Christians & DIGITAL MEDIA Benefits and Burdens BY C. Ben Mitchell
C. Ben Mitchell PhD is the Provost & Vice President for Academic Affairs and holds the Graves Chair of Moral Philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee.
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We were having an early dinner at formica-top tables while drinking sweet one of our favorite mom-and-pop tea and watching the sparse traffic pass restaurants in a sleepy little Southern by on the other side of the plate-glass town just outside where we live. As windows of the storefront restaurant. Nancy and I were talking about The scene was about as bucolic as it gets our day, a lad about 10 or 12 years these days. It could just as easily have old came through the door with an been 1956 as 2016. Except.
The strong tides that shaped digital technologies for the past 30 years...will continue to expand and harden in the next 30 years.
older woman who appeared to be As we waited for our burger baskets, his grandmother. It was as close to a I noticed that the young lad was using Norman Rockwell scene as one might a smartphone. That’s not unusual for imagine. Grandmother and grandson someone his age or, for that matter, were out for a quiet meal together any age these days. His grandmother on a Friday evening. One could even quickly surveyed the menu, asked the imagine this being a weekly treat for boy what he wanted to eat, and placed them both, a regular liturgy of life in the order. The lad never looked up this tiny community. from his phone. I mean he never looked Bob, the owner of the restaurant, is up from his phone. While he and his also the cook. The owner’s wife waits grandmother waited for their order, tables, delivering daily specials, superb both of his thumbs were busy on the hamburgers, or house-made pizzas phone. Meanwhile, the grandmother to mostly local customers who sit at gazed from one direction to another, 3 trying to find something to interest Yet despite the number of her while the lad played on. He never technologies we use, there seems to be looked up. When their meals arrived, he large scale naïveté about technology’s switched from two hands on the phone effects, especially the impact of to one hand on the phone and one hand digital technologies. Even otherwise holding his hamburger. He did not look helpful theologians and social analysts up for the entire 20 minutes it took him sometimes make the unsophisticated to bolt down that sandwich. After they claim that technologies are morally had both eaten their meals, the boy neutral; that in and of themselves followed his grandmother out of the they are neither good nor bad, but restaurant, still never looking up from it is the use of the technology that his phone. may be right or wrong. If it were that What could have been an simple, answers to our questions emotionally bonding experience would be much simpler. Unfortunately, between a grandmother and her the morality of technology is more grandson, turned out to be dinner complicated than we have imagined. alone, together. Instead of receiving the Emerging biotechnologies—like genetic wisdom of her years of life experience, augmentation, artificial intelligence, the lad spent all his time on a digital cybernetics, and robotics, for instance— device. The most disheartening reality mean that the human technologist may of this picture is that we’ve all seen or become the technology, the engineer experienced something similar and it’s may become the engineered. That is, “ not as disturbing to us as it ought to be. beings themselves may become the Familiarity has eroded contempt. Or, at artifacts of biotechnological innovation. the very least, we have no idea what to More about that later. do about it, so we just move on while As Stephen Monsma and his the proverbial water boils the frog in colleagues at Calvin College pointed the kettle. out decades ago in their book Digital technology is here to Responsible Technology,1 and the French stay. And on our best days, I don’t philosopher Jacques Ellul2 before think we’d want it to go away. We’ve them, technologies are hardly value become quite comfortable with digital neutral. That is not to presume that technologies and even dependent technology is by nature evil. Far from on many of them. We like the speed, it. But every tool has an impact on its efficiency, and connectivity they offer. user and the choice to develop and We have come to depend on a quick adopt any technology is a morally text message, an informative email, or freighted choice. We must assume that an entertaining meme on Facebook. the technology makes life better or we As the number of so-called digital would most likely reject it. And since natives continues to swell—those “better” implies some notion of the individuals born after 1980 who have good life, the invention and adoption of always had access to computers, laptops, a particular technology is informed by tablets, smartphones, and whatever is certain values, almost always nowadays next—rapid adoption of new digital the notion that efficiency is better than technologies will continue to be the inefficiency and that faster is necessarily norm rather than the exception. better than slower. 4 Every tool has an impact on its user and “the choice to develop and adopt any technology is a morally freighted choice. ” Despite the fact that we make media users, and more than 1.6 billion certain choices about technology, as mobile social accounts. founding editor of WIRED magazine, Consumers of digital media spend Kevin Kelly, has put it, there seems to increasing amounts of time with their be an inevitability about it. Some people digital devices: even speak of a kind of technological People now spend an average of 2 determinism; if the technology exists hours daily on the mobile web. we must use it. Although technological Individuals devote 1.8 hours to determinism may overstate the social networking, 30% of their case, Kelly’s point is that there is a daily online time. certain momentum to technological Digital natives spend on average developments, including digital more than 7 hours per day on innovation, that continues to propel their smartphones or on them. “The strong tides that shaped multiple digital devices (often digital technologies for the past 30 years,” at the same time). he predicts, “will continue to expand The average “frequent user” is and harden in the next 30 years.”3 If young, male, well educated, and he’s right, and I suspect he is, where is with one child. technology going, and what will our As of the second quarter of 2016, technoculture look like in 30 years? Facebook had 1.71 billion These are profound questions, especially active users. for Christians who, as the apostle has WhatsApp users grew from 700 said, are not to be conformed to the million worldwide in 2015 to world, but to be transformed by the 1 billion by February 2016. renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2). WeChat dominates social Let’s begin with where we are today. media in China, with over 697 The accumulated data are breathtaking. million users. According to the World Economic The average user is bombarded by Forum’s report, Digital Media and Society: more than 1,700 banner ads Implications in a Hyperconnected Era,4 in per month. 2015 there were approximately 3 billion These are stunning numbers that internet users, 2 billion active social give some people vertigo and others a
In 2015 there were approximately 3 billion internet users, 2 billion active social media users, and more than 1.6 billion mobile social accounts.
