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.
Jim, thanks for this comment. So many good things here. If there is enough interest, maybe we could organize a time for some readers to get together on Zoom for a mini conference to discuss some of these ideas. Will think about what that might look like.
I appreciate your challenge for disengagement and agree that in some cases this is necessary. Containment is not the only option, nor is it the best option in all situations.
Thanks as well for sharing some of your story from Mudd and your History of Technology class. Your experience is exactly the type of conversation I'm trying to foster on campus today. Would love to get together if you are ever able to make it back to campus.
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
Hi Zan, this is a great question. The big thing I would say is that we need to understand the importance and value of in-person community. It’s not that technology can’t help us to cultivate that, but the natural mode is to supplant, not support it. We need to be thoughtful about how we engage with our devices. The piece I published today helps to explore a bit more of my thinking on how we can parse this: https://joshbrake.substack.com/p/the-innovation-bargain
Would be curious to hear your thoughts and reflections on that.
Well thought-out and expressed. We might want to consider adding to the containment plan something akin to a feedback loop. That is, something to help us know how well we are doing in the art of 'containment' (or anything else, of course). Something in the way of 'measurement' or 'evaluation' is required. I know you know this, just wanting to add it in.
But more importantly, I want to post something a bit longer in this comment: Some words that I heard from the Lord on the 18th of May 2023. I posted this on my blog (https://listenmychild.com) entitled "Are we making tools or idols?" and since much of this discussion is about tools, here it is:
Sunday 14 May 2023
For weeks, now running into months, I’ve been vexed about this piece of the technology domain we are calling “artificial intelligence.” (See “The deception of the digital,” 25 November 2022, and “A word about time,” 26 September 2022.
Vexed, probably isn’t really the right word, more like confused, angered, frustrated, saddened and deeply troubled. An editorial opinion in the New York Times by Thomas Friedman (May 2, 2023) entitled “We Are Opening the Lids on Two Giant Pandora's Boxes” eloquently spoke of the very real dangers we are standing in, having ‘released’ AI into the wild, so to speak. Yet many discussions of AI are almost willfully ignoring the very real spiritual dimensions of the technology domain.
This Sunday morning, I had walked with Luke on the beach in the early morning breeze, calling out to God, with all my problems, questions, praise and worship songs, but there was only the sound of waves and seagulls in reply.
In my spirit, on the watery periphery of my vision, I can make out a signal flag:
This stands for the letter “U”, which means: “You are standing into danger.”
________________________________________
After driving home, I was standing in the driveway when the Lord spoke a single sentence:
"There is a difference, child, between making tools and making idols."
There was a whisper, a pointer that followed this, a reference to scripture: Habakkuk 2:18-19; a beautiful chapter, Habakkuk has made his complaint to the Lord that the wicked seem to be acting without regard to any judgement or discipline from the Lord. Now, he stands is watch and listens for the Lord’s reply; it is these latter verses that jumped off the page to me, the Lord’s words about idols:
18 “Of what value is an idol carved by a craftsman?
Or an image that teaches lies?
For the one who makes it trusts in his own creation;
he makes idols that cannot speak.
19 Woe to him who says to wood, ‘Come to life!’
Or to lifeless stone, ‘Wake up!’
Can it give guidance?
It is covered with gold and silver;
there is no breath in it.”
I am covered with a small shiver of Holy fear, because I’ve been talking about “guidance, navigation & control” asking in many technical pages and forums, asking: “Who or what is giving us our guidance, who or what is doing the navigating, and who or what is actually in control?” With all our technology, all our devices, flooding us with ‘information’ daily, it’s impossible not to think of the tiny silver-colored contacts and tiny components in each of our phones.
There is a cross-reference in my bible to Psalm 115, and here is further amplification about our idols (verses 2-8),
2 Why do the nations say,
“Where is their God?”
3 Our God is in heaven;
he does whatever pleases him.
4 But their idols are silver and gold,
made by human hands.
5 They have mouths, but cannot speak,
eyes, but cannot see.
6 They have ears, but cannot hear,
noses, but cannot smell.
7 They have hands, but cannot feel,
feet, but cannot walk,
nor can they utter a sound with their throats.
8 Those who make them will be like them,
and so will all who trust in them.
It is repeated confirmation, because he has been emphasizing again and again his dimensionless-ness, his very being in more than our five senses (see “More than angry”, 7 April 2023, and “The Trail of Tears”, 19 January 2022). And here is an answer to me directly about the idol we are making of “artificial intelligence”, something which cannot smell of feel or love, something which has no breath in it al all. Lord, thank you so much.
No sooner have I finished writing the scriptures in my notebook than he continues:
"It is good that you create, build, make, for you are made in my image, my dream. With all your senses, with all of the workings of your beautiful hands, I want you to use what I have given you, use the abundance of the earth. But use to your good, to the good and service of all, and use in reverence for everything on earth."
(I know in my spirit that the word “use” means “steward, because I know that we have been given a Dominion Covenant, a responsibility to tend and nurture all that we see, have and use.)
