Rikk Watts: Starships off Sagittarius

Lets continue the discussion of the Borgmann lectures at Regent College Vancouver in 2011. I will again focus on the replies of Regent College New Testament Professor Rikk Watts but will start with an attempt at explaining the Prof Borgmann's second lecture Pointless Perfection and Blessed Burdens.

Pointless Perfection

'It is the powerful burden of perfection that actually leads to a pointless life, and in reverse it is certain types of burdens that bring blessing and should be embraced.  Beginning with a brief discussion of the classic greek ideal of perfection, Borgmann then went on to develop his discussion around the tempting nature of cyberspace to offer this ever-increasing, disembodied perfection.  This notion of disembodied perfection is very powerful in our culture, with virtual objects – those whose realization is independent from any particular place or time – dominating our cultural landscape, and revealing a dominant bent towards unlimited collected intelligence and thereby immortality.  However, Borgmann claims that this pursuit of perfection is pointless, as human intelligence is essentially embodied, that is, mind and body cannot be torn apart.  It is actually within the burden of being ‘bodied’ that we do find the blessing that we seek'.

Thanks again to http://simplecityblog.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/pointless-perfection-and-blessed-burdens-laing-lecture-2/

Borgmann spent considerable time attempting to link the concepts of perfection and functionalism through a short but nevertheless messy discussion of the mind brain problem. In this incredibly meandering talk, he wandered through AI, Turing and current advances in computer technology. To make his points he draws on the most extreme boosterist like Kurweil. His argument is that the vision of perfection for the Brain downloaders movement is for us to be virtually ‘embodied’ online forever. Borgmann argues that being human is the physical and mind, brain and body – us – cannot be separated as it is the totality of our physical experience and our thinking that makes us, us. 

That is totally and undeniably true. So each of you readers out there are a mixture of male / female - short / tall - athlete / not so athletic - born in a very particular physical place and time. All of these physical attributes expose us to certain cultural influences that we carry with us through our lives. Indeed as we age and change geographies these continue to influence us. So I will say it, the brain downloading movement is nuts. But, they are something of a straw man in my opinion and in my opinion there are many stronger attacks on their understanding of the world than Borgmann's 'pointless perfection'. 

Why the cyber downloaders in the first place? Maybe to avoid death - hmmm now that dates back to when; lets see, Genesis. Herfeld suggests we suffer from cosmic loneliness, now that is food for thought and Christian discussion. Why should we be lonely? What is the remedy for that? What does the Bible have to say? But that is off track for this blog - Neither Borgmann or Watts went there. Through his talk Borgmann weaved a confusing thread of functionalism – that is that the function of the mind = architecture of the brain, which is what Watts picked up on in his commentary.

In response.

To sum up Rikk’s second thesis I would suggest it goes something like this – there may be a societal pull towards the Platonic idea of simple perfection and thus to the disembodied, but this need not imply that the Christian Philosophy is therefore to accept this equation and therefore reject cyberspace and the technological. Instead it is to live out a calling to transcend and redeem the philosophy of the age living with God’s desire for us to be mature, to submit our burdens to God and continue our creation mandate.

One of the more important points Rikk makes is this one.

For the designer, function belongs very much to the discourse of the Vicoean speech act, where a particular embodied subjective agent, through a particular act of imagination and incarnational fashioning, calls into being that which was not, namely, a particular thing; i.e. not motor vehicles generically but the model-T Ford. From this perspective, function has no existence of its own, but originates in, is called forth by, and is always oriented toward a particular incarnation; if one must, it’s more Aristotelian than Platonic. Variety, far from reflecting less-than-perfect attempts to realize the ideal motor vehicle, arises instead from the nature of what design theorists call “wicked problems.” A wicked problem is one where, in the very nature of the actual material world and unlike virtual mathematics, there is no single “correct” or perfect Platonic answer. The reason there are so many cars, aircraft, smart phones etc. and why people continue to design, build, and purchase them in all their glorious variety, is because they all succeed in various ways in their, not one or two, but manifold and incommensurable web of functionings (the plural is deliberate and essential).