6 mild adrenaline rush. What might all generation(s) that came after us.” 6 So, of this mean for the future? Where for whatever it may be worth, I will offer are we going? Are we being led by my perspective as a digital immigrant. market forces and insatiable human Although I had owned a personal desire, or are we making carefully computer for several years prior, I informed choices about digital media? vividly remember less than 40 years And how are Christians to think about ago connecting for the first time to my these things? university’s UNIVAX system through First, I want to outline some a telephone dial-up connection. Those of the opportunities digital media were the days of the CRT (cathode ray offer individuals, society, Christians, tube) screen with a black background and their churches. Then, in the and amber letters. Users had to boot context of what we know about our up their computer, enter a telephone anthropology—what it means to be number, and listen to a screeching noise human—I want to say something about that sounded a lot like some kind of the challenges these sadistic cat torture as new technologies a desktop computer bring. Then, I with two 3½ inch disk will offer some drives was connected recommendations by telephone line to a based on the mainframe computer findings. housed in a specially For the record, air-conditioned room I am neither a somewhere in the technological belly of the campus. optimist nor a If someone else had technological already connected pessimist. I am through that a critical realist telephone number, who thinks we should make informed you got a busy signal and had to try judgments. Furthermore, I am a another number. If that number was personalist5 who believes that persons also busy, you had to wait until the line take priority over things. In that same was free again. spirit of full disclosure, I should reveal I was just beginning doctoral work that I am not a digital native but a in 1989. Although connection to the digital immigrant. That is, I grew up Internet was less than instantaneous, before the advent of contemporary the ability to send and receive digital technology. For some, this email, participate in list serves, and fact may disqualify me from the communicate through synchronous conversation. Rather than disqualify chat were thrilling developments. I me, however, in her excellent volume remember my amazement the first time i-Minds, clinical neuropsychologist Mari I had an onscreen live-chat with another Swingle points out that “one advantage graduate student. I was in Tennessee, digital immigrants do have is that of she was in Israel. I would type a line perspective: we all have been witnesses or two, wait 10-20 seconds, and see her to great changes in ourselves and the lines appear on my screen 10-20 seconds 7 after she typed them. As primitive and is estimated to grow to 40 zettabytes. app-less as it all seems now, science That number is so large it’s difficult to fiction became science fact right before comprehend. my very eyes. Among other things, all of this But I noticed that something else means that it is increasingly challenging happened along the way. I remember in our digital age to concentrate for reading, reflecting, and writing for many multiple minutes, much less hours at a uninterrupted hours at a time during time without interruption, admittedly, graduate school days. Because everyone often self-imposed interruption. else was working hard too, there were Although I will grant that my experience few distractions in the graduate student cannot be taken to be universal, I apartment complex. When I did take the suspect that there are plenty of others time to endure the relatively elaborate who can empathize. What does all and time-consuming procedure to check of this mean for the future of digital email or visit the list serve, there would communication? What does all of this only be a few new entries in any 24-hour mean for Christians and for the church? period. I would check email once or twice a day, not only because it took so long to get connected, but because the The Opportunities of rewards would be slim. Connectivity Digital Technologies was less than instantaneous, and information was less than abundant. We should note, firstly, that the internet Since confession is good for the has done much to connect people, give soul, I will tell you, frankly, that my them a voice, and facilitate the creation attention span is not what it was before of virtual communities that have the digital technology. The siren call of opportunity to shape real communities. email, Facebook, Twitter, Printerest, Many will remember the role digital and a hundred other apps now beckons media played in the ouster of Tunisian us every hour of the day and night. I president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and receive more email in an hour than I did the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in the for entire days during graduate school. so-called Arab Spring of 2011. Social My email program notifies me of the media had an important part in building delivery of each new communication activist networks and rallying protesters, with an audible alert. Many people especially in Egypt. If literacy is power, who don’t want to wait on a returned connectivity is shared power. email now text me expecting a more Similarly, digital media have immediate response. united religious believers and religious There is exponentially more content communities around the world. In her on the internet today than in 1991, when work on media and religion, Texas A&M the first webpage appeared. In terms professor of communication, Heidi of volume, the internet quadrupled Campbell, chronicles the evolution of in size between 2014 and the end of what she and her colleagues have coined 7 2016. More than 1.3 zettabytes of data “digital religion.” Although Christian are transported between computer and Muslim adherents are thought networks worldwide—that’s 1.3 followed to occupy the greatest bandwidth in with 20 zeros. By 2020 this number social media, Hindu, Buddhist, and 8 96% of pastors use a computer at church, 46% use it for email, and 39% use it to access the internet.
new Japanese religions have a growing In his introduction to Ministry in footprint in the digital landscape. the Digital Age, Biola University’s David Through phenomena like the birth Bourgeois maintains that “[t]he Internet of religious user groups, broadcast- is the greatest communication tool ever style web forums, and the founding of invented by humans,”8 and that “The cyberchurches and virtual interactive single most important thing you can do worship environments, the internet for your ministry’s use of the Internet has provided a new media context for and social media is to design, document religious expression, proselytism, and and implement a digital strategy.”9 engagement. And, as Campbell and For him, one of the most strategic others have pointed out, it is a two-way activities in which a church can engage street. That is, not only are new media is the creation of a “digital ministry being shaped by religious communities, framework . . . that will allow you to but religious communities are being be confident that your use of digital shaped by new media. Notions of technologies is on the right track.”10 authority, authenticity, community, According to a 2010 random survey identity, ritual, and religion are all of Protestant churches by Axeltree being shaped and re-shaped, formed Media in conjunction with the research and informed by digital religion. arm of Lifeway, 78% of churches 9 maintain a website. Of those websites, Culture, Campbell and her co-author, 91% provided information to potential New Zealand theologian Stephen visitors to the church, 79% provided Garner, argue it is crucial we ask, information for the congregation, 57% “What is it . . . that the Christian encouraged increased participation tradition can offer here in light of the by members of the church, and 52% good news of Jesus Christ? And how solicited interest in ministries or can it offer it in a way that is intelligible volunteer opportunities.11 A 2015 Barna and credible to those in that context Group study, Cyber Church: Pastors and and also valuable and relevant to their the Internet, found that 96% of pastors everyday lives? All of these factors use a computer at church, 46% use it are critical for our theologizing about for email, and 39% use it to access the technology and media if it is to have a internet.12 Among those pastors who very real presence.”14 use the internet at church, 97% use it to Secondly, digital media are also find information, 88% to buy products, changing the way we obtain information. 80% to keep up Through the with existing internet we now relationships, live in what 71% to check out amounts to a single, new music or world-wide virtual videos, 39% to library. Receptive have a spiritual or knowledge, or religious experience, what University and 11% to play of Connecticut video games. philosopher In 2015 the Michael Patrick Church of England Lynch calls announced that “Google-knowing,”15 they would equip is available to all of its sixteen anyone who can use thousand churches with wi-fi internet a computer or other digital device that access. The idea was first suggested can connect to the internet. Information by Lord Lloyd-Webber, who said retrieval is much easier than it used to be. that “connecting churches to the As an experiment Lynch says that internet would make them the centres he wrote down four rather random of their communities once again to questions to which he wanted answers: draw more visitors to these sites and 1. What is the capital of Bulgaria? encourage churches to enhance and 2. Is a four-stroke outboard engine develop outreach programs to serve the more efficient than a two-stroke? practical and spiritual needs of a digital 3. What is the phone number of my generation.”13 The point is that, for good U.S. representative? or ill, digital media are increasingly 4. What is the best-reviewed integrated into the life of the churches restaurant in Austin, Texas, this and their ministers. week? In her newest volume, Networked He tried to answer those questions Theology: Negotiating Faith in Digital without resorting to digital sources. He 10 pulled a dictionary from his shelves, commerce, but he didn’t have any way located a map, and confirmed that Sofia to get their number. Besides, there was was the capital of Bulgaria. He worried, no reason to think the chamber would however, that the information might necessarily know the answer to such a be inaccurate given the publication timely question. Since his local library date of his dictionary and the fluidity of in Connecticut did not have any Texas eastern Europe. newspapers, he was stymied. The Question 2 was more difficult, not best restaurant in Austin that week least because he didn’t have any boat remained elusive. engine manuals. So he went to a local I just replicated his experiment marina and consulted a mechanic. using the internet and found the He got his answer after some effort answers to all the questions in about 2 and depending on whether or not the minutes. “Speed is the most obvious mechanic actually knew what he was distinguishing characteristic of how talking about. we know now,” says Lynch. “Google-
The point is that, for good or ill, digital media are increasingly integrated into the life of the churches and their ministers.
