Lost Pages

The central argument of John Fresko’s  The Christian  and Technology  is that technology is a double-edged sword that requires cautious and intentional use. Continuous uncritical use of technology erodes hunger for the Word of God, makes us self-centred and turns our useful devices into idols. The book intends to promote proper use of technology by encouraging us to dig into our hearts to see whether Christ so fills us that nothing can drag us away from him. Fresko believes there is no need for us to flee from technology or become Luddites because technology is value neutral. It is not in of itself good or bad. Instead, we must focus on carefully evaluating how we think about and use technology. This necessarily requires us  not only to understand the relevant technology, but also understand ourselves. A key part of this is recognising that we struggle with technology because we lack contentment in Christ. The book explores explores six different technolog...

Technology is fundamentally about our human desire to flourish. We buy new technology not simply because of what it can do for us, but because we believe it can help us to live a better  life. This necessarily means technology competes with God as our potential saviour. Since we know that the only true Saviour is the Lord Jesus Christ, it raises a troubling question: should followers of Jesus be using technology at all? And  if we have no choice but to use technology, how should we use it? This is the central question addressed by Nicholas and Brooks in their book  Virtually Human . I have had the pleasure of reading the book twice. So, I thought I should record a critical summary for future reference. I have structured the summary around the key questions I have on the subject. Needless to say this is not the way the book is structured. This means I sometimes address issues here that the authors only touch on slightly.  (1) Does our relationship with ...

Over the last few weeks the country has been transfixed on the amazing run of the England football team in Euro 2020. I was initially put off watching the football after I saw the team shamefully bowing to BLM at the start of each game. But as the excitement has grown in the country, I have found myself irresistibly pulled to watch a few games in the tournament. The collective national gaze over England’s Euro 2020 is an example of what Tony  Reinke, the author of Competing Spectacles , calls a spectacle.   A spectacle is something visible that captures our collective attention. It is that moment when society’s eyes and brains focus on something projected at us. This may be a big political story, a sports event, a new film or a badly behaved influencer. We primarily experience spectacles through technologies we use. I have been experiencing the spectacle of Euro 2020 through our television, but others have consumed it on the mobile or in person.  Most spectacles are ...

Social networking (social media) is now a significant part of our lives. We spend a huge amount of time online. A social networking service is an online platform which people use to build social relationships or networks with other people who share their interests,  backgrounds or real-life connections.  Many online services have some element of “social networking” so the list of these networks is potentially quite long. As communication technologies improve and people increasingly interact online, the definition of what constitutes a social network has become elastic.  For example on the one end we have Facebook which is focused specifically on building social relationships. At the other end there is Zoom and WhatsApp whose facilities are designed to build social relationships but would probably refuse to be classed as social networks.  Tim Chester’s Will You Be My Facebook friend? is a short book that tries to help us understand how social media relates to the Gos...

An interesting BBC article notes that social media platforms like Facebook are not merely reflecting our preferences but also actively shaping them though "nudge like": Platforms like Facebook are curating our news and information under catchall headings like “trending topics”, or criteria like “relevance” – but we only rarely get glimpses into how the filtering happens. This is important because subtle changes in the information we are exposed to can transform our behaviour. To understand why, consider an insight from behavioural science that has been widely adopted by governments and other authorities around the world: the policy “nudge”. This is where subtle tactics are used to encourage us to adopt a particular behaviour. One famous example is making organ donation opt-out rather than opt-in. Instead of requiring people to register themselves as organ donors, an opt-out system automatically assumes that anyone’s organs can be used for donation unless they have specif...

The process starts with a cue or stimulus. That’s an external trigger. It’s most effective if it arrives when the target is feeling some kind of discomfort (which Eyal calls an internal trigger), from which it can promise relief—like a Facebook message that happens to arrive in your inbox just when you’re feeling alone. “The more times users go through the Hook, the more the product forms an association with internal triggers like loneliness, boredom, or fear,” Eyal explains. “When we’re lonely, we turn to Facebook. When we’re feeling out of the loop, we turn to Twitter. From a very helpful piece in How Facebook and Candy Crush Got You Hooked .  The main lesson appears to be that online addiction is not accidental, it is deliberate inbuilt into the programme. Whilst this should not necessary stop us from using these platforms it should make us more vigilant how we use them. This is especially so since unlike alcohol or cigarettes there is no warning labels. Copyright © C...

Driveless cars, humanoid robots, 3D printers and the Internet of Things are just a few of the many technological developments that are increasingly converting science fiction into everyday reality. A recent book The Second Machine Age’  by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee argues that as extraordinary as these changes are, these are merely warm-up acts of a broader 'second machine age' that is already transforming us and is poised to sweep us off our feet in the near future! The first machine age was characterized by muscle power epitomized by the steam engine and its descendants. In the second machine age, computers and other digital advances are increasing use of our brains, enabling us to understand and shape our environments. This is vast and unprecedented boost to mental power means that we are at an “inflection point” in the history of economies and societies. Crucially it is an inflection point in the right direction - bounty instead of scarcity, freedom instead of ...