Rikk here is directly challenging both Kurzweil's conceptualization of perfection as well as Borgmann’s retreat from it. There are many possible solutions to technical problems – thus we have many designs for cars, aircraft, toasters. I would add at this point that economics, the oft forgotten dimension is fundamental here. The equation goes something like this Function X Technical solutions X Economic transaction points (price, location etc etc) X Existing technological knowledge = DESIGNS. So rather than decreasing variety we have increasing variety. Even at the extreme, the hugely costly endeavor of civil aircraft building, even with fewer aircraft assemblers the actual range of models has probably remained at least static for decades – each model designed for a specific market.

This has an interesting cross over with Ellul, yet neither Borgmann or Watts mentioned this in their talks. Borgmann was arguing that the current worldview supports an Ellulian proposition that technology leads to one perfect solution and Watts arguing that in fact technology leads away from such a conclusion. Empirically, the evidence is with Watts on this. Here what Kevin Kelly said recently in an interview:

Over time we are generating new technologies, we're producing all new problems. Most of the problems we have today are technogenic, meaning that they were created by technology in the past. Most of the problems in the future are going to be created by technologies we're creating today. Technology is a means of producing new problems. It's a means of producing new solutions, but the fact that we have a choice between those two is what tips the balance very, very slightly in the favor of the good for the long term. Over civilization scale, we have this net tiny incremental accumulation of these choices over time, and that tiny accumulation is what we call progress.

 …

The ordinary pen you use every day seems very simple but it probably took 100 different technologies to make this pen technology, technologies of plastic, ink, ball bearing, metal, and each of those different technologies probably themselves required another 100 sub-technologies to support it and, of course, there's kind of a circular way in which pens might be necessary to make a ball bearing in the same way that electricity is necessary to make a generator, and a generator may be necessary to make the wires of an electrical system. A hammer requires a handle and a head, and the saw requires the hammer to make the saw that cuts the handle, so there is a sense in which all of this is very recursive and that there is a network of different supporting technologies, and that the whole web of all these things I call the technium. The technium is that largest network of all the technologies working together to support each other, and while this pen is definitely not alive, there is a sense in which the technium as a whole exhibits life-like behaviors in the same way that your neuron doesn't really think, but the network of neurons in your brain can make an idea.

So rather than pointless ‘perfection’ as a unified point, technology and even cyberspace is actually heading in the opposition direction, like the biosphere the variety has increased.  

Burdens.

I feel Borgmann was on more solid ground on the topic of burdens. For Borgmann the ‘blessed burdens’ are taking the steps of walking, cooking, serving a meal, speaking words face to face etc. It appears that Watts was in agreement, noting that he has begun to enjoy activities such as mowing the lawn. Thus, there is nothing really to comment on here. We need to inhabit our own lives.

However, in a single sentence Borgmann skipped over a universe of issues.

“after we have cured the evil and truly intolerable burdens’ ... we can move on to enjoy the blessed burdens – what are these and what is the activity that will cure them. The science and technology system will surely be crucial in this endeavor. It was a throw away line that is fascinating for Borgmann's worldview.

Sameness does not equal  Perfection 

Borgmann was suggesting that the end point of cyberspace (as it should be pointed out conceived by some) is perfection but it is better characterised as sameness and those two are not the same. Once cyberised, experiences of a particular kind are fixed - one variable moves - the cyber entity can continue to think and learn but without a physical interaction with the world their is no true evolution of the person - Arnold Rimmer in the TV series Red Dwarf comes quickly to mind. Kevin Kelly in the same interview as quoted above makes a related point:

The real key is to remain different while you're connected. The problem with being connected is it tends to homogenize everybody, so there's this pressure to be the same if you're connected. You go to any large city around the world, and there is a uniformity in what that downtown looks like. Connection tends to drive things to uniformity, but the value, the power of being connected is by remaining different. There's this conundrum, this dilemma of remaining different while connected, because if you're just different but not connected, there's no power in that, and that's actually easy to do, but can you remain different while connected? You're different in certain degrees, yet you're part of the uniform standard. So it's like you don't want to make up new words that don't mean anything. You want to write a book that uses the standard words in the dictionary, so you're going to be different while connected to the standard. You're connected to the English language, but you're going to be different with what the words say.

In contrast to sameness I think the argument of Watts calls for difference.