Though he thought the third knowing is fast.”16 Lynch points question would be easiest, he out that because of the speed and remembered that he no longer owned contemporaneous nature of the data, a phone book. And when he went to we increasingly trust digitally acquired his local library, instead of pointing information over other sources of him to a telephone book, the person information—whether or not that trust behind the counter suggested that he is truly warranted. More about that later. use the computer to find out. After Books, encyclopedias, dictionaries, finally locating a telephone book on the news, and commentaries are available library shelves, he discovered his answer, with a simple mouse click or touch of a despite the fact that it could have been finger-tip on a digital app on a mobile wrong since it was several years old. device. Although sales of e-readers Question 4 proved to be the most dropped to 12 million in 2015 from 20 difficult because he did not know million in 2011, most books today are anyone in Austin, Texas. He thought published in both digital and hardcopy about calling the local chamber of formats. According to a 2015 Nielsen 11 ...since millennials are the first truly ““digital native” generation, they should get special attention when it comes to technology in the workplace. ” survey, 32 percent of people read books employees working on their devices primarily on e-readers. Even libraries instead of meeting face-to-face or are finding digital holdings to be popular coming into an office. Deloitte suggests among patrons. The Brevard County, that since millennials are the first truly Florida, library lent 1 million digital “digital native” generation, they should materials (ebooks, eAudiobooks, and get special attention when it comes periodicals) between August 2011 and to technology in the workplace. After October 2016. all, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Thirdly, digital media are changing predicts that by 2030 millennials will the way work gets done in business. A make up 75 percent of the workforce. Pew Research Center study published “As millennials grow into managerial in 2014, pointed out that 94% of the U.S. roles, their priorities—i.e., working job force are internet users. Sixty-one for more than just a paycheck—and percent of adult internet users said leadership styles will have a huge that email was “very important” to impact on all organizations in the doing their job, while 54% said the coming years.”18 Obviously, then, new internet itself was very important for media are playing pivotal roles in the their jobs. Somewhat surprisingly, just economy. In fact, the nearly universal 7% of working online adults feel their penetration of digital media in business productivity has dropped because of the has been tagged by some business internet, email and cell phones, while leaders and social commentators “the 46% feel more productive. Fifty-one third industrial revolution.” percent of those surveyed said that the In many of the same ways digital internet expanded the number of people media are changing the way churches, with whom they communicate outside synagogues, mosques, and temples do of their company, and 39% said that the their business. Shane Hipps, the Lead internet allowed more flexibility in the Pastor of Trinity Mennonite Church in hours they worked, while 35% said the Phoenix, offers an apologia for the use of internet increased the number of hours digital technology in his book Flickering they worked. 17 Pixels:How Technology Shapes Your Faith. According to a 2016 report from The book, says Hipps, “explores the Deloitte, the multinational professional hidden power of media and technology services firm, “Today’s growth in as a way to understand who we are, technological capabilities, exponential who we think God is, and how God’s increase in computing power available unchanging message has changed, to both consumers and enterprises, and is changing, and will change”19 as a almost ubiquitous Internet connectivity result of the mosaic of flickering pixels. among other digital advances is Borrowing Marshall McLuhan’s famous changing the way employees and aphorism, “the medium is the message,” enterprises work.” Faster computing Hipps argues that “Jesus is God’s perfect speed and greater storage is making medium—and the medium is the virtual and global collaboration possible message.”20 Since Jesus embodies God’s in more fields every day. As digital grace and mercy, and since the church technology becomes more robust and is the body of Christ, by extension hardware more reliable, employers Christians “are the message,” says become more comfortable with Hipps, a message of healing and hope 13 to the world.21 Social media become Digital media can facilitate a strategic way for the church to bear education and life-long learning. Online witness to God’s grace and to serve education is a growth industry thanks others in his name. to the internet. “More than 35 million From a sociological and people have enrolled in online courses in communications standpoint, the last four years, and 2015 enrollments technology and religious groups are doubled from 2014. (That’s equal to so thoroughly integrated that “digital one out of five working professionals religion” is now something to be in the U.S.!)”23 “Today there are more studied. Religious expression on the than 4,200 MOOC courses available internet has moved far beyond digitized (many more if you include the corporate sermons, Christian chat rooms, and training programs from companies like live-streamed worship services. Udemy, BigThink, Pluralsight, Lynda, With the rise of the virtual world NovoEd, and Skillsoft).” See also, How many groups are embracing ‘Elite’ Universities Are Using Online technologies such as Second Life to Education at www.chronicle.com/ create an online worship experience article/How-Elite-Universities/229233. that offers an interactive worship via avatars (for example the Anglican Cathedral in Second Life, or the The Challenges of Church of Fools). Now we see the Digital Media Internet becoming a tool to extend a church’s offline ministry into online Information retrieval, economic spaces. For instance, we see the rise growth, digital religion, and access to of Internet campuses within many education represent significant sectors multisite churches, and webcasting of opportunity that the burgeoning of services via iPhone and Facebook digital revolution is helping us realize. apps (for example LifeChurch.tv) As with nearly every other arena of becoming common. Thus, rather life, however, there are both benefits than being an alternative social and burdens. An accurate benefits space for a few, digital technology versus burdens calculus may help us becomes an important platform determine whether or not digital media extending and altering religious are a net gain or a net loss; but it may practice for many.22 well turn out to be more complex than
Creativity is one of those attributes that God shares with his human creatures. And create we must.
