God, Technology, & Us: How Our Digital Life Affects Our Faith

NOTES

Preface

I GREW UP AS A NERD on the west side of Detroit at the dawn of the personal computer revolution. As a result, I spent much of my time in middle school having heated arguments with my friends about which home computer was the best:

The Atari 800 is the best home computer, period.

Are you crazy??? The Apple III smokes the Atari!!!

Yeah—if by ‘smokes’ you mean it melts floppy disks.

"Both of you are wrong. The Commodore 64 beats all of them. 64K of RAM, full BASIC, and sixteen colors. What else could you want?"

Yes, even in the early 1980s, fanboys were alive and well.

While I grew out of my nerd fight phase, I never outgrew my love for technology. For years, I did my best to stay on the bleeding edge of whatever new platform or device was being introduced. From the Kaypro II (one of the earliest portable computers) to Apple’s first personal digital assistant (PDA), the Newton, I was all in. In addition to being an early adopter, I was always interested in the reasoning that went into the design of these devices—why things were designed the way they were. How do you create a gadget that meets the needs of a person you never met? What is it that makes people get attached to certain products?

When I first began searching for answers to these questions, I would never have guessed that digital technology would become so mainstream. The most surprising aspect of this popularity is the level of attachment that everyday people have toward these devices. Everyone it seems—teens, parents, business owners, rich and poor, young and old—all rely on technology. What used to be just a hobby for nerds is now an integral part of our culture. In the span of less than twenty years, we’ve gone from email is for geeks and pedophiles (a quote from the 1999 movie Cruel Intentions) to the point where not having a Facebook or Twitter account is akin to social suicide in many circles. What was once niche is now de rigueur. Even those of us who aren’t excited by technology know that they need to be engaged with it. Everyone from presidents and popes to pop divas, movie stars, and even terrorist groups have Twitter and Facebook accounts.

So what happened? How has today’s technology exerted such an unavoidable influence on most of the world?

In this book we will explore why our smartphones and computers, social media, and the Internet have become so indispensible to so many of us so quickly. Many people hold these devices very close—both figuratively and literally. They aren’t the only ones. Today’s corporations and governments rely on technology to collect data—about their operations or the people they serve—on large scale. The data they collect, which is analyzed by sophisticated algorithms, is used for everything from improved efficiency to covert surveillance. The involvement of these large organizations means technology touches all of us. Whether you’re wearing the latest smart watch, or still using a flip phone, we all have a close relationship with technology.

As any newlywed can tell you, when you enter a close relationship with someone new, the other people in your life must adjust. This can be a simple, enjoyable process if everyone gets along. Or it can be a stressful, daunting source of conflict. Some people don’t see where they fit. Priorities are reconsidered. There’s a reshuffling of the pecking order.

Technology is our new close relationship. As such, we are all struggling to better understand its purpose and how it should fit into our lives. Its presence means a reshuffling of our other relationships, in all areas of our lives. The goal of this book is to determine how this close relationship with technology affects the relationship we have with God.

We will do this by considering how we currently use these digital tools. Is the relationship we have with technology healthy? Are we using this incredible blessing that God has given us to grow and become better? Or are we using a new tool to make the same old mistakes?

We will also consider the design of the digital tools we use so often and explore the priorities that are reflected in their design.

Lastly, we will consider what both our behavior and our tools say about us and how we connect with God. We will also look at examples of how each of us can better use technology so it can be the blessing God always meant it to be.

The instrument we will use to answer all of these questions will be the truth and wisdom found in God’s Word. Through Scripture, we will consider how we use technology and how it impacts our relationship with God—our most important relationship.

No one knows what the future holds, but it’s safe to say it will include more technology. Will our adoption of all these new technologies lead to utopia on Earth or will it lead to some dystopian, Terminator-like hellscape, where Skynet controls our every move?

While the answer likely sits somewhere in between these two extremes, the only way we can positively influence the result is by thinking about what we do today. What I hope to do with this book is identify some of the issues that spring from our current relationship with technology and attempt to address them through the power contained in God’s Word. While you might disagree with my conclusions, or even with the validity of God and His Word, I hope you’ll consider some of the issues (and possible solutions) that surface in these pages.