But as humans we alone are also called to be “perfect”—meaning “mature, complete, lacking in no good work”—in our imaging the character of the one true personal God. And this is not a simple summons to “be good, or to do better.” It is an invitation to be transformed, by the indwelling grace of God’s Spirit, a Spirit, be it noted, of wisdom …and of truth. This is much more than telling people how to use cyberspace. It is changing us from the inside so that our mode of engagement, individually and collectively, takes on a different quality.

We are not called to be the same, we called to live the individual lives God intended for each of us. We should be encouraging a variety of lived expressions of the Gospel of Jesus and also challenging the dull sameness of the cyberspace visionaries but that is not the same as not allowing space in our lives for cyberspace. Can not cyberspace be a blessed burden. In other words can it not be a burden that is redeemed such that we have self control enough to enjoy it and not over indulge. We would say the same for eating. 

The last word however, must go to Rikk Watts for the most extraordinary conclusion to a Christian talk I have ever heard. Some of us may secretly hope for this but how many Christian have voiced it publicly I wonder?

Hopefully as (new) creators by our small expressions of transcendent incarnation in truly human technology we can work with God bringing a measure of merciful order, goodness and ... to this world in escatalogical anticipation of the goodness that is yet to come. And who knows if heaven on earth might not involve astonishing starships in stately formation off the galactic shores of an even more glorious Sagittarius. I not sure I can see the point of an embodied resurrection with our wonderful fully opposable thumbs if they are destined to spend the rest of eternity raised upwards or for the good Presbyterians amongst us calmly at our sides. Does this sound like preaching ... yeah but it was exactly this kind of preaching of the gospel that transformed the ancient world and I believe it will again.

Reflecting on thinking and communicating about 'technology'

First let me apologise that my next Rikk Watts blog is not ready yet, but it is on the way. However, I view blogging is a spiritual discipline - to write one blog a month helps me work at integrating the different parts of my life.

This month's blog then is a reflection on the challenges of writing and  thinking coherently about 'technology' as a Christian.

So let me paint my personal landscape. I do contract research. I have an association with a university research centre but am not employed by it. My income comes from doing research for others, mostly on technology industries, the impact of technological change on industries or evaluation of government programs related to research and technology. My engagement with theology and technology comes through reading, writing this blog and some occasional talks on the topic at churches. I have a PhD but it is is my professional field not theology.

So here are some observations:

1. not having any degree in theology is perceived I think as a limitation of credentials, yet it doesn't seem to work in reverse theologians can discuss technology;
2. although I sense a growing interest in the topic of theology and technology there is still somewhat of a gulf between the theology as it is discussed in churches and the lived experienced of "everyday life" as Robert Banks has pointed out many years ago;
3. we often comprehend a presentation when it is applied but if audience is diverse such as for a blog or an academic community then making it too applied can remove a sense of generalisability; and
4. then there is the issue of scale. This is the one I personally struggle with the most. In academic circles narrowness of expertise is rewarded, as a contract researcher, breadth is rewarded (there are very few repeat bits of work). Further, 'technology' as a topic of enquiry requires constant vigilance - the trends, the technologies, the patterns of adoption and use and the geographies of production are constantly evolving. For example in the 1990s the industries that made technologies such as computers and the firms within them were important but today those companies have become less important (except for the increasingly few top level architecture firms like Apple and HP). Today the companies that use technological infrastructure are more important (Google, Amazon, Facebook et al.).

This presents a problem. To be interested in the phenomena of technological development at an economy or society wide perspective for example requires both the mastery of a set of tools for analysis and also the visions to see shifts in the technoshere as I have started calling it (http://econscapes.blogspot.ca/2013/11/marco-innov-5-technosphere-slowing.html) mirroring the ecological language of biosphere. So those 'industries' I mentioned above - well  increasingly these are even conceptually problematic. Are social media companies a new entity or are they old media in a new clothes (new technologies) - they profit from selling advertising space after all? How do you classify a company with a few hundred employees with thousands or 10s of thousands contractors and billions in revenue. Many of these companies have few national employees in any particular country (if any) but substantial revenues and they are mostly very headquarters-centric (often America). What about the sharing economy - Airbnb etc. If you are not paying attention to the big picture your academic style specialisation will get published but it will also have a 'so what!' factor.

The challenge for Christians is God calls us to pay attention to and sift good from bad. We need to keep our sanity, always a danger whether focused on either the smallest or biggest pictures. We need to be constantly shifting our gaze, what seemed important 20 years ago just seems less so now, yet amongst the noise we need to keep our eyes focused on what matters - creation, sin, Jesus, grace and restoration/judgement.