14 that. Perhaps the gains are sufficiently We are innovators. The proliferation robust to justify ongoing technological of digital media, like other technological development, but instead of uncritical innovation, demonstrates that Homo adoption, we should develop criteria sapiens (human knowers) are also by for making better informed choices. nature Homo faber (human makers). How would we begin to do that? What What economist Michael Novak has should we know that will help us make called “the fire of invention”26 burns good choices about technology? in the belly of human beings. In the Let’s begin with this question: beginning, “The LORD God took the Does digital technology contribute to man and put him in the Garden of Eden human flourishing? Surely this is an to work it and take care of it” (Genesis important question for any technology, 2:15). God’s mandate to Adam and all and not least one that is so clearly his progeny “to have dominion over poised, according to some futurists, to the fish of the sea and over the birds of tempt us to jettison the heavens and our humanity. over every living Here, of course, thing that moves I’m thinking on the face of the not only about earth” (Genesis transhumanists,24 1:28), extended to but also any who every non-living are tempted to thing too. Indeed, believe in a kind in the Genesis story of technological we find people inevitability that making tools, boats, will eventually weapons, and outgrow human cities. Sometimes capacities and called “the cultural require us either mandate,” this to fight for our very lives or succumb injunction is a tacit directive to create to servitude to the Machine. Just technologies and culture. so, sociologist Katherine Hayles Creativity is one of those attributes has written, “Humans can either go that God shares with his human quietly into that good night, joining creatures. And create we must. the dinosaurs as a species that once Inventiveness and innovation are woven ruled the earth but is now obsolete, into the very fabric of our natures. So or hang on for a little while longer by we develop, improve, conquer, subdue, becoming machines themselves. In and steward natural and other resources, either case . . . the age of the human is including our own bodies. Generally drawing to a close.”25 speaking, we should celebrate, cultivate, What sorts of creatures are we and reward creativity as a divine gift. humans? And what does human We are social. From the beginning flourishing look like in a burgeoning human beings both desired and found digital technoculture? What burdens benefits in community. Although God do digital technologies pose for human saw that everything else was good in his well-being? These are profound new creation, it was not good that man questions in this phase of the 21st century. should be alone (Genesis 2). Technology 15 has contributed in unparalleled ways to and do resist certain technologies. Just help humans build community. From because we can do something doesn’t the family farm to the construction mean that we should, much less that we of small towns and large cities, we must. Even when a ubiquitous digital demonstrate that we are social technology like text messaging is so creatures. Sewage treatment, electricity, pervasive, that does not mean we are telephones, computers, and technologies determined to check our phones every like wifi, help us manage population second. But, as sociologist Sherry dense communities. Connectivity is a Turkle says, this takes the will to “both buzz word today because, among other redesign technology and change how things, it emphasizes our commitment we bring it into our lives.” to cultivating social networks of people We are desiring beings. Our desires, across extremely diverse locations, our loves, our affections are expressed populations, and cultures. in our habits. To borrow one of the We are playful. Play is a natural titles of Jamie Smith’s books, You Are expression of our creativity and What You Love.28 Or as St. Augustine sociability. Put two human beings taught, sin is disordered desire, together and give them a moment’s disordered love. The Christian life is release from the burden to survive, one of re-ordering our desires to bring and they will develop games and them in conformity with the love of competitions. Doubtless Adam and Eve God. We should love God with our played hide and seek in the garden. Josef whole hearts, love our neighbors as Pieper has argued convincingly that ourselves, and enjoy God through our leisure is the basis of culture. At its best, relationship with him and through the entertainment is a form of leisure—rest things he has made. Jesus said, “The for the soul against the pressures of good person out of the good treasure worry, the hurry-up culture, and the of his heart produces good, and the evil burdens of duty. Technology not only person out of his evil treasure produces helps us find more time for leisure by evil, for out of the abundance of the doing some chores more efficiently, but heart his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45). digital technologies have also become We are embodied. All humans are an enormous source of entertainment. embodied beings. From conception Radio, television, video games, and web- to death, and from resurrection based social networks are ubiquitous throughout eternity, to be human forms of entertainment in most parts of means to have a body. We learn this not the world. only from the Genesis account where We make choices. Humans are willing we are told that God made Adam’s body beings. Philosopher of technology, from the dust of the earth (Genesis 2:7), David Nye, reminds us that, “Machines we learn it supremely in the coming of are not like meteors that come the God-man, Jesus Christ. “Offspring of unbidden from outside and have an a Virgin’s womb,” as we sing during the ‘impact.’ Rather, human beings make Christmas season, Jesus is perfect God choices when inventing, marketing, and perfect man. From his conception, and using a new device.”27 Although it Jesus is an embodied human person. Or, sometimes feels like there is a kind of as the apostle John put it in his account inevitability about technology, we can of the good news of Jesus, “the Word 16 The Christian life is one of re-ordering our desires to bring them in conformity with the love of God.
became flesh and dwelt among us, and is omnipresent, omnipotent, and we have seen his glory, glory as from omniscient. We are limited by time the only Son from the Father, full of and space—we can only be genuinely grace and truth” (John 1:14). Through present in one place at a time. We the incarnation—the enfleshment of are limited in our powers—mental, God in Jesus Christ—God sacralizes emotional, spiritual, and physical. the human body. Our humanity is a We are limited in our knowledge— bodily state of existence just as Jesus’ including our native intelligence and humanity is a bodily state of existence. memory, so we are unable to anticipate Radical dualism is not only mistaken every possible consequence of our anthropology, it is mistaken Christology. decisions. Moreover, we are not only We are limited and fallen. In morally limited so that we do not always short, we are not God. In fact, our choose what is best for us, but also Lenten confession is that from dust because of our sinfulness, we sometimes we have come, and to dust we shall choose that which is ultimately return. Despite the many marvelous harmful to ourselves and others. So we human accomplishments, we are petition God to forgive both our sins of limited, mortal creatures. God alone commission and our sins of omission. 