Eulogy for the Reading Life
For those who love reading and thinking about reading, this book is a delight. Perhaps it will not change the world, but it did enrich my soul.
Read MoreThe Life We're Looking For - A Review
As we navigate modernity, sometimes it is hard to know what we are looking for. What is it that we are seeking?
Andy Crouch pursues that question in his recent book, The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World.
Crouch, who was a one-time editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, has dealt with the question of technology previously, particularly in his helpful Tech-Wise Family and alongside his daughter in My Tech-Wise Life. The latest volume builds on the earlier research, but moves beyond it to consider more broadly what sort of culture, environment, and general shape of the world humans naturally seek.
The book begins by outlining many of the reasons why we are unsettled. Crouch notes loneliness, isolation, and a radical shift from the way of life that humanity has existed in for millennia. We have become largely anonymous. Ironically, in a world where there is very little privacy, we are truly known by very few people. One of the negative results of a great deal of technology has been the loss of dependence of people on one another. According to Crouch, we have traded in our personhood for power.
The list of ways that humans have acquired power includes the “magic” of technology, the use of money instead of relying on bartering and personal exchange, and artificial intelligence. The basic theme here is that humans have chosen technique and technology to substitute for what were, at one point, interactions that required direct human to human contact.
There are distinct advantages to much of technology. The human physical condition is, measured objectively, drastically improved from prior to the Industrial Revolution. However, amidst the cheers for technologies’ progress, we have become alienated from each other and from the world, at least to some degree. In many cases, the sense of alienation has taken generations to accumulate, but appears to be advancing rapidly in the last few decades, especially since the lightspeed changes of the computer revolution.
The end of Crouch’s book is a plea to regain our sense of shared humanity, with an emphasis on some simple steps that can make the world more personal. This mostly has to do with recognizing that while technology may relieve a particular burden, it also often takes away opportunities and requires additional duties. Establishment of written language has, for example, greatly improved the ability to share stories, but it has also cause human memory patterns to change, so that our cultures no longer require us to learn, recall, and retell stories that have passed on to us by word of mouth. Now we have to write things down to remember them. There are unquestionable benefits, but significant losses, as well.
The crux of Crouch’s book is that Christians, especially, should be pursuing a deeper understanding of personhood. He notes the instance at the end of Paul’s letter to the Romans, where amidst the greetings from Timothy, Tertius the scribe, and Gaius the guy who hosts the church, there is a greeting from “our brother Quartus.” (Rom 16:23) He’s such a nobody that he was known as “the fourth,” as in the fourth son. No real name to speak of, not title. Just “our brother Quartus.” It’s easy to forget sometimes that Christianity came from such humble roots that a no name could be a someone in the middle of the church. That’s what Crouch calls the Christians back to in the midst of this modern age.
The Life We’re Looking For is a quick read. It’s easily digestible and the sort of text that would be good to put in the hands of someone overwhelmed by the weight of the world and attempts to navigate through it.
Crouch’s program of calling readers to consider the tradeoffs of technology is good, though I do think at points (as with the existence of money), he underestimates the benefit of having a basically universally acceptable medium of exchange—it does reduce the need for personal relationship, but it also ensures those on the lower end of the spectrum get access to markets and services. It may be that Crouch is overly negative to compensate for the positivity of many who see some of the advantages of technology. However, at the end of the day, Crouch makes readers think and really consider their positions well.
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My Tech-Wise Life - A Review
It’s one thing to argue that a plan like the one Andy Crouch outlines in Tech-Wise Family would work. It’s another thing entirely to find out how the people who participated in the plan felt about it. The 2020 book, My Tech-Wise Life, which was co-authored by Amy Crouch (Andy’s daughter) and Andy Crouch provides a portal into one teenager’s thoughts on her family’s approach to technology.
Amy Crouch is a student at Cornell University. As she describes herself in this book, she is not an exceptional being in the ways that our world often describes it. She is not a social media influencer with her own cable TV show, she has not won Olympic Gold, she has not developed a new technology that will end malaria in the world. However, at the age of 19, she did complete a manuscript for this volume. This is someone who may not be extraordinary in the conventional sense, but is the sort of person that I’d like to hear from about how a method of navigating the distractions of our tech-saturated world can come through and be the sort of college freshman that can write a good book.
This is a short book, but a helpful one for this particular moment. In eight chapters, Amy explains why her family’s conscious, tech-minimal lifestyle was a good thing. Each chapter is accompanied by a letter of response from Andy Crouch, Amy’s father. In Chapter One, Amy begins by demonstrating how social media can make us feel inadequate through comparison. A casual photo highlights our imperfections, which can make our image-infatuated minds dwell on negative self-perceptions. The answer that Amy provides is not to revel in self-love and post more ugly pictures on purpose, but to recognize the limitations of technology, keep tech in check, and focus on real life relationships. In the second chapter the topic is distraction. Anyone who writes knows how easy it is to get sucked into the cycle of clicking through social media platforms, email, and anything but the task at hand. Those who get notifications will find their phones constantly buzzing, drawing them away from essential tasks. The result is a harried life of distraction and unproductivity, which if started at a young age can set up patterns that undermine a teen’s future. Amy’s answer is to take control, limit apps, take media fasts, and keep the main things the main thing. This is enabled by a family structure than supports, encourages, and, when necessary, enforces such discipline.