Confused - exactly. Let try a different angle.

My wife studies assistive technologies, what is good and what may be harmful in certain circumstances from the perspective of biomechanics (i.e the human using the device). But what are the ethics of such technologies - are we 'normalising' people with disabilities so that they can be productive efficient members of society as Ellul might suggest. Or are these technologies good because rather than being left on the edges of society, people with disabilities can better engage with society as individuals that have liberty and freedom rather than being people who have choices made for them. You might think this pretty micro but within traditional academic structures there are people who research the philosophy/ethics etc of disability issues.

So where does a Christian thinking about the evolving technological world fit? When our interest is technology it is not just the tools (philosophy or economics) we bring to its study (see a good blog on the frailestthing) but the level at which we study it. If not constrained by academic structures do we try and be observers of the big issues (cyber security/spying, continuing developments in the technology economy and related ethical concerns) do we focus on particular technologies (new digital & social media interactions with personal development is popular at present), or even yet narrower topics.

As a massive generalisation humans like to either look deep into a subject or to try and get a handle on the big picture and we don't necessarily do this as a personality trait. We often explore topics of interest in depth and then survive by having general working assumptions for other parts of our lives. The academic enterprise encourages specialisation and increasingly at fantastical levels. As technologies become ever more complex this specialisation of the natural sciences and social sciences is mirrored in the engineering and design of products.

The question is how to be relevant to a discussion that barely existts. I have always been drawn to map making, trying to make sense of of the noise but does that mean my writings are too vague to be applied.

Hmmmm, how do you approach wrestling with such issues.

Being Human (body & spirit): Borgmann and Watts

I've attended a variety of different churches in my time (Presbyterian, Australian Baptists, Sydney Anglican style, and more recently Mennonite from the non-Amish end of the spectrum obviously). One feature binds all these together in a strange kind of way. The physical body - emotions, food, place etc doesn't get much of a look in. We discuss Christian belief in a rather abstract often kind of boring way. We say that we should be patient etc, but the sermon rarely covers the ground of what do you do when your world is falling apart or even if you suffer from conditions that make it hard to keep a level keel on life. Some people just physiologically find some things easier than others - this doesn't make them more faithful.

We don't want to admit it but our physical beings shapes applied theology and our theology shapes what we think of our physical selves. To give one quick example by way of introduction. Moving to Canada, I can not help but notice thanksgiving once a year - a time when seemingly the whole community celebrates what it has (not what it doesn't). Another example, the Canadian Foodgrains Bank where farmers on the prairies supply grains to give as aid overseas.  That comes from a theology of grace but we should not overlook it also comes from fertile soils and mild climates that produce solid crops yields year after year. Place, theology and the working lives of farmers coming together. Now, the Australian situation is a little different, poor soils, unpredictable rain and a legitimate fight for survival. There farmers show, patience, long suffering often and faithfulness waiting for the crop. Two different places two difference responses to grace.

So I am interested but poorly educated theologically to think about Christian faith and technology because technology interacts with our bodies and our identity. We spend so much time in Church on theological points divorced from everyday life that we end up with a tangled mess in our heads confusing God with the economy or our physical situation.

It is easy then to take for granted points that appear self evident but are really more messy than they appear. Take for example the key points of many who argue against, or fear, the emergence of cyberspace. Typically what is argued is that as physical beings we go virtual at the peril of loosing some integral nature of our created beings - we become less than the full image of God. It sounds like a legitimate concern but is this true theologically?

So back in 2011, yes a long time ago, Albert Borgmann gave the Laing Lectures at Regent College. Borgmann gave 3 lectures with Craig Gay and Rikk Watts, both Profs at Regent presenting responses to each lecture. I want to highlight the responses of Rikk Watts, not only because they were tantalising glimpses into new ideas but because I think any attention and ink spilt (virtual or on parchment - here here) on the lectures attended mostly to the arguments of Borgmann and he has already written several books voicing his opinions. So why now? Quite simply I didn't feel ready to take on this topic before now. It is time but I do so with trepidation.