17 A New Tower Since the fall in the Garden, the proclivities of humanity are toward of Babel rebellion against God, often manifest as the desire to be gods ourselves. The dual plagues of naïveté on the one Although they are expressive of our hand and hubris on the other have often creativity, technologies have also resulted in profound harm to individuals, provided the means for us to feel more communities, and societies. The Tower self-sufficient and less dependent on of Babel looms large as an example of God. In many ways we have become human pride (Genesis 11:1-9). In his masters of our own fate, developing life- most helpful volume, Virtual Morality: saving technologies like chemotherapy, Christian Ethics in the Computer Age, coronary artery by-pass grafts, and Graham Houston observes: organ transplantation. We can now The ziggurat is a well-known stave off the ravages of disease. The feature of ancient Mesopotamia, tower grows taller. Next is immortality and was often built with mud bricks and human perfection, or is it? and tar due to the scarcity of local Yuval Noah Harari is professor of stone. It is therefore a symbol of history at the Hebrew University of technology-gone-wrong, the result Jerusalem and of the ingenuity author of the of humankind award-winning in culling volume Sapiens: materials and A Brief History of using them for Humankind. In their own evil his sequel, Homo purposes. But it Deus: A Brief History is also a symbol of Tomorrow, he of their pride, declares: their desire to In the early 21st make a name century the train for themselves of progress is again (11:4). Excavated pulling out of the inscriptions station—and this indicate that will probably be the last train ever these towers were meant to serve to leave the station called Homo as stairways to heaven. They had a sapiens. Those who miss this train purely religious significance and had will never get a second chance. no practical use apart from religious In order to get a seat on it, you ritual. According to the biblical need to understand 21st century narrative, they were symbolic of the technology, and in particular the desire to usurp the authority of the powers of biotechnology and landlord. They were declarations computer algorithms. of independence from the true God, . . . These powers are far more potent yet also expressions of underlying than steam and the telegraph, and religious needs. 29 they will not be used mainly for the production of food, textiles, 18 vehicles and weapons. The main of processing data. But you should products of the 21st century will know that this is the current scientific be bodies, brains and minds, dogma, and that it is changing our and the gap between those who world beyond recognition.”32 know how to engineer bodies Changes in our humanity will not and brains and those who do happen overnight: not will be wider than the gap Homo sapiens is likely to upgrade between Dickens’s Britain and itself step by step, merging with the Madhi’s Sudan. Indeed, it will robots and computers in the process, be bigger than the gap between until our descendants look back Sapiens and Neanderthals. In the and realise that they are no longer 21st century, those who ride the the kind of animal that wrote the train of progress will acquire bible, built the Great Wall of China divine abilities of creation and and laughed at Charlie Chaplin’s destruction, while those left antics. This will not happen in a behind will face extinction.30 day, or a year. Indeed, it is already Harari maintains that humanity’s happening right now, through new religion is what he calls “dataism,” innumerable mundane actions. the worldview that all of reality can Every day millions of people decide be reduced to numbers. Those data to grant their smartphone a bit more are immense and are growing at a rate control over their lives or try a new humans simply cannot keep up with. and more effective antidepressant “Dataists are skeptical about human drug. In pursuit of health, happiness, knowledge and wisdom,” he suggests, and power, humans will gradually “and prefer to put their trust in Big change first one of their features and Data and computer algorithms.”31 then another, and another, until they He ends up predicting a dystopian will no longer be human.33 future, in part because resistance is What is happening to our humanity? futile. “You may not agree with the Among other technologies, how are idea that organisms are algorithms, digital media impacting us? and that giraffes, tomatoes and human beings are just different methods
Although they are expressive of our creativity, technologies have also provided the means for us to feel more self-sufficient and less dependent on God.
19 Shaping Future short answer is that our brains are speeding up, but not in a good way. Generations and Our neurophysiological reaction, or functional adaptation, to the age Ourselves of digital media is a higher state of The Fisher-Price iPad Apptivity Seat arousal and the nemesis that comes may be one of the most eloquent, if with [sic]. What nemesis? Quite grotesque, icons of the first quarter of simply, higher states of arousal the 21st century. “The seat is the ultimate come with decreased abilities to babysitter,”34 says Campaign for a self-quiet. Elevated states of arousal Commercial-Free Childhood director are further coupled with a reduced Susan Linn. The device is a child’s car ability to self-stimulate and self- seat with a holder attached for an iPad or entertain. This includes reduced other digital device that hovers over the abilities to observe, integrate child’s face. Advertised for newborns- information, and to be creative. to-toddlers, some experts argue that the In essence, we have less ability seat is tantamount to giving babies their to sustain focus on the normal, first hit of digital crack cocaine. the baseline, including states of Frighteningly, the past two decades observation, contemplation, and of research on emerging digital transitions from which ideas spark— media have shown less than positive what many under the age of twenty effects on both adults and children. now consider a void, proclaiming “ According to Mari Swingle, instead of boredom. perfecting ourselves, “For children, We now feel agitated when not adolescents, and youth, excessive externally stimulated; we need to usage of digital media is now highly be occupied, entertained. We also associated with learning disabilities, have greater troubles quieting, emotional dysregulation, as well as including reaching states of repose, conduct and behavior disorders. For satisfaction, and restorative sleep.36 adults, it is highly correlated with One expert who has warned about the anxiety, depression, sexual dysfunction deleterious effects of digital media on and sexual deviation, insomnia, social infants and children is Mary Aiken, a isolation, disaffected pair bonding, cyberpsychologist in Ireland. She and marital conflict, and compromised work her colleagues at the CyberPsychology performance.”35 Swingle continues: Research Network have conducted The universal place-time research and training with INTERPOL, accessibility we initially embraced the FBI, and the White House. In a thereafter systematically invaded 2015 article in the journal Psychology all aspects of our lives. We are now Research, Aiken et al. called for an urgent always “on call”: workers, parents, investigation of the effects of interactive spouses, children, lovers, all of us screentime on infants and very young in (all) our multiple roles. Many of children.37 In her most recent volume, us now do not, or cannot, liberate The Cyber Effect, Aiken chronicles ways ourselves from “accessibility” and cyberspace is changing the way we the buzz of the world. But what think, feel, and behave.38 The findings is this doing to our brains? The are not comforting. 20 The short answer is that our brains “are speeding up, but not in a good way. ... In essence, we have less ability to sustain focus. ” Over against the potential harms of digital exposure, there is strong evidence for the benefits of non-technologically-mediated, unstructured play among children.
