participate in essentially Boy Scout camp activities (though the reference to the 70's seems odd, considering it sounds like the camping experience my son and I shared just a few weeks ago).

Interesting quote:

"When you were a kid, your life was not dominated by the technology that it is now," he said. "We want to take people back to that easy state of living where their only concern is 'what's the next activity that I'm going to right now and what's going to be the next fun thing?'"

I take a little exception to this because our lives have been surrounded by technology for a long time.  However, I also take his point about being surrounded by screens & digital technology.   That technology demands (and gets) our attention and much of it is designed to automatically entertain us.  I think this kind of week fights against a couple things: mediated connections we think we have on social media, thinking "fun" can best be had via a relatively passive experience with a screen, and an attachment to work that eats into other parts of our lives.

Our family is going on vacation soon and we're going to leave the laptop & iPads behind.  I know we'll struggle with that, but we're taking board games and books and will hopefully remember how to have fun together without our screens in between us.

What Is a Technologist's Responsibility After the Product Is Sold?

Go read this article on Wired: Alfred Anaya Put Secret Compartments in Cars. So the DEA Put Him in Prison.  This gets at the heart of a question I've mulled over for some time.  What is the moral responsibility of someone that designs and/or builds a technology once it is purchased by the customer?

To summarize my position, the designer and builder must make a good quality product, well suited to it's purpose, and the purpose must be for good and within moral boundaries God has given us.  In this view, the designer & builder are responsible if those become clearly not true after the sale.

However, this article is about Alfred Anaya who made custom secret compartments in cars, that at least some customers used to smuggle drugs.  He was eventually convicted of federal crimes and is in jail for decades - much longer than those that actually ran the drug ring.  He never ran drugs himself, nor saw them, but saw a large stash of cash one time in a secret compartment he was repairing.

The legal issues aside for the moment, what is the moral aspect of this?  In general, I think the technologist cannot control whether someone uses their product for good or evil.  I can imagine many scenarios where I would like a hidden compartment in my car. Any technology can be used for evil, so the technologist cannot possibly design out all evil potential.  The only other criteria I can see where he may have failed is to do technology within moral boundaries.  Apparently, compartments like the ones he built are popular among drug runners.  Should he have gotten out of that business because some customers may be using them for illegal activities?  Sould he have kept a customer receipt that he submitted to police every now and then?  Should he be responsible even when he only suspects someone of running drugs and risks carges of a false report himself?  Are there legitimate, good reasons for someone to install one of these in their car?  Yes, and on that basis I think this is a bad prescedent.

Agree or disagree?

Vending Machine with a Prick for the Conscience

This is an old story, but Facebook's offices have vending machines to dispense replacement computer accessories for employees.  They're free, but there are two things that make the employees think twice about just emptying the machine for themselves.  First, the retail price of each item is displayed so the employee knows just how much they're costing the company by grabbing one.  Second, they have to swipe their employee ID card for it to dispense an item.  This way, those that do abuse the system can be found fairly easily.

I really like this use of technology.  It indicates a level of trust of the employees to do the right thing - grab what they need and no more.  The employee is shown how much they're costing the company when they take one of these items so that they must morally justify it to themselves (and to not leave the power cord where the dog can chew it up in the future).  Also, there is more accountability than what you get from an unlocked cabinet with the equipment just piled up in it, ready to take.

And, it's good for the company.  They claim the cost of managing replacement computer accessories has dropped by 35%.  That's a lot of time that IT people can spend on projects instead of deciding whether or not to replace someone's keyboard and then running it out to them.

So, here's some praise for an excellent use of technology to make life a little easier for everyone involved and supports good moral choices.

Twidiocracy

This was an interesting article: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/twidiocracy_719178.html# 

 It touches on the seeming importance of Twitter (only 16% of Internet users are on it), how much the 140 character format constrains communication, how it encourages narcissism, and how "followers" can be purchased for artificial popularity. The point about encouraging narcissism particularly struck me. Here's the writer's description of Twitter: 

 "A technology that incentivizes its status-conscious, attention-starved users to yearn for ever more followers and retweets..." 

I think any social media can encourage narcissism by letting you at least think you're reaching and influencing lots of people. We've even modernized and systematized narcissism by quantifying your popularity. You can easily track your followers, friends, likes, and retweets and check your popularity against others. 

 For myself, it's made me think about how I use social media. I'm not less sinful because I don't tweet (except to feed blog posts there) - I can be just as narcissistic through an paper newsletter. However, it seems that Twitter is a technology that should be used cautiously at risk of encouraging love for yourself.