To cast Borgmann's arguments crudely and straightforwardly, I'll pinch some elegant summaries from elsewhere. Rikk I will take in his own words either from the Audio available through the Regent bookstore or from Rikk's own notes which he kindly emailed me. Of course I take responsibility for any interpretation and thoughts, although Rikk if you ever come by this and what to comment, feel free!

Borgmann

During these three lectures, Borgmann was most concerned with determining the ontological quandaries that face us in an ever de-materializing technological existence and in light of that elevating the mystery of our material lives. Translation: we all spend more and more time in cyberspace, our lives are becoming virtual, and we’re missing the grace that abounds around us. This has disastrous consequences for how we understand ourselves as humans and greatly restricts our ability to live fully and freely. Tim Boland and Ryan Munn Printed in Et Cetera October 25 2011.

So much of what Borgmann hammered on for three lectures was the body physical. As one example, being present, truly present (body and mind) at meals with others rather than being distracted by cyberspace.

Rikk Watts in his 2011 Borgmann response suggested something interesting and different that I have been thinking about ever since. However, I don't pretend to understand everything Rikk said in his 'lectures' but I hope to surface here a point that I've not come across before. Here is a snippet from the beginning of his first response taken from the text version.

Consider, for example, Professor Borgmann’s concern with the “distance-less” nature of cyberspace. Yes, “distance-less-ness” seems inherently opposed to the three dimensionality of physical presence which is inherent in image language. But central to image is also the language of spirit—and isn’t there a sense in which Spirit is also “distance-less”? That is, might it be better to see the two as complementary elements of our humanity? Part of what makes me human is my ability to collapse distances, first, and perhaps foremost, with my mind. Might cyberspace be seen in this respect as also reflecting and perhaps extending, as does much technology even if more sharply, our image-bearing nature? At the same time, to the extent that cyberspace can make present—albeit in refracted image—those who are bodily absent, might it be seen more positively as an agent of at least partial incarnation? Of course cyberspace can be an escape, a means of hiding in the garden. But these potentials are present in book or telephone, and we’ve had to learn to develop best practice. Cyberspace we are told is
different, even radically so. And in important respects perhaps it is—though how radically, I’m not yet certain. But since in terms of “present partial-image” and “distance-less spirit” it apparently reflects and therefore shares our ontology I would caution against a too quick reaction. We have learned best practices before, is there any reason we cannot do so now? Perhaps, then, one of the fundamental ways forward is to consider to what extent cyberspace affirms or hinders our (plural) “embodying God’s character upon the earth”? In this respect, and so in spite of the sometimes near apocalyptic rhetoric, I do not find cyberspace’s collapsing of distances and of contexts necessarily troubling. Not only is the vast majority of my life still lived in a spatial world, so too are the means by which I engage “cyberspace”: I still have to touch, type, swipe, hold, look, listen, speak to, and so on, and one always does so in a particular temporal and spatial location. I myself collapse distances and contexts all the time, precisely because I myself am a transcendent being with a psychosomatic unity that remains “me” across various contexts.

The taped version reveals something a little tweak that nuances the above text in an important way.

There are elements of earlier technologies like books that will do that too, enable us to hear voices from distant ages from different parts of the world etc.

...
This helps make sense of Rikk's latter notes [again lecture response 1] where he says (and the tape is reasonably similar):

Thus I find the previously mentioned distance-lessness equally in my pocket Greek New Testament—whose origins lie in the first century, with the problem of the absent author going back thousands of years before that—as I do in my Accordance version on my iPhone. Anytime, any place, I can begin a private “conversation” with a faceless Mark—and that regardless of WiFi coverage. But in neither case am I necessarily tempted to commodify the gospel. I’m not convinced that knowledge, in principle, becomes foggy in moving from brains to computers—fogginess of mind is hardly a 20th century innovation. On the contrary, if I attend to the particulars, I’ve learned a great deal as I’ve joined the astonishing number of people who have downloaded and listened to or read serious academic materials from or on the web. If the Encyclopedia Britannica and National Geographic can bring the entire world into clear and colourful focus with the mere flip of a page, why not on the web with a switch? And all the while, the same real world of trees, gardens, and blue skies continues to exist outside my open window.

Now Rikk made all necessary comments on agreement with Borgmann and the cautions we need to acknowledge that technology can be taken too far for a given person, but that is normal temptation. However, the comments above hint that we have the capability of coping with distance-less-ness as part of our image bearing. This is a profound thought.