Chapter Three wrestles with the question of connection and isolation. She discusses strategies to use technologies to connect rather than isolate. This begins by recognizing how easy it is for our portable entertainment devices to keep us isolated and treasure the connection. Social media is a fine garnish, but our goal should be a life off-grid. The secret to getting there is recognition of which has the greater value. In the fourth chapter, the topic shifts to the problem of secrets, privacy, and the digital age. Amy’s emphasis in this chapter is the problem of porn, which is distorting self-perceptions, expectations about sex, and relationships. Additionally, she talks about how the prospect of secrecy or anonymity can enable negative behaviors. Amy recognizes the good of privacy, but also that it is a limited good, so that having parents who can help when you’ve been sucked into binge watching a fairly harmless, but not-particularly-valuable show can provide some direct feedback.
Chapter Five deals with the issue of lying online. This has been encouraged, in some cases, because of the age limits of apps like Facebook, so that 11-year-olds would claim to be 13 in order to get access. Now the realization that a million identities and faux accomplishments are only a few clicks away. The message here is that it isn’t worth it, your real friends will know the truth, so you are burning bridges by presenting a false front online. The sixth chapter tackles the topic of using technology to avoid boredom. Here Amy channels some of the wisdom of her father (the culture maker) to argue that boredom is a good thing and the source of creativity and greater community.
The topic opens in several earlier chapters, but Chapter Seven explores the issue of technologies replacing sleep time, especially among teens (who need more than most adults). The stats are inarguable. 24/7 access to phones and computers is taking away from the rest that kids (and adults) need to live healthy, cognitively balanced lives. Amy’s solution is to put boundaries on phones, keep them out of the bedroom, and practice Sabbath where minimal technology is available to distract from other activities. The final chapter is an exhortation to live in hope. Basically, we need not acquiesce to the negative influences of technology. We can, in fact, take control and have a more positive experience if we take control, set limits, and live in communities that encourage healthy limits to technology.
I commend both Andy Crouch’s book, The Tech-Wise Family, and the combined effort with his daughter, Amy, My Tech-Wise Life, to both individuals and families. My Tech-Wise Life is obviously marketed toward teens, but I found it to be refreshing and helpful in many ways. It serves to undermine the argument, which I have heard some parents make, that limiting access to technology is going to “make my kid angry for living like we’re Amish.” Amy shows that when the whole family tries to live a tech-wise life it can make for a much better experience.
This book is very important in the attention economy because it shows (rather than states) the possibility and promise of limitations to technology. Amy encourages asking why one should use a particular technology or platform, not merely how to get access to it. Though the applications will change faster and faster, the principals are the same.
If you are a parent, read The Tech-Wise Family and this book, too. If you are a youth pastor, buy copies to distribute to your students. If you are a pastor, read this book, buy copies to have on hand when you have families come in for counseling due to results of stress that a tech-harried life will cause. This book does not answer all questions or make detailed theological arguments, but it provides a way forward for one of the most pressing questions of our day.
NOTE: I made the decision to refer to Amy by her first name due to the fact that this was co-authored by her father, to simplify the language. Since there are distinct divisions between her work and her father’s the first name seemed the simplest way to make the differentiation.
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12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You - A Review
There is a moment of panic when you feel like you’ve lost something vitally important. It can cause a shot of adrenaline as you look around you, feel your pockets, and ask others if they have seen it. Usually after a few seconds your find where you left your phone, sitting on the counter or in the seat beside you. The crisis is averted. No big deal. Except it reveals one of the critical dependencies of our age.
Jacob Shatzer, in his book, Transhumanism and the Image of God, discusses the phone as an extension of humanity. He notes that smartphones and tablets often function as an extension of our minds, holding data, organizing thoughts, and becoming an essential means of retention and communication.
In his 2017 book, 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You, Tony Reinke focuses on how smartphones are shaping our minds, our perceptions, and reality. As we seek to understand discipleship in this technological time, this book is a critical resource for parents, pastors, and teachers to see how this often helpful and seemingly innocuous technology is having an enormous impact.
Summary
Given the title, it is not surprising that the body of Reinke’s book consists of twelve chapters, to which he has added an introduction, conclusion, and brief epilogue. The argument is structured as a chiasm, with chapters 1 and 12 forming a pair, so that the whole book centers around two chapters that focus on identity, since identity is a question of perennial significance in the human experience.
Chapter One begins by observing that modern humans are addicted to distraction. This is not up for debate for those of us who find ourselves compelled to look at our phones constantly to see whether we’ve gotten a text, what has happened on social media, or simply because there is a dull spot in the movie we are watching. Chapter Twelve argues that because of this addiction we have lost our sense of time. That is, our present physical reality is absorbed into an ethereal “now” that causes us to neglect the world in our immediate vicinity.
