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. The Christ on Campus Initiative exists to inspire students on college and university campuses to think wisely, act with conviction, and become more Christ-like by providing relevant and excellent evangelical resources on contemporary issues. We aim to distribute resources—prepared by top evangelical scholars, pastors, and thinkers—that are intellectually rigorous, persuasive in argument, appealing in tone, and consistent with historic evangelical Christianity. The Christ on Campus Initiative is generously supported by the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding (a ministry of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) and the MAC Foundation. This essay is Copyright © 2016 by Christ on Campus Initiative (CCI). Readers and organizations may circulate this and other CCI essays without charge. Christians & DIGITAL MEDIA Benefits and Burdens BY C. Ben Mitchell 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.