As I ponder this it seems to me that what Rikk is saying is that with the power of our rational minds and imaginations we have the power to comprehend otherness. Without both faculties reading Mark would mean nothing to us - we could neither put ourselves back into a 1st century world to understand the context nor connect it to our daily lives. Those who suffer from severe Autism give us insight into image bearing when it goes wrong. They cannot understand emotions, they cannot imagine themselves into a story and because they cannot imagine they cannot create. So with cyberspace, by which Borgmann I think means the attending to the reading of material on the web, dealing with emails or skyping he is worried that we will attend less to being physically present, but we can do both as as Rikk points out we have done both. Story telling around campfires on the African savannah surely involves a virtually a cyberspace of the imagination.

It leads to a number of thoughts.

1. Technologies must tap into realities of being human. So for example, truly alien technologies would be impossible for us to invent or use because they would link to personhoodness that are intrinsic to the alien species. Thus, cyberspace works for us humans because it links to some reality of what it is to be human.

2. More importantly, Rikk is pointing to two deeper issues, I think, that he doesn't draw out fully. First, when we read, we somehow manage to travel in space and time. more impressive, I think than a telephone call. We have an innate ability to mostly comprehend what another human is trying to convey through dead words on a page. An impressive achievement. Second, this points back to the earlier technology of language. Language is in a sense virtual - it is a wonder that I can speak words that travel through the air and another can hear them and interpret them, often with a high degree of accurateness. Somehow we have minds that can tune into the minds of another human. Language as a technology works because we humans have an identity that somehow transcends the sound waves themselves. If we are going to talk of cyberspace and virtualness we need to grapple with the created identity that allows us to know another human - not completely for now but know well enough.

Indeed, humanness seems to be even stronger than the technology of language. Just the other day I came across the following in a book by Tim Flannery that prints excerpts from the journals of early Australia explorers (aptly called The Explorers). I think it captures this spirit, transcendent identity of humans.

There is a certain moment in Australian exploration which has always transfixed me. It is the instant when white looks on black and black on white, for the first time. Neither knows it, but such meetings bridge an enormous temporal gulf, for they unite people who became separated at least 50,000 years ago. That's 40,000 years longer than people have been in the America's or Ireland, 20,000 years before Neanderthals finally surrendered Europe to my ancestors, and 25,000 years before the worst of the last ice age turned most of Australia into a howling desert, a vast dunefield. No other cultures, meeting on the frontier, have been separated by such an unimaginable chasm of time. The thing that fascinates me about such meetings is just how clearly both sides managed to make themselves understood. A smile, anger or fear are immediately comprehended - as if the separation of millennia never existed. That understanding is a tribute to the great commonality of experience that shaped humanity on the African savannah for a million years before the diaspora of the late Pleistocene brought people to Australia. It speaks to me of a common humanity that makes differences in colour, race and culture almost invisible in their triviality. That magic second of reunion between black and white in Australian exploration has resolved itself in as many different ways as there are explorers. ... p5-6

So this strikes me as simultaneously as being in agreement with Borgmann and Rikk. These meetings were deep engagements made possible by physical presence. Smell, sounds, sight, touch even taste were all important to these meanings, the meeting of minds may not have been possible in quite the same way without physical presence, but there is something else going on. There is a virtualness going on here as well; the meeting of minds points to the unity of humanity, its single identity. It strikes that me that there is something amazing here, we can too easily speak of what it is to be human and created in the image of God. But our humanity is a deep mystery.

Jedi Knights and Christmas

Over the years, there have been any number of analyses of the Star Wars universe and its philosophical and religious heritages. My concern in this blog is not these deep issues. For this Christmas there is a different concern. In my recent blog on Huxley and Brave New World I wrote that Huxley wrote his future with Christianity dead and buried. Back in the 1980s Oz Guinness (a Christian apologist and analyst) wrote the Grave Digger File which contained a number of observations about how the culture of that period in time was shaping Christianity. Many of those sociological characteristics were related to technological change (TV evangelists, drive through churches etc).