The second chapter notes that our distractedness causes us to ignore the physical world around us. Surrounded by our friends, we find ourselves occupied in digital dialogue. Facing the incredible responsibility of driving a multi-ton machine down the road, we are more concerned with the chimes and chirps of our silicon companion. This is fleshed out in the eleventh chapter where Reinke observes that people are often less kind to others, both in person and online, because we ignore their humanity in the face of their digital avatar. There are real ethical consequences to our digital projection.
https://www.bdcwire.com/the-internet-fell-in-love-with-this-picture-of-the-black-mass-premiere/
Chapter Three argues that smartphones have increased our need for immediate approval. Delayed feedback is devastating. If the likes and shares don’t pile up immediately, then our digital existence is for naught. If we aren’t digitally amazing, then we are not really worth anything. Chapter Ten highlights the connection between this desire for approval and the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) that characterizes so much of online life. We are drawn to envy and deceit as we try to match everyone else’s highly edited digital reality. This is a dangerous condition for the human soul.
In the fourth chapter Reinke highlights the impact that smartphone addictions have had on literacy. When I worked at a Christian liberal arts university, I was surprised to hear faculty discuss the number of our students who admitted they had never read a full book. I was also shocked to hear students argue that they didn’t need to learn (i.e., memorize) anything because they could always use their favored search engine. The always-on tunnel of information that the smartphone enables has made people more ignorant and less literate. This, in turn, leads to a loss of a sense of meaning, which is outlined in the ninth chapter. Stories are one way that humans have captured and transmitted the meaning of life through generations. By cutting ourselves off from the ability to read, listen to, or watch whole narratives, we cut ourselves off from the ways that meaning has been communicated in previous generations. This is tragic.
Chapter Five focuses on the way that smartphones turn us into consumers who objectify the people we watch. This is true with the explosion of internet pornography mediated by smartphone technology, but also in the way that we watch models and celebrities on social media. Chapter Eight then outlines how the objectification of humans can lead us to secret vices like pornography, gossip, and other sins of various depth. It becomes easier to participate in some of these anti-human vices because the pixelated being on the other end seems much less human to us.
Chapter Six reminds us that we are shaped by what we “like” on social media. This is true in at least two ways. First, we become like that which we fixate upon. When we absorb media, it shapes the way we think. Second, to maximize traffic, the algorithms of social media and search engines are designed to feed us what we have already shown an interest in, which only perpetuates the transformation of our informational feasting. Chapter Seven turns this to show that this tendency leads toward isolation as we get narcissistically caught up in a self-shaped reality and turn away from the people around us.
Conclusion
I was expecting Reinke’s book to be much more technophobic. In fact, he recognizes that value, convenience, and, perhaps, the necessity of smartphones in our technological age.
And yet, this book provides a significant warning of the ways that we can and are being transformed by something that has become so ubiquitous that we may be tempted to ignore its impact.
This is an important book for people to read. It is balanced and well-researched. The time-bound nature of the research will tend to limit its direct applicability over time as technologies continue to advance, but the lessons in the book are timeless.
12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You is, like Andy Crouch’s Tech-Wise Family and Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows, a book that grasps the real challenges of our day and helps us navigate through the seismic shifts in society that cannot be ignored.
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Technopoly - A Review
Neil Postman’s most well known book is Amusing Ourselves to Death. There is good reason for that, since he both explains the media ecology of the early ‘80’s, including the election of a movie star presidents, and predicts where culture will head. His predictions have proved to be largely true, which is a stunning feat. He provides no timeline for what he anticipates, but he looks at the trajectory of culture and describes where it is headed—for us, where it has headed—in the decades to come.
His book, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, is less well-known, but in many ways more powerful and prescient. Published in 1992, Postman was standing at the beginning of the internet age, when personal computers were beginning to be more widely available.
The book is not about some dystopian future where Artificial Intelligence has taken over and time traveling robots have been sent back to wipe out the people that started it all. But it is a book that helps explain what technology is, why understanding that definition is important, and what it is doing to society.
From the very beginning, Postman makes it clear that technology is all around us in ways that we no longer detect. Technology fundamentally changes the way society works and how our brains function. (This is part of Jacob Shatzer’s argument in his recent book, Transhumanism and the Image of God, which is also worth your while.) He begins with one of Plato’s dialogues, Phaedrus, which contains a story of Thamus who resists the use of written languages, especially books, because it will change the way people receive information and allow readers to gain info apart from the oral tradition. To modern readers, so many centuries beyond that technological revolution, and also well beyond the revolution enabled by moveable type on printing presses, it may seem incredible to consider what life would be like without written communication. And yet, that was a technology that has fundamentally changed society in a way that we can no longer fully comprehend because it is so ubiquitous.
