timeimmortal

Count Roland invokes Neil Postman’s classic work in his response to this article.

Neil Postman, in various books but especially Technopoly, makes a similar argument about technology and how it and ‘scientism‘ have become our civil Religion. One of my favourite anecdotes is the student who could not declare a room to be hot before consulting the thermostat.

Socrates said it 2500 years ago that writing would impoverish humanity, as it would lead to a weakening of memory. Maybe it has, but likely not since writing can help us discover and adapt beyond one man’s lifetime work. But the kernel of truth is that every technology we develop changes us, and not necessarily for the better. Our trust in technology and in ‘they’ is as irrational as the faith we hold, if secularist claims about religious faith are to be beleived (they are not), and more irrational than the actual faith claims and their rational justifications especially in light of the ends to which they are going. GPS may save time on a temporal shipment; our faith has the telos of our immortal souls and the eternal situation in which they end.

What is increasingly troubling is that the gap between those who know (in a full sense) the technology and those who use it is widening. For example, thirty years ago most men could fix their own cars — they were simple nough to understand — or at least know if the mechanic was being less than honest, but today most drivers can not fix many problems because cars have become more technical. Yet, we seem to be putting more trust in said technologies. Trusting more what one understands less of, as a society, is irrational insofar as it makes us more vulnerable to personal and corporate catastrophe — a broken car on a lonely highway in winter, a terrorist attack using a Tandy 3000 on our power network. That is the opposite thrust to what Christians strive to do — trust more as we understand more. Now, we can never fully understand God and a childlike (NOT childISH) faith is important, but a child’s most important question is ‘why?’ and we seek to find the answer to that question about God and about creation. Blind faith in what ‘they’ tell us is right is not mainstream Christianity. Mainstream Christianity is fides quearum intellectum — faith seeking understanding — and while we,in sin, can follow the wrong path, a sincere journey will eventually take us towards the Truth. Modern society’s faith in ‘they’ — usually scientists or media-political elites — is indicative of cult (in the contemporary sense) behaviour.

Chesterton was so right, but then again, aren’t we Christians just ignorant fools? Everyone is, but sometimes God graces us with wisdom — I suspect Chesterton would have told the two mothers to cut the child in half, too.

Roland hints at a rather curious thing — the underlying paganism in atheism (or, more broadly, secularism).

Even a cursory look at history should inform the reader that, for as long as humanity has had any semblance of society (even down to the tribal level), humanity has had Religion. The act of worshipping is an intrinsic aspect of human nature, and the philosophers of atheism have it exactly wrong. The question is not, as some might suppose, whether we shall worship; the question is what we shall worship.

For example, Daniel Dennett would ultimately suggest that we worship the meaty organ located an inch or two behind our eyes, and its capacity for reason and rational thought. Other secular categories of worship include the environment (through movements such as radical global warming/climate change alarmism) and animals (through movements such as PETA and other rabid animal rights organizations), the sexual organs and the sexual act, money, power, technology (which we are discussing here), and Barrack Hussein Obama. Most adherents of these movements and philosophies might not regard their participation in them as being an act of worship, but fundamentally that is what it distills down to, personal opinions nonwithstanding.

In other words: formal, ardently disbelieving atheism is but a temporary interlude between (in the West at least) Christianity and whatever religion will supplant Christianity, or between old Christianity and a new, resurgent Christianity.

Humanity’s reliance on — and increasing credulousness in the face of — technology, however, seems poised to continue and to worsen. Roland is exactly right in noting the widening gap between the typical user’s understanding of the complexity of a particular piece of technology and the actual complexity of that technology. Think for just a moment, O Reader, about the last time someone — if not yourself, mind — pointed at a computer tower and called the whole assembly a “hard drive.” That’s a tiny (if somewhat irksome, in my opinion) example, but illustrative all the same.

We trust too much in technology, while at the same time knowing less and less about the ins and outs of pieces thereof. That’s not a good — nor very Christian — position for us to be in.

Bus driver chooses instructions from GPS unit over bridge height-limit warning signs — ends up shaving the top two feet off of most of his bus.

Chesterton once noted, I believe, that if people stop believing in God, they’ll believe in anything. I haven’t the first clue about the bus driver’s religious beliefs (or lack thereof), but I do happen to think that our society has gotten…a lot more credulous, especially where technology is concerned. Heck, it’s gotten to the point where people are willing to trust the little Garmin box sitting on their dashboard over the road signs that have been in place for twenty, thirty, or forty years.

I remember when Google Maps first launched — it took them over a year to finally sort out which streets in Edmonton’s downtown area were one-way streets, and another few months to sort out which directions those one-ways went. Even now, when I use Google to find directions, I tend to take the results as only a rough guideline; the reality on the ground may be a very different thing than what the picture on the screen suggests, and on a long-distance trip I need to be able to adjust for that when and if it happens.

Anyone want to bet that a decade ago, before GPS units became commonplace, that this bridge that the bus hit saw hardly any overhead impacts in a typical year?

So true.

“…younger workers will use your corporate network to run most any device, technology or social networking software they can get their hands on. Dubbed “Millenials,” these workers born after 1980 are nearly twice as likely to use cell phones and PDAs at work, and half admit to installing unauthorized software on their employer’s computers. On the upside, the Millenials are more security aware than their older co-workers.”

When they’re not causing security risks by updating their MySpace profiles during lunch breaks and downloading music, chat applications, and a host of other bits of media content that have traditionally served as vectors for malware and viruses, that is.

That’s what makes IT such a challenging field — you have to be smarter than the other users, and stay one step ahead of the craftiest cube-dweller. People will use proxies to get around firewalls, so you have to be able to identify and block proxies. People will try and use chat programs, reach Facebook, download games, watch videos, update their iPods, and so forth. To say nothing of the hosts of malicious programs that can get in by any number of means, even email.

It’s a challenge, to say the least.