The “gravedigger thesis” (which gave the book its original title) is the notion that the Christian faith is the single strongest contributor to the rise of the modern world, yet the church has fallen captive to the modern world it helped to create. So as the church accommodates to the world uncritically, it becomes its own gravedigger. There are parallel versions of the same idea in Cotton Mather as well as Karl Marx. For Mather, early Puritanism created prosperity, only for prosperity to undermine Puritanism. I would argue that only such a wide-ranging analysis does justice to the full raft of problems we are facing today. Without taking such cultural analysis into account, other proposed remedies will always fall short of our hopes and prayers.  http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2010/03/04/an-interview-with-os-guinness-about-the-gravedigger-thesis/ 


I thought at the time I read this book his reading of the times was rather profound. And though I don't agree with everything his says but he is a voice worth hearing. His telling point I think is one he has been bashing on about for more than twenty years. The following quote from the same interview linked above refers to a newer book he was promoting in 2010 that took up the gravedigger thesis again.

The chief challenge for the church in our time could be summarized in three words: integrity, credibility, and civility. This book is about the first, and our need to recover a faith that can prevail with the integrity and effectiveness in the advanced modern era. Everyone mentions rightly that the church is exploding in the Global South, while failing badly in Europe and faltering in the US. But the church in the Global South is largely pre-modern, and the major reason for the weakness of the church in the West is captivity to the spirit and systems of the modern world. Put differently, much of the church in the West is in a profound Babylonian captivity. It has become deeply worldly, like the European church before the Reformation. (ibid).


The point that generally in pre- (advanced) technological societies Christianity is thriving but collapsing in the advanced technological societies is a critical issue. So as I write this and think about how to connect young people to a faith that is 2000 years old, ringing through my ears comes the voice of Hans Solo.

Han Solo: Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.

Luke Skywalker: You don't believe in the Force, do you?

Han Solo: Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other. I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe there's one all-powerful force controlling everything. There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny.

In the same movie Darth Vader is challenged with the same question.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zzs-OvfG8tE

Is Christianity in danger of becoming a hokey religion in a technological age? How do we communicate a grander story - the story even.

In a discussion group where I first opened my thinking on this topic, Jason Carroll made these points 

• It used to be that it was enough to function in the world if one could simply read and write, and maybe a little math. Not so now, we need data processing skills, much higher levels of thinking processes and the ability to integrate and assimilate information quickly.
• In a sense, ancient texts require a totally different kind of "literacy". The ancient texts are about story, poetry, allegory and so on, and our children (not to mentions reams of adults who are catching up with the technology) are not "literate" in a way that helps them engage with the text. They are technologically literate but not epistemologically literate; they only know how to gather, process and disseminate information, and they don't know how to draw truth from text because no one has taught them that truth can come from a text, and even if they did, no one has taught them how. 
• Since the invention of the printing press we have engaged the text as a written text rather than an oral one. Prior to that, with low literacy rates and limited access to written materials, believers engaged the text orally and communally in the setting of worship. 

The reformation in Europe was simultaneously a renewal movement that restored a more Biblical Christianity but intertwined within that it adopted the latest technologies available - the printing press - combining it with a theological innovation, that believers should read the text for themselves in their own native languages (and not hear it in a foreign one (Latin).

Clearly, then there are multiple factors at play. 1. As people gain knowledge about their world and power technologically they feel more in control, more independent and thus less dependent on a God. 2. Access and use of technologies changes how we think - more and more things become utilitarian. Questions of life become centred on whether it is valuable or useful not. Less survival more choice. A sense of background ethics or principles get in the way of necessary decisions. Consumerism fits in here, we don't see a problem with all the stuff we buy. 3. We instill in our lives a sense that we are where we are because of our work and eliminate from our lives a sense of grace and mercy - but for some chance, we would have been born poor in India  or Brazil or Africa. 4. We have no long view - how do we live with a small footprint? 

How not to be a hokey religion?

Shrinking back from a Christianity that engages with the world and scientific knowledge leads to a god of the gaps - a god which inevitably shrinks -Bonhoeffer, in a letter that he wrote in 1944:

...how wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know; God wants us to realize his presence, not in unsolved problems but in those that are solved.^[3]^ http://www.theopedia.com/God_of_the_Gaps

So retreating from science or from a technological society is not useful, as we have seen in recent history but but as Guinness warns simply embracing technology it on its terms is wrong and will lead us astray. The quest is to embrace it and subvert it. For me our thinking of technology must come under Romans 12.