The central message of Technopoly is simple, but it is important: Every new technology that gets widely adopted changes society. It would, therefore, important that we ask whether those changes are good or not and what we are giving up by adopting new technologies.
According to Postman,
“Technology is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology. This requires the development of a new kind of social order, and of necessity leads to the rapid dissolution of much that is associated with traditional beliefs. Those who feel most comfortable in Technopoly are those who are convinced that technical progress is humanity’s supreme achievement and the instrument by which our most profound dilemmas may be solved. They also believe that information is an unmixed blessing, which through its continued and uncontrolled production and dissemination offers increased freedom, creativity, and peace of mind. The fact that information does none of these things––but quite the opposite––seems to change few opinions, for such unwavering believes are an inevitable product of the structure of Technopoly. In particular, Technopoly flourishes when the defenses against information break down.”
Postman further notes, only a couple of pages later, that social institutions are supposed to function as control mechanisms to help people discern which information is important and which is noise. As he notes,
“Social institutions sometimes do their work simply by denying people access to information, but principally by directing how much weight and, therefore, value one must give information. Social institutions are concerned with the meaning of information and can be quite rigorous in enforcing standards of admission.”
In this information age, even the best of our institutions cannot function fast enough to accomplish this task. And, based on the violation of trust that many institutions have engaged in or been accused of, people tend not to trust some of the institutions that might possibly be able to do a fair job at keeping up with information.
Technopoly helps explain the dis-ease of contemporary culture because we are being perpetually swamped by information and it is difficult to discern what is true. We have few reliable handlers of information that we can count on to present the information in a reasonably unbiased way. Some of the gate keepers of information, including members of the media, abuse their institutional role as information handlers to intentionally mislead through shifting perceptions.
Technopoly predicted our present state and our ongoing trajectory. Postman’s book highlights the epistemic and social nightmare we live in: there is too much information and we don’t know who to trust. Postman has few suggestions for a solution (indeed, he pokes fun at himself in the last chapter for that fact), but simply having the problem exposed is helpful.
Personally, I think that part of the solution needs to be a renewal of the Christian Mind, which I have written about previously and will discuss further in this context in a future post.
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The Reality of Our Dystopian Fantasy
Recently I have been reading dystopian fiction as I think through the nature of totalitarianism in real life. I’m struck by both the similarities and differences between the various books I have read. Although the authors have drastically different worldviews, much of what they held to be a means of control is similar and many of those means of control are already in place.
More significantly, many of the means of control that are in place in our society are voluntarily implemented. We choose to be absorbed and distracted by our televisions and smart phones; we (societally) elect to be distracted by sex in various forms. In light of these somewhat dated dystopian visions, reality is even more frightening.
Entertainment
In George Orwell’s 1984, for example, entertainment is used both as a means of control and of monitoring. The telescreen is always on, pornography is produced for the proles to consume to keep them happy, and other cheap entertainments are made available that are poor quality and degrading. Striking in Orwell’s fantasy is the nature of the violence in the movies, which was used to help the audience dehumanize other people.
In contrast, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World doesn’t have the intrusive telescreen (likely because that technology was in its infancy and had little commercial availability), but the feelies are a common source of entertainment, where the motion pictures are trite in their plot, pornographic in nature, and have technological innovations that allow the audience to get some of the physical sensations of the actors on the screen.
In both cases, the purpose of the entertainment is largely to pacify the masses. In both cases the entertainment is also a major means of shaping culture. This is reflected in the warlike nature of Orwell’s Oceania and the sensualism of Huxley’s world.
Set in an obviously fictional dystopia, the symbolism of both authors is heavy handed, but it is not too far from the techniques used in totalitarian regimes. In We Have Been Harmonised, which reads like a real-life 1984, Kai Strittmatter describes the cheesy entertainment produced for the masses to support the Communist Party. This includes forming music groups to produce party-supporting rap music: “The reform group is two years old now / and it has already done quite a lot / Reform! Reform! Reform! Reform! Reform!”
There is also overlap with the way the Nazi’s rose to power. In Milton Mayer’s book, They Thought They Were Free, German citizens describe how they were perpetually entertained through meetings, organizations, etc., so they were always imbibing the National Socialist message and not thinking about big things.
Consider, then, the message of The Shallows and Amusing Ourselves to Death that what we consume for entertainment and how we consume it deeply shapes our experience in life, particularly how we think. The difference is that we are clamoring for more of the entertainment that is destroying us. With regard to entertainment, we are living in a voluntary dystopia.
Sex as Control
Dystopian fiction also tends to see sex as a means of control.
This is nowhere more obvious than in Brave New World, where casual sex is not only allowed, but socially expected. However, prevention of the natural result of sex is an absolute social necessity as the girls are taught from childhood to execute the Malthusian Drill to prevent pregnancy. Control is exerted by sex and lots of it to keep people quiet.
