…Technology creates its own imperatives and, at the same time, creates a wide-ranging social system to reinforce its imperatives.
-Neil Postman, Technopoly, p. 105
Michael Polanyi makes a similar point in Personal Knowlege:
All technology is equivalent to a conditional command, for it is not possible to define a technology without acknowledging, at least at second hand, the advantages which technical operations might reasonably pursue…A technology must…declare itself in favour of a definite set of advantages, and tell people what to do in order to secure them (p. 176).
When Postman and Polanyi come together, I listen intently.
We need to be asking ourselves what our technologies are asking of us. By ‘asking of us,’ I mean what are they compelling us to do and what are they asking us to give up? The next logical question is, What are the benefits of obedience? In summary, then, every device is telling me to do something, asking me to give up something, and offering me something in return for obedience.
If we want to subvert the imperatives of technology, if we want to throw off its sovereignty, a good starting point may be to ask what we will gain if we disobey, and if that disobedience may lead to better results than simply yielding to what is offered to us. Another starting point, and a distinctly Christian one, is to ask how we can submit technological imperatives, or technological sovereignty, to the imperatives and sovereignty of God. That is, rather than being a tool of our tools, can we use those tools to follow a different sovereign. Can we see them as His tools?
One sure way of knowing who’s sovereignty we are under, and whose commands we are obeying, is whether our use of those tools look just the same as someone who has no love for Jesus Christ. Do you surf the internet the same as the godless? Do you text the same? Do you take the same kinds of pictures? Do you post the same status updates and photos?
This is all stream-of-consciousness. I have not worked out a definite position here. I only want to provoke thought. But the main point I think I want to make as I post about technology (and Technopoly) is that my idea is that we must be aiming at a loving subversion against the spirit of the age. Subversion is not necessarily rebellion. But it always asks questions and it always proposes possible alternatives.
“One sure way of knowing who’s sovereignty we are under, and whose commands we are obeying, is whether our use of those tools look just the same as someone who has no love for Jesus Christ.” A very helpful observation. And I agree that we need a “loving subversion against the spirit of the age.” How does the Love of Christ demand that we use technology differently? How should Christ’s love be visible in EVERYTHING we do, including technology?
I am again reminded of Luke 11:24-26, where Christ speaks about a demon “swept” clean from a person. The demon desires to return, and when he does, he finds “the house swept and put in order. Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there. And the last state of that person is worse than the first.” How often do we as Christians want to “sweep our houses clean” but have no answer as to what should occupy the empty space? The Love of Christ ought to inhabit that space, but we don’t know what that looks like, and are too frequently focused ONLY on “getting rid of” the sin that is shaming us.
Do we have demons in our use of technology? We must not rid ourselves of them, but REPLACE them with the Love of Christ.
I love your point here. That’s what Thomas Chalmers called ‘the expulsive power of a new affection.’