"Your abilities to imagine and create tools are precious gifts, child. I watch and guide – if you seek me – as you make tools and structures and instruments, which grow and feed and heal. I see you make tools of destruction and warfare. I know that tools made for one purpose have become tools or manipulation and oppression. I know that tools for communication have become something more vicious than many can even recognize or admit. The enchantment cast by the abusers of these tools makes many of my children believe that they are powerless, and the must somehow meekly accept ‘some of the bad to get more of the good.’
Consider that very carefully, child, because the carefully constructed addictive qualities built into some of your tools has made them idols, and I detest idol worship among my people.
What have I told you about tools before, child?"
“That your tools have dimensions unknown to us, Father. That your tools are sharper and harder and more precise that we can imagine. That your tools remove lie, hypocrisy, and poison from us. ”
"I have told you before that so many of your tools and inventions and manufactured things are marvelous. Truly there is much good accomplished by so many. I know how you have used tools to create complex systems, clockworks, mechanisms, and structures. I created in you the abilities to observe, identify and resolve problems and challenges.
I know every word that is written and spoken about your technologies and tools, child. I know all the supposed reasoning and logic that attempts to justify creating and releasing tools and technologies which do not nurture and serve, but dominate, steal and oppress. I know that you will be mocked and ridiculed for saying these things, because I know that my people are quibbling over gnats of definitions while giant creatures run amok through your midst.
You are right to observe that unbridled, unconstrained, un-thought-out creations will crash, as so many of your own experiments and tests have done before. If you, my children, will ask me, I will show you how and what, and at what pace to build and develop. Yet if you ask me, seek me, I require that you listen more than hear, that you see more than look, that you feel and love more than just touch. I require that you then obey as I direct, I require that you build and create for mercy and justice, and to do this for every generation that will follow you. For you know that I lead and rule with transcendent Love and Power.
Frank, thanks for the thoughtful comment. I particularly appreciate your focus on how our current efforts in technological development are intertwined with our natural human impulses towards idolatry and trying to tease out when a technology is a tool for a specific purpose and when it is playing a bigger role. I really like Andy Crouch's framing of instruments vs. devices here (https://journal.praxislabs.org/we-dont-need-superpowers-we-need-instruments-860459cfc165). We do need to ask the question about if we decide to pursue the development of a particular technology and weigh the potential pros and cons before we automatically assume that building it is a good idea.
And as you noted, we certainly need an evaluative component of our feedback loop to allow us reflect on how things are going. In our haste, I think that this is one component that we don't have firmly in place but need to establish.
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.
Jim, thanks for this comment. So many good things here. If there is enough interest, maybe we could organize a time for some readers to get together on Zoom for a mini conference to discuss some of these ideas. Will think about what that might look like.
I appreciate your challenge for disengagement and agree that in some cases this is necessary. Containment is not the only option, nor is it the best option in all situations.
Thanks as well for sharing some of your story from Mudd and your History of Technology class. Your experience is exactly the type of conversation I'm trying to foster on campus today. Would love to get together if you are ever able to make it back to campus.
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
Hi Zan, this is a great question. The big thing I would say is that we need to understand the importance and value of in-person community. It’s not that technology can’t help us to cultivate that, but the natural mode is to supplant, not support it. We need to be thoughtful about how we engage with our devices. The piece I published today helps to explore a bit more of my thinking on how we can parse this: https://joshbrake.substack.com/p/the-innovation-bargain
Would be curious to hear your thoughts and reflections on that.
That's a great explanation - thanks for taking the time to share that! I'll have a read of your next piece today :)
Well thought-out and expressed. We might want to consider adding to the containment plan something akin to a feedback loop. That is, something to help us know how well we are doing in the art of 'containment' (or anything else, of course). Something in the way of 'measurement' or 'evaluation' is required. I know you know this, just wanting to add it in.
But more importantly, I want to post something a bit longer in this comment: Some words that I heard from the Lord on the 18th of May 2023. I posted this on my blog (https://listenmychild.com) entitled "Are we making tools or idols?" and since much of this discussion is about tools, here it is:
Sunday 14 May 2023
For weeks, now running into months, I’ve been vexed about this piece of the technology domain we are calling “artificial intelligence.” (See “The deception of the digital,” 25 November 2022, and “A word about time,” 26 September 2022.
Vexed, probably isn’t really the right word, more like confused, angered, frustrated, saddened and deeply troubled. An editorial opinion in the New York Times by Thomas Friedman (May 2, 2023) entitled “We Are Opening the Lids on Two Giant Pandora's Boxes” eloquently spoke of the very real dangers we are standing in, having ‘released’ AI into the wild, so to speak. Yet many discussions of AI are almost willfully ignoring the very real spiritual dimensions of the technology domain.
This Sunday morning, I had walked with Luke on the beach in the early morning breeze, calling out to God, with all my problems, questions, praise and worship songs, but there was only the sound of waves and seagulls in reply.
In my spirit, on the watery periphery of my vision, I can make out a signal flag:
This stands for the letter “U”, which means: “You are standing into danger.”
________________________________________
After driving home, I was standing in the driveway when the Lord spoke a single sentence:
"There is a difference, child, between making tools and making idols."