During the first three months of of Pediatrics offered the following a baby’s postpartum life, her brain recommendations: will grow a remarkable 20 percent. For children younger than 18 According to the best brain science, months, avoid use of screen media when a baby is born, each cell of other than video-chatting. Parents the brain has about 2,500 synapses of children 18 to 24 months of age (junctions between two brain cells). In who want to introduce digital the next three years that number grows media should choose high-quality to about 15,000 per brain cell. At this programming, and watch it stage the brain is creating 700-1,000 with their children to help them new neural connections every second. understand what they’re seeing. In other words, the foundation for For children ages 2 to 5 years, higher-level brain function is developing limit screen use to 1 hour per day robustly during this phase of a baby’s life. of high-quality programs. Parents We also know that the best way to should co-view media with help a baby develop speech and other children to help them understand cognitive skills is through human what they are seeing and apply it interaction. “Time and again videos and to the world around them. television shows have been shown to be For children ages 6 and older, ineffective in learning prior to the age place consistent limits on the of two.”39 Nevertheless, because they time spent using media, and the tap into our technological optimism, types of media, and make sure devices like the Apptivity Seat tempt media does not take the place of parents to think digital media may be a adequate sleep, physical activity helpful tool in teaching babies to learn. and other behaviors essential to Just the opposite, they may cause harm. health. One study of a thousand infants who Designate media-free times viewed more than two hours of DVDs together, such as dinner or per day actually performed worse on driving, as well as media-free language assessments than babies who locations at home, such as did not view DVDs.40 bedrooms. It is no wonder, then, that in Have ongoing communication October 2016, the American Academy about online citizenship and 22 safety, including treating others always delivering a wild surprise, with respect online and offline.41 pulsing with breaking news, Over against the potential harms statistics, personal messages, and of digital exposure, there is strong entertainment. The overwhelming evidence for the benefits of non- evidence point to this: A technologically-mediated, unstructured combination of the fast delivery, play among children. When a child exploring opportunities, unexpected exercises imagination, creativity, information, and intermittent decision-making, and problem-solving, rewards creates a medium that is he is helped in developing early math enticing, exciting, and for some concepts, such as shape, size, and sorting, individuals totally irresistible. Now and, at the same time, fine motor skills let’s add in the design aspects of and hand-eye coordination.42 the apps, ads, games, and social- But the negative impact of digital networking sites—the alerts, push media is not limited to children. Because notifications, lights, and other visual of the perception of the lack of authority, triggers that signal us like primitive the anonymity, mating calls.44 and the sense This kind of of distance or digitally-induced physical remove, hyperactivity has cyberspace also contributed facilitates to our inability diminished to find solitude inhibitions tolerable, much less among users. beneficial. In fact, for What researcher increasing numbers John Suler first of people solitude called “online equals loneliness. disinhibition Sociologist Sherry effect” (ODE) is Turkle contrasts now an accepted solitude with origin of certain behaviors online.43 loneliness. Solitude is “the capacity ODE contributes not only to impulsive to be contentedly and constructively behaviors among some individuals, but alone,” whereas loneliness is a word also a growing problem with Internet we invented to describe “the pain of addiction. Based on literature review being alone.”45 and her own research, Aiken maintains Developmental psychology has long that digital technologies can stimulate made the case for the importance the release of dopamine to the pleasure of solitude. And now so does centers of the brain. That explains, in neuroscience. It is only when we part, why searching online, purchasing are alone with our thoughts—not goods and services online, and using reacting to external stimuli—that social media like Instagram, Facebook, we engage that part of the brain’s and Twitter can be addictive. basic infrastructure devoted to Hard to resist. That’s how building up a sense of our stable many of us find the Internet. It’s autobiographical past. This is the 23 The average American adult checks his or her phone two hundred times a day...
“default mode network.” So, without interpersonally, scholastically, or solitude, we can’t construct a stable professionally. In other words, quite sense of self.46 simply, when usage starts to have the But now that connectivity is properties of addiction.”47 continuous, fewer and fewer people A 2015 study found that Americans know how to cope with time alone. check their phones a total of 8 billion They find it difficult to concentrate, times a day, with the average adult they complain of being bored, they get checking his or her phone two fidgety. In short, they experience anxiety hundred times a day, or about every that leads them back to their digital five minutes.48 With more than three devices, especially their smartphones. quarters of teens having access to Mari Swingle suggests that “A loose yet smartphones, it’s no wonder that digital rather accurate measure of when usage addiction is rising.49 of digital media becomes problematic is (1) when one can’t do without, (2) when one can’t stop, (3) when one chooses an Excarnation Internet or I-tech activity consistently Following the lead of Templeton award- over all others, and finally, (4) when winning philosopher Charles Taylor, there is some form of dismissed, or Australian missiologist Michael Frost ignored, repercussion or consequence, has appropriated a vivid term to describe 24 our contemporary technoculture: experience of life today. . . . We “excarnation.” Frost argues that “the debate or mock those with whom core idea of the Christian faith is the we disagree on blogs and in social incarnation: God took on flesh and media without ever engaging them dwelled among us.”50 Jesus of Nazareth face to face. We refer to people is both fully man and fully God. His who have connected with us on claim to be God got him crucified on a Facebook as our “friends” without Roman torture device. His humanity necessarily having ever met them. In meant that he really died. His divinity fact, nothing is more subversively meant that he could conquer death and excarnate than the pressure to rise from the grave. As the apostle John objectify a stranger as a “friend.” puts it, “In the beginning was the Word, Many teens recognize that they and the Word was with God, and the and their friends and family are Word was God. He was in the beginning increasingly tethered to their with God . . . And the Word became electronic gadgets, and a substantial flesh and dwelt among us, and we have number express a desire to seen his glory, glory as from the only disconnect sometimes. A recent Son from the Father, full of grace and study found that 41 percent of teens truth” (John 1:1-2, 14). describe themselves as “addicted” to Excarnation is the opposite of their phones. Forty-three percent of incarnation. Historically, excarnation teens wish that they could “unplug,” refers to the ancient practice of and more than a third wish they removing the flesh and organs from a could go back to a time when there dead body to prepare it for burial. Also was no Facebook. Some teens get known as de-fleshing, the practice was frustrated by how attached their used in the late British Neolithic period friends and parents are to their own in England and Scotland, as well as on devices. For example, 28 percent of the Hawaiian islands as late as the 18th those whose parents have a mobile century. After rehearsing the history, device say they consider their Frost remarks, parents addicted to their gadgets, I mention all this not merely to and 21 percent of all teens say they highlight an archaic custom but to wish their parents spent less time suggest that while the defleshing with their cell phones and other of corpses is no longer in vogue, devices. Nearly half (45%) of teens we currently find ourselves in a say they sometimes get frustrated time in history where another with their friends for texting, surfing kind of excarnation occurs, an the Internet or checking their social existential kind in which we are networking sites while they’re being convinced to embrace an hanging out. increasingly disembodied presence . . . [Excarnation] has also seeped in our world.51 into our everyday thinking in The evidence for excarnation is the church as well. We drive our manifold and damning: SUVs across town to churches in . . .the rise of the influence of the neighborhoods we don’t live in Internet has contributed radically (and don’t want to). We send SMSs to the increasingly excarnate and check Twitter during the 25 sermon, and then we download our where the ambition of spreading the favorite celebrity preacher’s sermon gospel is genuine. 52 as a podcast to listen to during Although not a professing Christian, the week. We engage in online cultural critic Lee Siegel offers a similar discussions by posting smug and diagnosis in his broadside, Against the condescending remarks about those Machine: Being Human in an Age of the unseen, unknown folks with whom Electronic Mob: we disagree. We sign petitions and What kind of idea do we have of change our Facebook profile picture the world when, day after day, we to show our support for various sit in front of our screens and enter causes without any thought of further and further into the illusion getting involved personally. We are that we ourselves are actually outraged by those who manipulate creating our own external reality child soldiers in Africa or who traffic out of our own internal desires? We sex workers from Central Europe, become impatient with realities but we don’t open our homes to our that don’t gratify our impulses or own neighbors, let alone those with satisfy our picture of reality. We find no home at all. And this isn’t even it harder to accept the immutable to mention the prevalence of online limitations imposed by identity, porn usage by churchgoing men, talent, personality. We start to including male clergy. behave in public as if we were acting This says even some church leaders in private, and we begin to fill our themselves are intentionally private world with gargantuan excarnate, appearing only onscreen public appetites. In other words, we via satellite links, beamed in from find it hard to bear simply being the mother church, multiplied and human. digitized for a consumer audience. For the first time in human history, a It’s as though the pastor becomes the person can have romance, friendship, new icon in the Protestant worship and sex (sort of); be fed, clothed, service, and if that’s true, it’s hard to and entertained; receive medical, see how the video-based multisite legal, and just about every other church can’t tend toward idolatry, type of advice; collect all sorts of pride and self-promotion—even
What kind of idea do we have of the world when we enter into the illusion that we ourselves are creating our own external reality out of our own internal desires?