In contrast, the suppression of sex is significant in Orwell’s 1984. Party members are not supposed to enjoy it, so much of Winston and Julia’s rebelling consists of sneaking off to knock knees. Orwell is less dire in his depiction of anti-natalism, but the joyless sex that Winston suffers through from his willing, but resistant wife is appalling. Children are presented as a duty and not a delight.
In C. S. Lewis’s dystopian fairy tale, That Hideous Strength, when Filostrato describes “reproducing ourselves without copulation.” Eliminating sex is a part of control for the N.I.C.E. because, “There will never be peace and order and discipline so long as there is sex. When man has thrown it away, then he will become finally governable.”
According to these various authors, either the total elimination of sex or its abundance is a means to control. These amount to the same thing, because in each of these situations, sex has become essentially meaningless.
Sex in Brave New World has no social purpose other than to pacify and to conceive through it is failure. Sex in Oceania is supposed to be pleasure free, solely for begetting future members of the Party. There is no social purpose of it. For the N.I.C.E., sex must be eliminated, because it will have no purpose. Whether there is a great deal of sex or very little sex, the physical act is always divorced from its natural purpose.
And this is exactly where we find ourselves. Contemporary “hook-up” culture is essentially similar to Huxley’s vision, though freely chosen. We need look no further than the rabid concern among left-leaning politicians that sex be divorced from its gendered directionality, and that if a couple who can procreate do copulate, that the government provide the means to prevent conception or destroy its result. The self-chosen sterility of many young professionals for the sakes of their careers, etc., is a sign of this acceptance. As a society, we certainly live much more on the Huxlean side of the spectrum than the Orwellian side, but I think we may not be too far from seeing Lewis’s dystopian vision come to fruition.
Self-Chosen Dystopia
The amazing think about each of these dystopias is how accurate they are with respect to the worst aspects of our culture. The tragedy is we often realize the unhappiness that results but fail to connect it to the cause. We are, in general, less happy than earlier societies even though we are much wealthier. Part of the reason for this is that the very things that were supposed to make life better have helped to sap its meaning.
At this point in my life, I’m not prepared to give up my smart phone. There are simply too many advantages to having the sum of human knowledge in my pocket wherever I go. What needs to change, however, is how often I pull that silicon and plastic rectangle out of my pocket to look at useless things. There is little doubt that some of my dissatisfaction with my life as it is because I’m constantly borrowing other people’s strife and longing for other people’s good.
At the same time, there are likely means of control that I can rightly eliminate from my life with no real loss and a great deal of gain. The challenge is to find the room above the antique dealer––hopefully one that isn’t bugged by Big Brother––and figure out what adds value, what distracts, and what can be eliminated. I think we’d all be happier if we spent some time doing that, though our technological controllers were much prefer we did not.
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We Have Been Harmonised - A Review
Our capacity to forget is pretty astounding, when you think about it. A few months ago the internet was blazing over the violence against freedom protesters in Hong Kong. National attention was drawn to the issue, in part, because of backlash against the general manager of the Houston Rockets, Daryl Morely. The NBA quickly came down on Morely and dozens of significant figures within the NBA (including Lebron James) stepped forward to call Morely ignorant and essentially denounce his assertion that the Chinese government might not be entirely fair to Hong Kong.
A few things were revelatory in that event: (1) The NBA, which is focused on “social justice” when convenient, completely backed down in the face of Chines pressure and silenced their players and employees of franchises. (2) Many of the players with sponsorships in China were quick to denounce as “ignorant” the comments, despite basic facts to the contrary. (3) People upset at the NBA have already forgotten (for the most part) and are back to watching the NBA, posting about it on social media, and pretending nothing ever happened.
All of this was orchestrated through financial coercion and propaganda by the Chinese government, which is really just a puppet of the Communist Party.
A recent book by German journalist, Kai Strittmatter, We Have Been Harmonised: Life in China’s Surveillance State, pulls back the curtain on the oppressive regime in China, how it has taken hold of many Chinese hearts and minds, and how China is working to expand its power throughout the world.
Summary
Strittmatter’s volume is particularly interesting because he spent roughly three decades as a correspondent in and about China. He has, therefore, seen many of the changes occur that have turned China into a house of technological horrors. Since the advent of the internet, smartphones, and face recognition technology in China, the state has begun to develop the ability to manage every aspect of the peoples’ lives.
At one level, this is a primary source on China’s shifting controls. On another level, it is a treatise that helps explain how totalitarian regimes rise, get control, and use their people to “voluntarily” enforce the will of the rulers.
Much of what Strittmatter writes marries up with dystopian fiction. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength, Huxley’s Brave New World, and Orwell’s Animal Farm are all mashed together in the horror that is contemporary China. The frightening thing is that, because of our willingness to adopt new technologies, many aspects of it may be coming to the global West, too.
China uses a mixture of old-fashioned control techniques and modern technology to anesthetize some of their population, terrorize some of the people, and extinguish the remainder. The state invests heavily in propaganda, papering cities with pro-Party references. Even though the messages are often implausible, the message is clear that the Part controls the bandwidth.