Social media allows us to vent our feelings without a filter. I cringe whenever a Christian leader says anything controversial online. I know what's coming. A barrage of criticism from people who may indeed be right in their assessment, but wrong in their approach. The disunity of the church has never been on display more than in our current age when everyone is a publisher. The problem is, because we speak from behind the thin veil of a screen, we disconnect a person's words from the context of their life. We pounce without understanding the heart, the motives, or the real life story of the one whom we are castigating. And when everyone voices an opinion about everything that is major news, the world sometimes sees the worst side of who we are. It is by our oneness that the world will know we are followers of Jesus, but social media can fuel division and put it on display. From Brandon A Cox's piece 4 Ways Social Media Will Destroy Your Life . His general point is that ...

Janet Daley recently wrote in the UK's Daily Telegraph on the inherent anti-social nature of 'social media': Where has all this absurd, unfathomable rage and hatred come from? Has it always been there, lying beneath the surface of an apparently benign national life, just waiting for its chance to leap from the dark? I doubt it: I am more inclined to believe that there is something about the isolation of computer-based activity (and this includes online pornography addiction) that breeds deviant, narcissistic, almost autistic, attitudes to the outside world. Which may be another reason why obsessive participation in “social media” is not really social at all: why it can so easily become detached, insular and, in the end, deeply anti-social.. She is definitely onto something by noting that the nature of social media leads to living isolated lives. And that such isolation inevitably breeds dark deeds. As King Solomon warned, whoever isolates himself seeks his own desir...

I recently read an interesting article in the UK's  Grace Magazine  by Pastor Andrew King on christians and social media. The article identifies three dangers of social media to Christians and six opportunities that we should embrace to help us use social media responsiby.  Three dangers : 1) The danger of being shallow rather wise . The vast amount of information that is generated by social media means that that there's a real danger that we waste our time updating or reading trivia. Most of what we read is not important.  2) The danger of being selfish rather than serving . Whether it is carefully constructing my comments to attract a person's attention, or regularly checking for their replies, social media runs the risk of making an idol out of our own significance. 3) The danger of being connected rather than communal . Social media has the danger of removing our minds to 'somewhere else' rather than where we are.  With our phones and tablet...

Lindsey Carlson has an excellent piece on  The Plastic Fruit of Online Living   where she makes the following observation : Avoiding real-life connections—the ones you see every Sunday morning—to unpack your heart in the digital community doesn’t only set you up for a delusional view of self, disappointment with your physical community, and social isolation; it also breeds spiritual stagnancy. No matter how great your internet friends are, they aren’t standing beside you, sensing your suffocating self-absorption. They don’t see you at your worst or notice when you’re avoiding fellowship or suffering from spiritual depression. They won’t pick up on your dissatisfaction with your spouse, your constant bitterness or negativity, or your refusal to forgive the friend who hurt you. But real-life friends, the ones who can drive to your doorstep when you call, will. I need friends who will get in my grill, iron sharpening iron, and help me to conquer sin head-on. I may turn...

Bianca Bosker's Huffington Post  article on the social network app Instagram provides yet more evidence  of man's inherent capacity to corrode the good gifts of life. Instagram, the photo-sharing app, is technologically morally neutral. Indeed at its best it should not only deliver “fast" and "beautiful” ways to exchange images but should be an active conduit for positive innovation and creativity.  But the app once heralded as the "Eden of social networking sites" is now threatened with the dark nature of its users: It’s the place where 80 million people share picturesque, gently-tinted photos of bouquets, sunsets, spaghetti and cappuccinos. And it’s a service Facebook paid $1 billion to bring into its fold. But beyond the food porn that regularly tops Instagram’s “most popular” list lurks an abundance of, well, porn porn. Images tagged with terms such as “sextagram,” “instaporn,” and “handbra” summon up tens of thousands of images of genitalia and nu...

I recently read (and reviewed for a magazine) a book by Michael Sandel, What Money Can't Buy , where he argues that the relentless march of prices in our lives has led to erosion of social assets / goods that money simply can't buy. The result is that as a society, we are all becoming poorer for it. We have shades of similar posturing in this observation by Robin Mansell on technological progress:  In the Internet age the trend is to rely too much on technological progress and too little on social values. The consequence is that the monitoring of online behavior is being extended further and further into the private domain of citizens lives. Citizens are entitled to a world in which the benefits of digital media and information are not outweighed by the harm of increasingly intrusive incursions into their virtual and ‘real’ lives. The challenge is to imagine how governments can privilege democratic rights in the face of the seductive attraction of superfast computing and ...