I've been reading a bunch of cautionary books this semester about the way in which technology is colonizing our lives, and how in a lot of cases that it is driving us further apart rather than bringing us together in any meaningful sense. Perhaps if I didn't feel so completely wrung out from work and school and sundry personal issues that come and go, I would take these cautions less seriously. But I find myself so drained, so positively burned out nearly every single day from all the directions my attention is being dragged, sometimes kicking and screaming, that I have spent enormous amounts of time simply wasting it on the internet. I'm so tired that I want something mindless, and I usually find it. But in true form, as several of these books have noted, because of the way image works instead of static print, my brain's attention is quickly diverted, leaving me EVEN MORE DRAINED than before. Yet without my computer I feel as though I am wandering around in a sensory deprivation chamber.
Something is seriously off here.
So let me briefly reflect on this book as another part of my class assignment, in which I will lament the loss of my ability to pay non-digital attention to the important things in my life. Sherry Turkle's Alone Together is a combination of facts and startlingly blunt anecdotal stories of people, parents and children, feeling increasingly disconnected from each other and from the world, even as they cling even more closely to the pieces of technology that are doing the separating.
My brain is not running at full capacity this week, as a ton of stress has left me full of adrenaline bumps and exhausted, but I will try to tell you some snippets from the book that bothered me intensely.
One of the moments took place in a discussion of how teenagers, in the wake of Columbine and September 11, see their cell phones as having some kind of talismanic power of safety. This may make sense to many, but it makes no sense to me. Here is why.
1) In the event something like September 11 happens again, you will be lucky to get anyone on your cell phone at all. Towers will be so overloaded by people also trying to call or text that communication will likely be impossible.
2) Kids had cell phones during Columbine, and it didn't stop anyone from dying. Dave Sanders still effing bled to death because it's not communication that was the problem. The people outside knew he was injured and dying. It was a lack of coordination and courage on the part of the authorities.
3) Emily Keyes may have texted her parents during the Platte Canyon High School hostage situation, but it didn't keep the gunman from killing her.
The point being, technology has the power to do many things, but it cannot keep you from being killed in a storm of human evil or ineptitude. Furthermore, as has become obvious in the recent spate of adolescent suicides due to bullying, the technology itself just becomes another tool of human evil, a source of even more vitriol and hate, even when the subject is no longer physically present with you. This can lead to a type of anxiety called hypervigilance, which is often a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder. Speaking of which, this leads me to my next moment of disturbance, which is...
The manifestation of panopticon, in which the internet, instead of freeing us, becomes a giant endless recorder of every mistake or mishap we will ever commit. Even if you go back and try to edit or delete, someone can keep their own record of it, and later blackmail you. Governments can track your electronic trail. Many people take this as a positive thing, saying "It's not a big deal if you have nothing to hide." But that isn't the question. The question is whether or not people are in a constant state of self-censoring panic because they are afraid of friends, companies, the government, whomever, finding out about them. That is not the road to a more free and just society. That is the road to endless possible permutations of manipulation by forces that probably don't have qualms about throwing people in the garbage to get what they want.
Which makes me wonder about the concept of grace. If grace means that the slate is wiped clean and God forgives, what does that mean in a world where the line in the sand stays drawn? What does it mean if the law has triumphed by cataloguing every sin that has ever been committed? What does it mean if we let ourselves let the law triumph over grace, over the possibility of redemption and starting over?
The desire for redemption and starting over is nonetheless strong and compelling enough to fuel confession sites, however. One of them that I read on a weekly basis is PostSecret. Yet Turkle points out something that finds us all in an emotional dead end when combined with the endless vigilance of the internet's all-seeing eye. We are confessing because we have done something wrong, but confessing online often takes away the whole point of confession: absolution. If we confess our sins to the person whom we have hurt, they may or may not forgive us. We are vulnerable in doing so. Yet because we don't want to risk that vulnerability, because we have not nurtured relationships that can accept this level of interaction, we instead retreat to a place where we feel we won't be hurt when we confess, which is ok because we won't have to face up to the fact that maybe we aren't really sorry. So the internet collects our sins and never absolves us of anything.
One of my friends this week wrote on Facebook that her eschatology has been all messed up in this class; instead of Revelations, the end of the world might look more like The Matrix. I don't know if I can disagree with her. Certainly, all our 'progress' and 'prosperity' of the last two and counting centuries has brought many of us unprecedented levels of health and comfort. Yet it comes at a price, a price which is slowly destroying the environment that keeps us alive, destroying the communities that helped give us meaning, poisoning the food we eat, the water we drink, the interactions we have with one another. We paint each other and ourselves into corners of nonsensical either/or decisions, in which both choices fail us. When someone brings out another piece of technology that is supposed to free us, we use these devices to make the noose around our collective necks even tighter, using our levels of connection and endless feedback loops to make ourselves more isolated.
Wherefore this blog, then? After this class, I don't know. I do know that as an INFJ I am constantly in search of ways to pare down my life and make it less stressful. I am going to one class next semester, which I am hoping will allow me a little more emotional leeway as my job shifts around a bit. I am hoping that maybe I can spend more time with friends in person. My fiance and I held an impromptu dinner party last night that left us both feeling tired, but in a way that wasn't draining. Thanksgiving was a hoot because technology was at a minimum and togetherness and food were at a maximum. I find that a little more rewarding than the last few weeks.
Wherefore God, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit? I'm not entirely convinced of deus ex machina as I used to be, and despite the valiant efforts of my professors, I feel less convinced than I did going into the class of the wisdom of churches going online. I know that entire networks of ministry are happening through Twitter and podcasts right now, but I often wonder who they're talking to. Many people I know don't have the time or opportunity to sift through the massive amounts of materials produced in ever increasing numbers by blogs and zines and sites. I don't even have the time anymore. And if I spent more time listening to that, what would the tradeoff be for the people physically in front of me every day? Kairos time is something I desperately need more of, not chronos time.
Would our efforts be better spent by, instead of trying to shoehorn ourselves into technology, advocating for a moratorium on the type of capitalism that is spiralling itself and us toward destruction with its tyranny of time and advocating for a system of kairos that places emphasis on human relationship to one another and nature rather than some twisted notion of efficiency? We'd have to give up a lot of comfort, but in the end we're going to be doing that anyway, according to all the reports from this year saying my generation will be worse off than my parents'. I guess it comes down to a question of whether or not we are willing to give up short-term comfort for long-term survival for everybody, not just us. Maybe I'm setting up a false dichotomy too, but I'm not so optimistic these days.
I guess that's the paradox of Advent though. When you say "Come, Lord Jesus," you're not just talking about the baby in the manger. You're talking about the Cosmic Creator who said He'd return again, and not to make us feel safe or good about ourselves.
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