Technology & Spirituality , livre ebook

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C ONTENTS
Acknowledgments
0 Introduction: Redefining the Boundaries
1 Tis a Gift to Be Simple
2 Finding Our Way
3 Virtual Village
4 I Am My iPod
5 Arigato, Roboto
6 I Can t Drive 55
7 Neutrons, Networks, and New Models of God
8 The Truth Shall Set You Free
Notes
Suggestions for Further Reading

About the Author
Copyright
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A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
Kids whose worst subject in school was English don t grow up to write books without a lot of help. The list of people I ought to thank (or blame) for getting me here is probably endless, but I ll name just a few of the more notorious.
Tom Mullen for demonstrating how writing can be a ministry, John Miller for allowing me to believe I could write, James McElhinney for teaching me to tell the truth, no matter what, Haven Kimmel and Joe Armstrong for showing me how, Jay Marshall for the opportunity, Steve Reid for the encouragement, Stephanie Ford for the path, and all my friends, enemies, students, teachers, mentors, and colleagues at Earlham School of Religion, Bethany Theological Seminary, and Ball State University for giving me a life.
I owe a special debt of gratitude to my editor, Mark Ogilbee, whose vision has guided this work from conception to completion (and persistently saved me from myself), and to my wife, Donna, whose undying love and support has, quite literally, made this project possible.
0
I NTRODUCTION
Redefining the Boundaries
Most of us are not terribly reflective about the technologies we use. We may be hesitant in our approach or slow to adapt, but sooner or later we blindly accept whatever technology comes along, acting as if we believe, however skeptical we might have been at first, that it will make our lives easier, better, more interesting or rewarding, that we will be better or happier or more valued human beings because of some newfangled way of doing something.
At the same time we tend to dismiss the power of technology too lightly, acting as though it doesn t really affect us. We know it affects our lives, to be sure, but it doesn t really affect us , does it? Deep down, our identity and our relation to God and to other human beings is unaffected by the whirlwind of technological change that surrounds us, right?
If you truly want to believe that, read no further. Set this book down, walk away quietly, and I ll cause you no further discomfort. Then again, you might want to read on a bit, but only if you re willing to face the uncomfortable reality that we are what we eat, that the technologies we consume (and in the lexicon of the technocrats we are all merely consumers or users ; think about the implications of that for a minute) in some important sense determine who we are.
My goal in writing this book is to help us 1 gain a deeper understanding of how emerging technologies affect our spirituality, how we can learn to live with (or without) them better, and how we can develop a relationship with technology that will help nurture our spiritual being. If I am successful, this book will empower us to make some good choices regarding our personal use of technology and our attitude toward it.
OIL AND WATER
One could argue that spirituality and technology are like oil and water; that both might be interesting and important areas of inquiry on their own, but that one has little to do with the other. I categorically reject this notion, and I hope that over the course of your reading you will come to reject it also. But first let s take a look at what we really mean by technology.
Technology is a word whose Greek roots are quite familiar. The -ology part comes from the Greek word logos , an important concept in ancient philosophy and modern Christian spirituality. It is normally translated as word but the meaning runs deeper, such as in the Gospel of John where the w is capitalized. We get some flavor of this deeper meaning in modern expressions such as give me the word on the street. In common use it simply means the study of, as in the words biology, psychology, sociology, astrology, numerology, and so on ad infinitum; you can make up your own words using - ology, and most people will instinctively know precisely what you mean.
The Greek technikos- in addition to the various forms and permutations of technology, such as technical, technician, technobabble (the stuff they say on Star Trek ), technophobia- also shows up in the word technique, which perhaps better points to its true meaning, most closely approximated by the English words art and skill. This understanding helps to correct one of the common misconceptions about technology, namely that it deals strictly with the material. Naturally, we associate technology with contraptions, gizmos, or gadgets. We think of science fiction scenarios: monstrous machines, robots, mountains of wire, and sprawling wastelands of complicated equipment. In the minds of many, technology is cold and capricious, all head, no heart, and no soul. One might even say that technology is the antithesis of humanity.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Technology is the study of human art and skill. In the struggle to differentiate human beings from other animals, anthropologist have sometimes pointed to our propensity to fashion and use tools. Think of paintbrushes and pens, not just screwdrivers and hammers.
But technology is not our tools; it is how we create and use tools. In a nutshell, technology is part of what defines us; it is part of what makes us human. More than that, the technologies we adopt affect the very type of humans we become. The tools we choose to use and how we use them affect how we think, how we make decisions, how we relate to one another, how we construct knowledge, even how we think about God. This connection between technology and anthropology is not always obvious. We tend to think of our human identity as some sort of absolute. After all, we created our technology, it didn t create us, right?
True enough, but when we study the history of human thought, with a mind to concurrent technological development, it s not hard to see that over a sufficiently long period of time any major development in technology will eventually affect our sense of identity and our engagement with the world. Even outside the historical record it s easy to imagine how technology might change our outlook. Humans with the ability to make and control fire would have a fundamentally different outlook on the world-and attitude toward their role in it-than humans without such technology. From there it s equally easy to speculate how the wheel, agriculture, architecture, printing, chemical engineering, or just about any other major breakthrough in technology would have a similar sort of revolutionary impact on our sense of self and our experience of the world.
We re right in the thick of such a revolution today. A number of technological breakthroughs in the last half century, probably starting with the invention of the digital computer and the transistor in the 1940s and 1950s-which came together in the 1970s in the microprocessor-have been radically transforming communications technology and essentially reinventing information technology. I tend to call these various breakthroughs emerging technologies, though some are much more developed than others. They mostly revolve around computers and the Internet in one way or another, but it would be a mistake to identify either as the main technology driving the revolution.
It s not just the personal computer or just the Internet that is transforming our world; it s the whole gestalt. Indeed, part of the task before us is to conceptualize how all these emerging technologies differentiate and fit together, and where they are all taking us. This movement has been referred to variously in the literature, but one concept that seems to have caught on, and which brings the proper perspective, is that we are transitioning from the industrial age (which followed the Iron Age, Bronze Age, and Stone Age) to the information age. In an effort to invoke this sense of fundamental paradigmatic shift in our culture, I have come to refer to the onslaught of these various technologies collectively as the information revolution .
That s enough for now on technology, but what of spirituality? What do we mean, what are we talking about, when we speak of spirituality ? If my central thesis is that technology and spirituality have a relationship, that they are not like oil and water but rather that they affect one another, that they do mix in ways that are worthy of consideration and study, then I need to make some attempt to define spirituality, if not for all purposes, then at least for the purposes of this book.
Etymology is of limited help here. The word spirit is generally associated with the animating force of life, the uniquely dualistic understanding that we are material beings trapped in the material world, bags of water and other chemicals inhabited by a superior spirit, a ghost in the machine, if you will. That s fine, if that s your philosophical take on the human condition, but it s not mine and it doesn t have to be yours in order to have som