This is an important discussion that all of humanity needs to be engaged in. It is a discussion that will ultimately determine the kind of world we live in.

PART 1

Our Digital Love Affair

CHAPTER 1

A Seat at the Table

I VIVIDLY REMEMBER the first time I got lost in a public place. I was about five or six years old. My family had gone to an open-air fruit market not far from our home. As soon as we pulled into the parking lot and got out of the car, I immediately went into sensory overload. The place was full of people. The hot summer air was filled with the scent of fresh produce. But most of all, I was mesmerized by the colorful array of fruits and vegetables that seemed to go on forever.

What’s that purple thing?

Why is that celery red?

What’s that smell?

Now, it’s important to understand that I was a boy with a healthy appetite (my clothes always came from the Husky section of the boys’ department). Understanding the size of my appetite, my parents did their best to channel me toward fruits and vegetables instead of junk food. Because of that, there was always plenty of fruit around the house for me to snack on. As a result, when we arrived at the open-air market, my mind went racing.

Are those strawberries? Maybe Mom will bake a pie!

Whoa—did that guy just eat one of those grapes? Can I have some?

Look! That lady is giving out samples!

As I ran from booth to booth, sampling new fruits and marveling at things I had never seen before, I became separated from my parents. When I realized I was lost, I spent the next ten minutes doing what any sensible child would do in this situation. I started screaming my head off! My parents didn’t hear my cries, but an older woman who heard me figured out I was lost and helped me eventually find the rest of my family.

Now, as I once again watch hundreds of people line up in front of their local Apple Store to buy the latest iPhone, I get a sense of déjà vu. I can’t help but think that just as those fruits and vegetables grabbed hold of the mind of a chubby five-year-old, the assortment of gadgets, social networks, and services that we call technology have taken firm hold of our collective attention. New technology is no longer just nerd culture, it is popular culture—and we can’t get enough.

More than any other social or political force of the past fifty years, the advance of digital technology (which includes the invention of the transistor, integrated circuit, and microprocessor) has been the most consistent force for change. No other movement has had such a direct impact on how so many individuals live day to day. Fundamental aspects of culture, such as how we work, how we learn, how we have fun, how we meet and fall in love, and how we communicate, have all been profoundly changed by digital technology.

Despite the fact that it is everywhere and we all recognize it when we see it, people’s idea of what is meant by the word technology varies wildly. So it is important to explain what I mean when using the term. Technology can be used to describe everything from electric cars to a new web analytics platform to the latest smartphone available at Best Buy. But since we are talking about technology and the individual, it makes sense to define technology in a way that is consistent with how most people encounter it. For the purposes of this book, the word technology will be used to refer to personal technology, including:

1.  Devices and gadgets (tablets, smartphones, wearable devices, etc.)

2.  Personal computers (and associated mediums such as email and the Internet)

3.  Social media (Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, Tumblr)

4.  The cloud (Internet-based storage and services)

5.  Cell phones and smartphones

Using this basic definition, few can deny that technology has changed the lives of millions. We can now have transcontinental conversations, write brief notes or novels, take snapshots, and create feature-length films all on a single pocket-size device. With the advent of the Internet, millions of people have access to more knowledge and data than has ever been amassed at any point in human history. As of 2010, there was a total of 1.2 zettabytes of data online. To put that in perspective, if you were to digitally store every word that has ever been spoken, it would make up only 42 percent of all the data available online.¹ And with the aid of technology, we have simply been able to get more stuff done. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percent growth in productivity during the first decade of the twenty-first century (2000-2009) outpaced the same measure during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s combined. It is almost universally agreed among economists that this spike in productivity is due to the proliferation of information technology.² The way we buy everything from music to airline tickets to cars and homes has also changed, thanks to the Internet. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, ecommerce has grown from $27.5 billion in 2000 to $143.4 billion in 2009—a five-fold increase.³ Even when it comes to something as intimate and personal as choosing a mate, technology has become a major player. According to a 2013 University of Chicago study, 35 percent of U.S. couples who married between 2005 and 2012 met online through dating services such as Match.com and eHarmony.com.⁴