26 information, matter to me: from historical peace, economic facts to secrets justice, ecological about other health, political people—all honesty, family without leaving and community home. For the stability, good first time in work.”54 In the human history, conclusion of a technology his essay, Berry exists that provided his allows a person standards for to live as technological many secret innovation, lives, under arguing that any a pseudonym, as he is able to new technological tool should: manage. For the first time in human Be cheaper than the one it history, a person can broadcast his replaces. opinions, beliefs, and most intimate Be at least as small in scale as the thoughts—not to mention his face, one it replaces. or any other part of his body—to Do work that is clearly and tens of millions of other people.53 demonstrably better than the one it replaces. Use less energy than the one Ways Ahead it replaces (preferably solar or for Thoughtful bodily energy). If possible, use some form of solar Christians energy, such as that of the body. As I indicated above, despite these Be repairable by a person of profound problems, digital technologies ordinary intelligence (provided also have profound potentials for good. they have the tools). So what is the way forward? Where do Be purchasable/repairable as near we go from here? to home as possible. First, we should reject uncritical, Come from a small, privately consumeristic, adoption of digital owned shop or store that will take technologies. We need to establish it back for maintenance and repair. a set of criteria for employing new NOT replace or disrupt anything digital technologies. In what is a now good that already exists, and this famous declaration reprinted in Harpers includes family and community magazine, Kentucky agrarian author relationships. and farmer Wendell Berry established Although these criteria may seem an argument for why he wasn’t going too restrictive or overly strict, the to buy a computer (and, by the way, point is that Mr. Berry has a rationale still hasn’t). The short answer is, “I do for adopting new technologies. And I not see that computers are bringing us would argue that he offers us a good one step nearer to anything that does place to begin. 27 Also, please note that Berry is not idols as substitutes for God, no Tower a Luddite. The epithet “Luddite” is of Babel for the heavenly city.”55 meant to brand a person as hopelessly Third, like the modern-day anti-technological. But this is not so. Luddites, the Amish, we should resist Who were the Luddites? They were the notion that efficiency is thesummum a group of English craftsmen from bonum, the greatest good. In some Yorkshire who fought back against spheres of life inefficiency should be the the industrialization of the woolen measure of the good. For instance, if industry in the early 19th century. They my wife looked across the table during were self-employed and mainly knitted our candlelit 50th anniversary dinner wool hosiery in their homes. The rise and remarked, “You know, you’ve of factories and industrial processes been the most efficient husband a threatened not only their livelihoods, woman could wish for,” how would but their entire way of life. Their leader I take that? Either it is an insult or was Ned Ludd, hence, the Luddites. a category mistake. Relationships It’s not clear whether Ned Ludd was between husbands and wives, parents a real or fictitious character, but for and children, and pastors and church those who called themselves Luddites, members are not measured by it didn’t matter. What did matter was efficiency but by richness, depth, and that they did not reject technology per time spent cultivating the relationship. se. After all, they used hand looms to In the same way, discipleship and knit socks for sale. What they rebelled education are, by their very nature, against was mechanization of the inefficient enterprises. They are more process. They had a “form of life” that like the relationship between a parent involved good people, good work, and and a child or between a master a familiar way of life. Industrialization craftsman and an apprentice than they would mean large factories, imported are like industrial processes. employees, and a lifestyle governed more by efficiency than craftsmanship. They were decidedly not opposed Conclusion to technology, but railed against the These points beg for practical ways of disintegration of their communities. moving forward. Thus, in Reclaiming Second, we should remember Conversation, Turkle suggests that those our humanity. The anthropological who wish to tame technology should: benchmarks outlined above should Remember the power of your provide some assistance in establishing phone. It’s not an accessory. It’s a criteria. That we are the kind of beings psychologically potent device that who exercise our wills argues that we changes not just what you do but should be critical and reflective as we who are. think about technology. Moreover, Slow down. disembodiment or excarnational Protect your creativity. Take your technologies should be resisted. time and take quiet time. Find your Likewise, atomistic individualism own agenda and keep your own should be rejected. We belong in pace. community. As Schultze recommends, Create sacred spaces for “We should accept no humanly devised conversation. 28 ...turn it off, walk away, and find rest and delight in God and what God has made.
Think of unitasking as the next big your phone. thing. Uninstall beckoning apps. Talk to people with whom you don’t Turn off notifications. agree. Keep phone in airplane mode. Obey the seven-minute rule—wait Turn it off—cold turkey. at least seven minutes into a If you must play on an iPad or conversation before reaching for smartphone, play with your child. your phone. Challenge a view of the world as Finally, the Sabbath principle may be apps. immensely helpful. Duke University’s Choose the right tool for the job. Norman Wirzba has written in Living Learn from moments of friction. the Sabbath, Remember what you know about . . . a Sabbath way of living stands life. in marked contrast to our current Don’t avoid difficult conversations. stressful, exhausting, death-wielding Try to avoid all-or-nothing thinking. ways. According to the psalmist, Sabbath observance is above all Aiken offers the following practical steps: infused with thanksgiving and Have a device to announce the praise. Insofar as our practical living time (such as a watch), instead of 29 grows out of a grateful disposition, a Whether you call it a digital detox or sense that the gifts of God to us far a digital Sabbath, one way to avoid, or, if exceed what we can comprehend or necessary, break the addictive power of expect, we give concrete witness to digital technology is to rest from it. At the world of a God whose generosity regular periods, turn it off, walk away, and care simply know no bounds. and find rest and delight in God and When our work and our play, our what God has made, even if it’s only for exertion and our rest flow seamlessly 20 minutes at a time. Ironically, online from this deep desire to give thanks resources like the Jewish to God, the totality of our living— www.sabbathmanifesto.org and the cooking, eating, cleaning, preaching, Christian website www.artofmanliness. teaching, parenting, building, com offer helpful tips on breaking the repairing, healing creating— cycle of technological addiction. The becomes one sustained and ever- alternative is to learn the hard way: if we expanding act of worship.56 don’t get away, we’ll come apart.
