Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Jim Au's avatar

Hi Prof. Josh. I get the idea that if the several of us commenters were sitting together in a room with you, we could easily carry on this conversation for several hours or days. It's taken me a long time to even know what I would write here, since this topic has been whirling around in my head ever since you published this post. I will say only these two things.

First, the main question is about how we can set up safeguards around new technology so as to minimize negative social and personal effects and byproducts that are bound to result. I love the word that you chose to brand this with--containment--since it reminds me of us trying to tame a wild beast that we think we can get some mileage out of if only we can get it to obey our will. Somehow, I cannot seem to keep my mind on this question, but instead I've foolishly wandered off into a parallel conversation in which I'm seeing that IT IS US who are contained by the technology which we have crafted, thinking that we are the ones in control of our universe, but in reality we are constrained to the pathways which have necessarily formed. A very literal example is in transportation. We are so focused on the cars and vehicles which we have poured massive efforts into developing and perfecting, that we are routinely guilty of having neglected to dedicate an appropriate amount of time and resources to the actual pathways on which those vehicles carry us. I admit that it sometimes feels very freeing to be out cruising on I-5 in great excess of the speed limit, but how free am I? Can I suddenly point my vehicle in any direction I want and continue to experience the same exhilaration without a suitable road underneath my wheels? And no, flying airborne will never feel the same as having my car hugging the pavement at 90 MPH and up. Every technology we have invented poses many strict and unavoidable limits on us. The way I see it, it is almost as if the technology itself poses these limits on us, who are now victimized to live with those limits since our technology is built upon so much infrastructure and social integration that it sometimes literally takes an act of Congress to change things. The freedom that we thought we were crafting for ourselves through innovation, it may be nothing more than illusion that we have drugged ourselves into believing is real freedom.

In the way that I'm thinking, it is not containment that is needed, but rather wholesale disengagement. To borrow from your example, it is not just a matter of spending less time on my mobile devices before bed (woe is me). It is finding a way (help me God!!!) to not even be enslaved to them at all. I say all that knowing that daily, I must filter through at least 100 emails to get my inbox down to the 3-5 that are critical for me to read, because either my job or ministry activities or community involvements or personal relationships or hobbies have come to depend on those digital communications.

That brings me to the second and final point, in which I am myself earnestly seeking how I might practically simplify my life so that I do not again and again find myself to be a victim of the technological bulldozer. As I write that, I am taken back to when we watched the epic silent movie "Metropolis" in a one-off History of Technology class offered at Mudd in 1979, in which Lewis Mumford's tome was required reading. Picture the beleaguered masses enslaved to keeping their massive machines running. What is the antidote? I hope that it could be this simple. Namely, God created everything in the natural order, and it was esteemed to be nothing short of good. Over the millennia, we have managed to design and invent our way around that simple goodness and have created the impossibly complex world that we inhabit today. Piece by piece, practice by practice, device by device, could we not somehow retrain ourselves to return to what God originally intended, and find a way to limit and re-purpose how technology should fit into our lives? I see this happening with people who are growing their own food as a matter of lifestyle, or those who have for the most part ditched the use of a personal vehicle (I've been trying to do this in limited ways for going on 2 decades now). I know someone who even ditched phone messaging; his last smartphone is in the bottom of a creek with a bullet hole through the screen (I know, those lunatic Oregonians!). Our society is going crazy, and right now I'm thinking especially about the Vision Pro which you mentioned. We do not have to allow our individual and collective chains to be yanked by those who institute these usage standards for us. In many cases, we can decide that we want to live more simply, more in line with what our ancestors once enjoyed, more aligned with what our Creator gave us all the while knowing that we would immediately start tinkering with it.

Well, this is by no means any kind of complete thought on my part. I think that I've been wrestling with this question probably starting with my own days at Mudd, in fact, spurred on by that history of technology class and reading Mumford. My class of 1981 was a "special" one (lucky us) in which all of us had to write a pretty lengthy dissertation in order to graduate. This topic was in fact the subject of my paper. Your post (and some neighboring ones) have merely reminded me that I am still trying to address these issues in my own life. So then, Prof. Josh, thank you.

Expand full comment
Zan Tafakari's avatar

Really insightful piece, Josh! You mentioned "The comfort of technology dulls our senses and shapes us and our communities." How do you think we can counteract this dulling of senses, especially in younger generations increasingly reliant on tech? Aside from containment. Is there space for positive-use design in this? or is the technology too potent and containment the only viable way in your opinion

Expand full comment
6 more comments...

No posts