There was a whisper, a pointer that followed this, a reference to scripture: Habakkuk 2:18-19; a beautiful chapter, Habakkuk has made his complaint to the Lord that the wicked seem to be acting without regard to any judgement or discipline from the Lord. Now, he stands is watch and listens for the Lord’s reply; it is these latter verses that jumped off the page to me, the Lord’s words about idols:
18 “Of what value is an idol carved by a craftsman?
Or an image that teaches lies?
For the one who makes it trusts in his own creation;
he makes idols that cannot speak.
19 Woe to him who says to wood, ‘Come to life!’
Or to lifeless stone, ‘Wake up!’
Can it give guidance?
It is covered with gold and silver;
there is no breath in it.”
I am covered with a small shiver of Holy fear, because I’ve been talking about “guidance, navigation & control” asking in many technical pages and forums, asking: “Who or what is giving us our guidance, who or what is doing the navigating, and who or what is actually in control?” With all our technology, all our devices, flooding us with ‘information’ daily, it’s impossible not to think of the tiny silver-colored contacts and tiny components in each of our phones.
There is a cross-reference in my bible to Psalm 115, and here is further amplification about our idols (verses 2-8),
2 Why do the nations say,
“Where is their God?”
3 Our God is in heaven;
he does whatever pleases him.
4 But their idols are silver and gold,
made by human hands.
5 They have mouths, but cannot speak,
eyes, but cannot see.
6 They have ears, but cannot hear,
noses, but cannot smell.
7 They have hands, but cannot feel,
feet, but cannot walk,
nor can they utter a sound with their throats.
8 Those who make them will be like them,
and so will all who trust in them.
It is repeated confirmation, because he has been emphasizing again and again his dimensionless-ness, his very being in more than our five senses (see “More than angry”, 7 April 2023, and “The Trail of Tears”, 19 January 2022). And here is an answer to me directly about the idol we are making of “artificial intelligence”, something which cannot smell of feel or love, something which has no breath in it al all. Lord, thank you so much.
No sooner have I finished writing the scriptures in my notebook than he continues:
"It is good that you create, build, make, for you are made in my image, my dream. With all your senses, with all of the workings of your beautiful hands, I want you to use what I have given you, use the abundance of the earth. But use to your good, to the good and service of all, and use in reverence for everything on earth."
(I know in my spirit that the word “use” means “steward, because I know that we have been given a Dominion Covenant, a responsibility to tend and nurture all that we see, have and use.)
"Your abilities to imagine and create tools are precious gifts, child. I watch and guide – if you seek me – as you make tools and structures and instruments, which grow and feed and heal. I see you make tools of destruction and warfare. I know that tools made for one purpose have become tools or manipulation and oppression. I know that tools for communication have become something more vicious than many can even recognize or admit. The enchantment cast by the abusers of these tools makes many of my children believe that they are powerless, and the must somehow meekly accept ‘some of the bad to get more of the good.’
Consider that very carefully, child, because the carefully constructed addictive qualities built into some of your tools has made them idols, and I detest idol worship among my people.
What have I told you about tools before, child?"
“That your tools have dimensions unknown to us, Father. That your tools are sharper and harder and more precise that we can imagine. That your tools remove lie, hypocrisy, and poison from us. ”
"I have told you before that so many of your tools and inventions and manufactured things are marvelous. Truly there is much good accomplished by so many. I know how you have used tools to create complex systems, clockworks, mechanisms, and structures. I created in you the abilities to observe, identify and resolve problems and challenges.
I know every word that is written and spoken about your technologies and tools, child. I know all the supposed reasoning and logic that attempts to justify creating and releasing tools and technologies which do not nurture and serve, but dominate, steal and oppress. I know that you will be mocked and ridiculed for saying these things, because I know that my people are quibbling over gnats of definitions while giant creatures run amok through your midst.
You are right to observe that unbridled, unconstrained, un-thought-out creations will crash, as so many of your own experiments and tests have done before. If you, my children, will ask me, I will show you how and what, and at what pace to build and develop. Yet if you ask me, seek me, I require that you listen more than hear, that you see more than look, that you feel and love more than just touch. I require that you then obey as I direct, I require that you build and create for mercy and justice, and to do this for every generation that will follow you. For you know that I lead and rule with transcendent Love and Power.
So much do I love you."
Frank, thanks for the thoughtful comment. I particularly appreciate your focus on how our current efforts in technological development are intertwined with our natural human impulses towards idolatry and trying to tease out when a technology is a tool for a specific purpose and when it is playing a bigger role. I really like Andy Crouch's framing of instruments vs. devices here (https://journal.praxislabs.org/we-dont-need-superpowers-we-need-instruments-860459cfc165). We do need to ask the question about if we decide to pursue the development of a particular technology and weigh the potential pros and cons before we automatically assume that building it is a good idea.
And as you noted, we certainly need an evaluative component of our feedback loop to allow us reflect on how things are going. In our haste, I think that this is one component that we don't have firmly in place but need to establish.
Indeed @Josh Brake - which naturally includes how our brain develops and functions ...