For Further Reading
Technopoly: i-Minds: How The Surrender Cell Phones, of Culture to Computers, Technology Gaming, and Neil Postman Social Media (Vintage, 1993). Are Changing A modern classic written Our Brains, Our by the late media critic Behavior, and and Columbia University the Evolution of professor, Technopoly Our Species contrasts the Orwellian Mari Swingle with the Huxleyan (New Society, 2016). critique of modern culture and argues that An up-to-date review by a media technology (in Canadian neurotherapist this case, the television of what we are learning news) dilutes and flattens about the way digital information making technologies form it nearly impossible to and deform cognitive sort the acute from the structures and behavior. mundane. Much of his Constant connectivity is analysis can be equally changing our brains. applied to contemporary media. 30 Alone Together: Habits of the Why We Expect High-tech More from Heart: Living Technology Virtuously in the and Less from Information Age Each Other Quentin J. Schultze Sherry Turkle (Baker Academic, 2004) (Basic Books, 2012) Schultze is a renowned Based on extensive media expert who has interviews with people taught for many years at from all walks of life, Calvin College. He argues children and adults, MIT that we must focus on the social scientist Sherry cultivation of Christian Turkle, describes the way virtues and practices—the technology is impacting habits of the heart— as human relationships. A we make decisions about deeply unsettling book. social media.
The New Second Nature. Atlantis: A secondnaturejournal. Journal of com Technology and An online journal for Society. critical thinking about thenewatlantis.com technology and new media in light of the Christian Published by the Center for tradition, Second Nature the Study of Technology is a very thoughtful and Society and The Ethics resource published by The and Public Policy Center International Institute for in Washington, DC, the the Study of Technology journal seeks to improve and Christianity lead by public understanding directors with a connection of the social, political, to Wheaton College. ethical, and policy The journal explores the implications of modern connection between media science and technology. and technology, worship, A great resource for those theology, poetry, and seeking to understand the contemporary culture. ethical, legal, and social implications of emerging technologies, including digital media.
31 Endnotes 1 Stephen Monsma (ed), Responsible Technology: A Christian Perspective (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1986). 2 Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (New York: Knopf, 1964). 3 Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that Will Shape Our Future (New York: Viking, 2016), 4. 4 Digital Media and Society: Implications in a Hyperconnected Era (World Economic Forum, 2015), 5. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEFUSA_ DigitalMediaAndSociety_Report2016.pdf 5 Christian Smith, What is a Person? Rethinking Humanity, Social Life, and the Moral Good From the Person Up (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). 6 Mari Swingle, i-Minds: How Cell Phones, Computers, Gaming, and Social Media Are Changing Our Brains, Our Behavior, and the Evolution of Our Species (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society, 2016), 5. 7 Heidi A. Campbell (ed), Digital Religion: Understanding Religious Practice in New Media Worlds (London: Routledge, 2013). 8 David T. Bourgeois, Ministry in the Digital Age: Strategies and Best Practices for a Post- Website World (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2013), 8. 9 Ibid., 9. 10 Ibid., 11. 11 Churches Divided on Website Usage, http://www.lifeway.com/lwc/files/lwcF_ LifeWay_Research_Finds_Churches_Divided_on_Website_Usage_pdf.pdf 12 https://www.barna.com/research/cyber-church-pastors-and-the-internet/ 13 Church Times, January 8, 2015. 14 Heidi A. Campbell and Stephen Garner, Networked Theology: Negotiating Faith in Digital Culture (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016), 117. 15 Michael Patrick Lynch, The Internet of Us: Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data (New York: Doubleday, 2016). 16 Ibid., 23. 17 Kristin Purcell and Lee Rainie, Technology’s Impact on Workers (Pew Research Center, December 30, 2014) http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/12/30/ technologys-impact-on-workers/ 18 Jennifer Buchanan, Beth Kelley, Alicia Hatch, Digital Workplace and Culture How Digital Technologies are Changing the Workforce and How Enterprises Can Adapt and Evolve (Deloitte Digital, 2016), 2. https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/human-capital/ us-cons-digital-workplace-and-culture.pdf 19 Shane Hipps, Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), 13. 32 20 Ibid., 167. 21 Ibid., 169. Italics original. 22 Campbell, Digital Religion, 1. 23 http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2016/01/05/use-of-moocs-and-online- education-is-exploding-heres-why/#73bd8d9e7f09 24 Transhumanists maintain that the current phase of humanity is transitional, hence trans-human. The trajectory of human technological self-evolution is towards being post-human. Cf., C. Ben Mitchell, Edmund Pellegrino, Jean Bethke Elshtain, et al., Biotechnology and the Human Good (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2007) and Brent Waters, “Whose Salvation? Which Eschatology? Transhumanism and Christianity as Contending Salvific Religions” in Ronald Cole- Turner (ed), Transhumanism and Transcendence: Christian Hope in an Age of Technological Enhancement (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011). 25 Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 283. 26 Michael Novak, The Fire of Invention: Civil Society and the Future of the Corporation (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999). 27 David E. Nye, “Shaping Communication Networks: Telegraph, Telephone, Computer,” in Arien Mack (ed), Technology and the Rest of Culture (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1997), 125. 28 James K. A. Smith, You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2016). 29 Graham Houston, Virtual Morality: Christian Ethics in the Computer Age (Leicester: Apollos, 1998), 69. 30 Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (London: Harvill Secker, 2016), 273, Ibid., 368. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid., 49. 34 “Baby Bouncy Seat with iPad Attachment Sparks Outrage Online,” Associated Press, December 10, 2013. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/baby-bouncy-seat-with-ipad- attachment-sparks-outrage-online/ 35 Swingle, i-Minds, xii. 36 Ibid., xviii-xix. 37 Ciaran Haughton, Mary Aiken, Carly Cheevers, “Cyber Babies: The Impact of Emerging Technology on the Developing Infant,” Psychology Research 5 (September 2015), 504-518. 38 Mary Aiken, The Cyber Effect: A Pioneering Cyberpsychologist Explains How Human Behavior Changes Online (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2016). 33 39 Ibid., 97. 40 Ibid., 98. 41 http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/138/5/e20162591 42 Aiken, The Cyber Effect, 102. 43 Aiken, The Cyber Effect, 22. 44 Ibid., 53. 45 Sherry Turkle, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age (New York: Penguin, 2015), 65. 46 Ibid., 61. 47 Swingle, i-Minds, 10. 48 Aiken, The Cyber Effect, 54. 49 Teens, Social Media & Technology Overview 2015, Pew Research Center http://www. pewinternet.org/2015/04/09/teens-social-media-technology-2015/ 50 Michael Frost, Incarnate: The Body of Christ in an Age of Disengagement (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2014), 15. 51 Ibid., 10. 52 Ibid., 24-25. 53 Lee Siegel, Against the Machine: Being Human in an Age of the Electronic Mob (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2008), 18, 21. 54 For the complete essay, see Wendell Berry, What Are People For? (Berkeley, CA: North Point Press, 1990), 170-177. 55 Quentin J. Schultze, Habits of the High-tech Heart: Living Virtuously in the Information Age (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 197. 56 Norman Wirzba, Living the Sabbath: Discovering the Rhythms of Rest and Delight (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2006), 21.
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