Although there are still privately held corporations in China, despite the rise of President Xi’s new authoritarianism, but because of the power of the Communist Party, companies self-censor. Social media apps (like TikTok) have teams of censors, thousands of company employees, who read and delete posts. They also write algorithms to automatically delete phrases that might be sensitive. Even Western corporations (like the NBA) will self-censor to appease the Chinese leaders and so retain access to the lucrative markets.
The internet in China functions more like an intranet. This means that the Communist Party has installed firewalls to prevent the people from getting to Western websites. Facebook is off-limits. Even Wikipedia is forbidden. The Chinese replace these sites with their own, but always under the government’s control. For example, the Chinese equivalent of Wikipedia has removed reference to the massacre in Tiananmen Square and has even removed the historical summary of the news in 1989 to erase that event from common memory.
Much of this is boiler plate totalitarianism, which is bad enough. However, the rise of AI, prevalence of closed-circuit cameras and other technologies like smart phones turns horror into hell.
Imagine a society where cash was being slowly restricted and all purchases were now being made by credit cards or apps on the smart phone. Every purchase would then be traceable and it would be impossible to step out of the system. Imagine that the government had access to the location on your phone at all times, could turn on the microphone or camera, and could study your behaviors. Imagine that your credit history was tied into the larger pool of information about you. Imagine if crosswalks had cameras with facial recognition software, which would document if you ever crossed on the wrong light.
All of this is occurring in China. And, people are cooperating, for the most part. There are obvious benefits to this. For example, it makes it easy to screen potential suitors. No need to even date a man who will not pay his debts. No need to check the credit on a person, because you can see their behavior is consistently responsible.
But all of the convenience has a dark side, too. Those that are deemed risky citizens can be monitored even more closely. They can be prevented from travelling or making purchases. Their family can be harassed when they do something that is considered untoward. In other words, the state gains the ability to coerce any behavior it deems appropriate.
That would be wonderful if the rulers were entirely benevolent. However, as the saying goes, power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That is the growing legacy of China.
Analysis
Little of what Strittmatter reports has not been published before. Reports of the social credit system and state surveillance structures have made their way into Western media before this. However, We Have Been Harmonised puts the information together in one coherent volume.
This is not the easiest volume to read. At time the prose is a bit heavy, likely due to the fact it has been translated into English from the German. However, the work of reading the volume should not dissuade people from reading it.
We Have Been Harmonised is a critically important book. It is informative about the nature of the Communist regime in China. Many of these stories are not adequately discussed in Western culture. They should give us pause in what we purchase from China and how corporations deal with China.
More significantly, this book raises questions about the nature of community, the place of individuals within the community, the authority of the state, and the dangers of technology. Anyone thinking seriously about politics and technology in the contemporary age should read this volume. What China is doing by fiat, many of us are enabling voluntarily in the United States. This is a cautionary tale.
Note: I received a gratis copy of this volume from the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.
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The Shallows - A Review
Recently several news outlets have reported that humans have begun to have skeletal adaptions based on our modern lives. Although the exact cause may not be clear, it appears the people that use smartphones and other digital devices regularly may begin to see biological changes due to looking down more than any previous generation. A humoristic vision of the human future might have people with extremely well-developed thumbs and hunched shoulders several hundred years in the future.
Whether our physical bodies are indeed changing will likely be explored more fully in the years to come, but it appears that the internet is indeed changing how people think, reason, and learn. That thesis is the subject of Nicholas Carr’s seminal book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.
Published in 2010, Carr’s book has been oft cited, including in more recent books like Andy Crouch’s Techwise Family and Jacob Shatzer’s Transhumanism and the Image of God. At the time, Carr’s book sounded an alarm about the changes to the human mind caused by the easy access to information that was always available.
Though it has been nearly a decade since Carr wrote, his ideas have been proven to be more correct than he likely could have imagined. When his book was published, the iPhone was only a few years old and smartphones were just beginning to exist at the price point where the majority of the population in the developed world could have access to them. Now it is only the rare individual that does not have a smartphone.
As internet memes remind us, the smartphone would have ruined a large number of movie plots recorded through history. Is there a bomb in the building? No need to rush through traffic to warn those inside, simply text, call, or instant message those threatened by disaster. This wonder of technology in the form of a quarter pound of silicon and heavy metals promises a world where communication is easy and instantaneous. That sounded like a promise of lower stress and a simpler life.
The reality has not lived up to the promise. Surveys continue to indicate that people are more stressed now than in decades past. There seems to be good evidence that the internet, and particularly constant access to it, are increasing the feelings of stress and disconnection.
Additionally, human learning habits have changed. While I served on the administration of Oklahoma Baptist University, I would overhear students complaining about closed book exams. Their reasoning was that “in the real world” they would be able to do an internet search for all of the answers. They could see no need to know historical facts or even how to do mathematics. When the information or process was really needed, it would only be few keystrokes away. This was not a particular trait of students at my university, but a general trend in how the population values knowledge and skill. The pervasiveness of this attitude has been reinforced by the recent graduates that I have worked with who have little cultural awareness (outside of the memes and hot-button issues they have been inundated with) and lack the ability to learn.