With all of these benefits, there’s little question as to why society as a whole has embraced the use of technology in nearly every aspect of life. In fact, I don’t think it would be an overstatement to say that, beyond simply embracing it, many of us are infatuated with technology. This infatuation has been driven, in part, by the speed at which technology has been able to do more things for us. This increase in technology’s utility is a result of an exponential growth in computer processing power, as described by Moore’s Law. In 1965, Gordon E. Moore, a cofounder of Intel Corporation, first made the observation that the number of transistors on integrated circuits (and in turn, the amount of computer processing power) doubles approximately every two years. Advanced computer processors (hardware) are capable of running computer instructions (software) faster. This advanced hardware allows programmers to write more complex software. As software becomes more complex, more advanced hardware is needed. The end result is technology— in the form of more powerful computers and devices—that is capable of doing more in almost every part of our lives. Moore’s Law has been the driving force behind the virtuous cycle between hardware and software development. The cycle has been ongoing for the past fifty years. Each new device grants us functionality that a few months ago we didn’t know of but, today, can’t live without.

Devices that now seem like core parts of a person’s being did not even exist less than a decade ago. The iPhone, which many consider the first modern smartphone, is a scant eight years old. Its most recent incarnations, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, sold a total of 10 million units in its first weekend of availability a record for Apple.⁵ In fact, Apple sold so many iPhone 6 and 6 Plus phones at its introduction that it resulted in the largest quarterly earnings of any corporation in history.⁶ When the iPhone was first released, it took three months for Apple to sell 1.12 million units.⁷ The growth of the smartphone segment has taken off so quickly that MIT Technology Review recently published an article that posed the question, Are Smartphones Spreading Faster Than Any Technology in Human History?⁸

This rapid expansion of technology into our lives over such a short period of time isn’t limited to smartphones. Google’s Gmail, a web email service that has 425 million users who rely on it to communicate with the world every day, has only been available to the general public since 2007.⁹ Facebook, the social media service that helps you connect and share with the people in your life, crossed the 1-billion-user mark after only eight years. The digital tablet, a category popularized by Apple’s iPad, reached 10 percent penetration in the U.S. market within a scant three years. For the sake of comparison, it took the television and the mobile phone both more than a decade to accomplish the same feat.¹⁰ In short, it is clear that technology has introduced profound changes in our day-to-day lives in an astonishingly short period of time.

Pervasive technologies such as mobile communications (cell phones), electronic messaging (email, texting, IM), and the Internet are so widespread that many of us find ourselves at a loss if they are suddenly taken from us. Not too long ago, I was driving to a conference with a friend in his mid-twenties. We were discussing the prevalence of smartphones and GPS devices and our reliance on them to get to new places. My friend asked me, Wow, how did people get around without GPS? My response was limited to a faint chuckle, due to the fact that I took his question as rhetorical.

It wasn’t.

At that point, I began to explain the process of getting a TripTik map from the American Automobile Association, which is something some people used to do prior to taking a road trip. As I described the act of going to a (brick and mortar) AAA office to pick up a booklet of pre-highlighted road maps, my friend’s face went blank. It was as if I were trying to explain nuclear fission. It became clear to me that my twenty-something friend had difficulty conceiving of a non-Internet or non-GPS means of navigating the world. In my friend’s defense, the amount of change that technology has introduced into our lives, and the rate at which new technology continues to change, can’t help but disorient us. Widely used means of communicating and self-expression become dated in a matter of months. MySpace, which launched in 2003, was arguably the first popular social networking site. It was quickly overtaken by Facebook, which, after starting as a Harvard student-only site in early 2004, opened its doors to everyone in 2007. While Facebook is still currently the largest social networking site, with over a billion members, it is now being forsaken by many users for alternative services such as Instagram and Tumblr.

This treadmill of change can leave many of us constantly feeling two steps behind. The large-scale change we experience as a result of technology can at times be exhilarating, but is more often confusing and disorienting. In his book Present Shock, media analyst Douglas Rushkoff explores the unease brought about by the increasing rate of technology-driven change. In his preface, Rushkoff observes, "Add real-time technologies from the iPhone to Twitter; a disposable consumer economy where 1 -Click ordering is more important than the actual product being purchased; a multitasking brain actually incapable of storage or sustained argument; and