One of the key changes Carr highlights is the shift from deep reading to skimming. The internet fuels this, as people spend less and less time on a given website. Our brains reward us for changing the source and nature of the stimulation we receive with a little hit of dopamine. This is why many kids’ shows and even recent, popular movies change camera angles at a nausea-inducing rate. This is why when I see people outside at a scenic destination, they are less overwhelmed with the grandeur of the sights and more concerned with posting their selfies and checking to see who has affirmed them for sharing.
The change in the ability to read has become apparent in my own life. Since I have adopted a smartphone and the internet is only a click away wherever I am I have a harder time focusing on deep reading. Even when my phone is across the room, my eyes wander off the page periodically as I begin to wonder what is going on outside of my immediate vicinity. There is a constant pull to be stimulated that I was less subject to before I spent my day at an internet-connected computer with a supercomputer in my pocket.
It is not clear what changes will evolve in humans and in society in the coming years, but there is a case to be made that many of them will be a net negative. As Christians we need to think carefully about what technology is doing to us and, more significantly, what technology is for. It seems as if easy access to the internet is making us shallower as individuals. If that is the case, then we must find ways to resist the deleterious effects that may limit our ability to meditate on Christ and become more like him.
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Tech Wise Family - A Review
There are twin dangers in dealing with contemporary problems. The first is to assume that the world has seen nothing like a given issue and that wise solutions must be manufactured anew, independent of historical sources of wisdom. The second danger is to assume that there is nothing new about a given problem and that the solution is to go on about our normal course of business.
In his 2017 book, The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place, Andy Crouch avoids both dangers. He recognizes that current technologies threaten the to exploit human vulnerabilities in new ways, but that wisdom to navigate the threat can be found in historical explanations of human nature and the purpose of the family.
There is an abundance of data that shows that the new attention economy is straining the social-fabric of our world. The prevalence of social media has enabled hyper-individualistic communities to arise that are sometime relatively harmless, but sometimes allow socially caustic influences like racism, sexual revisionism, and collectivism to coalesce in unhelpful ways. Similarly, the constant pull to look away from others and toward our phones is damaging our families and our local communities. The social experiment of putting a supercomputer in our pockets and allowing constant access to limitless entertainment is a little over a decade old, and the early results seem to be far from positive.
Without wading too far into the argument of the potential benefits of technology versus its drawbacks, Andy Crouch proposes that families need to take steps to use technology appropriately. We need not avoid it altogether, but we need to ask the fundamental question, “What is this good for?” Then we need to adapt our usage of technology to get the best out of it.
Crouch’s approach assumes the value of the nuclear family, but also takes into account the broader value of the extended family and community, including the nature of the family as the church. The main purpose of community and family is not merely to continue existence and ensure entertainment, but to form people into responsible humans. He offers ten “Tech-Wise Commitments” to frame a balanced use of technology.
1. “We develop wisdom and courage together as a family.” –– He recognizes the central purpose of families is to form humans.
2. “We want to create more than we consume. So we fill the center of our home with things that reward skill and active engagement.” –– Notably, many homes are oriented around the television or computer, which often encourage passive entertainment. He offers practical suggestions to instill a culture within the home that encourages creativity and activity.
3. “We are designed for a rhythm of work and rest. So one hour a day, one day a week, and one week a year, we turn off our devises and worship, feast, play, and rest together.” –– This is the concept of Sabbath woven into the fabric of the family. It recognizes that while often being passive forms of entertainment, electronics are often drains on vital energies. Turning them off helps facilitate true rest and recreation.
4. “We wake up before our devices do, and they ‘go to bed’ before we do.” –– For many, the last and first thing they see each day is the blue light of their phones. There are studies that show teens being deprived of sleep (and brain development time) by the interruptions and temptations of their phones. Crouch recommends charging phones away from the bedside table.
5. “We aim for ‘no screens before double digits’ at school and at home.” –– The Crouch family had no television in the home until their youngest was 10. They worked with their local school system to minimize the dominance of “learning technology” in the curriculum. This comes from the realization that much less learning than often promised usually comes from various techno-centric approaches to instruction.
6. “We use screens for a purpose, and we use them together, rather than using them aimlessly and alone.” –– Again, the purpose of life is to grow toward something. The purpose of the family is to make better people. Therefore, isolation and idle entertainment are barriers to those goals.
7. “Car time is conversation time.” –– As a public-school family, the Crouches use their car time to communicate with their children and each other in a focused environment. This may be less applicable to families that spend more time together.
8. “Spouses have one another’s passwords, and parents have total access to children’s devices.” –– Open access to each other’s browser history is often a means to prevent sliding into unhealthy habits. This approach recognizes the importance of trust and honesty. It also recommends the unique dangers that electronics offer to young people.
9. “We learn to sing together, rather than letting recorded and amplified music take over our lives and worship.” –– There is something quite powerful about unamplified human voices raised in songs of praise. This is something that has been minimized by the presence of easy everywhere music of unlimited quantity and variety.
10. “We show up in person for the big events of life. We learn how to be human by being fully present at our moments of greatest vulnerability. We hope to die in one another’s arms.” –– Technology has an amazing power to build community and minimize the impact of distance. It has tended toward isolation. This is, perhaps, the most important of the ten commitments, because it recognizes the need for real, personal contact that cannot be replaced by digital connections.
One need not agree with everything Crouch proposes to find benefit from this book. Some of his proposals would be much easier to implement in a family that is not already techno-centric (so young parents take heed). However, even beginning to consider the place that technology should have in our families is a step in the right direction.
Even more than his practical suggestions for making a better use of technology, Crouch’s discussion of the purpose of the family is important for our consideration. We would do better to consider the reason why God formed families and what their function is. That would help us to value it, put it in its proper place, and enhance the flourishing of our communities one family at a time.
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Transhumanism and the Image of God - A Review
Transhumanism is a term that will be unfamiliar to many Christians, but will become increasingly important in the coming years. Transhumanism, simply defined, is “the belief or theory that the human race can evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations, especially by means of science and technology.”
For some, this term conjures images of Darth Vader, the Borg from Star Trek, or the dystopian world of The Matrix. However, the reality is that transhumanism is around us, is much more pervasive than we often believe. To some extent, all technological innovation leads to changes in humanity, but that pace appears to be accelerating.
Our smartphones are changing the way that we focus, constantly dragging our attention away from more significant things to the trivial. Social media is functionally altering the way that we socialize with one another. We tend to focus on documentable events rather than companionable experiences. The internet and the availability of search engines are modifying how we value knowledge of facts.
In his recent book, Transhumanism and the Image of God, Jacob Shatzer shows that transhumanism is with us now and, to some degree, inescapable. At the same time, it is our responsibility as Christians to begin to ask questions about to what degree we can accept the changes demanded by technology and to what degree we ought to resist them.
At its most radical level transhumanism includes the intentional tampering with the human genome. The groundwork for a radical reimagining of the possibilities for this sort of tampering is being laid in China, for example, where recently human brain genes were put in rhesus macaque monkeys. Or, pig brains have been kept alive––to some degree––after they have died. These are experiments whose long term goal is to push back death for humans, perhaps even leading to eternal life.
Shatzer rightly unpacks some of the potential ethical questions that are folded in questions like these. For example, the ability to tamper with the human genome and “improve” it might have consequences we have not yet anticipated in terms of mutation. It would be rather cruel to modify particular humans into a form that undergoes excruciating pain beginning at age 30 or has increased opportunities for psychoses. These are the sorts of consequences we might not uncover until we have already cursed a generation to such an unfortunate and unnecessary fate.
Even without unforeseen consequences that impact the modified humans directly, such practices raise ethical concerns about how technological mutation of certain humans might leave those who can’t afford the modifications (or are unwilling to tamper with humanity) as a permanent sub-class to the new generation of Supermen. Thought experiments regarding such modification always begin with the “common good” in mind, but history has shown that concern for genetic improvement tends to end poorly for those perceived as second-class humans. Additionally, he rightly notes that, “We in the West spend on Botox while others throughout the world lack mosquito nets to help protect from malaria.”
But the main point of Shatzer’s book is not to raise alarm about some dystopian future but to point out the many ways even Christians within our culture adopt technology and adapt to its demands without ever considering how we are being changed and whether or not the technology is good. We often never ask the question of purpose and value. Instead, we focus on the marginal benefits or novelty of the given technology. As a result, many of the men in the church are addicted to internet pornography, millions of Christians spent hours on their phone pointlessly scrolling and almost no time in prayer or Scripture reading, and we are damaging our bodies through sedentary lives inspired by technology. These are real consequences, right now. These are realities we need to wrestle with.
Transhumanism and the Image of God is a reminder that we need to reconsider what it means to be human. It is a call to reconsider what this life is about and in what ways technology is distorting the created order or masking its goodness. The book is carefully written and simply explained. Although it was published by IVP Academic, it is well within the difficulty range of laypeople who regularly read.
Shatzer’s book deserves a wide reading. This is the beginning of an important conversation; one that Christians cannot afford to sit out. Pastors and other church leaders should read this as they consider the way they are shaping liturgies and the structures of their church programs. Parents should read this book to begin to evaluate what sort of humans we are raising. We cannot afford to drift with the rapidly shifting technological currents, otherwise we will wake up in a few decades unable to recognize the sorts of humans we are and what we have done to the generations that come behind.
Note: I received a gratis copy of this volume with no expectation of a positive review.
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The way we talk about humans also has moral implications, which are more significant than how we treat our pets. In his 2011 book, Less than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, David Livingstone Smith explores how language changes culture and leads to the justification of extreme violence against others, especially when they become perceived as less than human.