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

There is a need to test technology by the standards of Christianity - does it do good or put differently: I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. (Matt 25:35-36)

I am challenged by the idea Paul presents in Colossians (NIV).
The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.18And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Dwell on that...
 reconcile to himself all things ... things created and things technological, what is it to redeem, to reconcile technology to Jesus?

But how, how do we begin this conversation? How do we promote a literacy in Churches of the text we have of narrative, of poetry, of theology? Do we need to change the form that Church takes? Less lecture more hacker space where we take a passage and pull it apart and learn how to apply it to our lives? How do we begin to bridge the gap between text literacy and media/technological literacy - within a Christian context? Relying on a single Pastor or even a team if your Church is rich enough I don't think has the muscle. We need leading because history shows that quickly enough groups wander off in all directions but Pastors are increasing too separate from the world their congregations inhabit.

In memory of C.S Lewis and Aldous Huxley 22 Nov 1963

To mark the 50th anniversary of the death of C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley (they died the same day as John F. Kennedy) it seemed apt to ask what we understand of their views of technology and Christianity.

A bunch of resources are useful for thinking about these two men.

CBC on Lewis 1: http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2013/10/09/cs-lewis-and-the-inklings/
CBC on Lewis 2: http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2013/10/17/cs-lewis-and-the-inklings-part-2-1/

BBC on Brave New World http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00jn8bc

I have never seen or heard these two books compared with one another but as I read Brave New World I could not help but see the Abolition of Man in it.

C.S. Lewis

Some context for the life of Lewis and Tolkien is important. Both served in World War 1 and that conflict with nerve gas and trench warfare would be enough to turn anybody against technology and build a desire for the peace of a rural setting Oxford library..

There are many insights into man and technology sprinkled across Lewis' work but perhaps the best source is The Abolition of Man. The book is a work of non-fiction matters in the context of the current blog and was written in response to a school book that Lewis calls the "The Green Book'.

Chapter 3 is called the Abolition of Man and includes the following text.

Man's conquest of Nature' is an expression often used to describe the progress of applied science. `Man has Nature whacked,' said someone to a friend of mine not long ago. In their context the words had a certain tragic beauty, for the speaker was dying of tuberculosis. `No matter' he said, `I know I'm one of the casualties. Of course there are casualties on the winning as well as on the losing side. But that doesn't alter the fact that it is winning.' I have chosen this story as my point of departure in order to make it clear that I do not wish to disparage all that is really beneficial in the process described as `Man's conquest', much less all the real devotion and self-sacrifice that has gone to make it possible. But having done so I must proceed to analyse this conception a little more closely. In what sense is Man the possessor of increasing power over Nature?

Let us consider three typical examples: the aeroplane, the wireless, and the contraceptive. In a civilized community, in peace-time, anyone who can pay for them may use these things. But it cannot strictly be said that when he does so he is exercising his own proper or individual power over Nature. If I pay you to carry me, I am not therefore myself a strong man. Any or all of the three things I have mentioned can be withheld from some men by other men—by those who sell, or those who allow the sale, or those who own the sources of production, or those who make the goods. What we call Man's power is, in reality, a power possessed by some men which they may, or may not, allow other men to profit by. Again, as regards the powers manifested in the aeroplane or the wireless, Man is as much the patient or subject as the possessor, since he is the target both for bombs and for propaganda. And as regards contraceptives, there is a paradoxical, negative sense in which all possible future generations are the patients or subjects of a power wielded by those already alive. By contraception simply, they are denied existence; by contraception used as a means of selective breeding, they are, without their concurring voice, made to be what one generation, for its own reasons, may choose to prefer. From this point of view, what we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

It is, of course, a commonplace to complain that men have hitherto used badly, and against their fellows, the powers that science has given them, But that is not the point I am trying to make. I am not speaking of particular corruptions and abuses which an increase of moral virtue would cure: I am considering what the thing called `Man's power over Nature' must always and essentially be. No doubt, the picture could be modified by public ownership of raw materials and factories and public control of scientific research. But unless we have a world state this will still mean the power of one nation over others. And even within the world state or the nation it will mean (in principle) the power of majorities over minorities, and (in the concrete) of a government over the people. And all long-term exercises of power, especially in breeding, must mean the power of earlier generations over later ones.

The latter point is not always sufficiently emphasized, because those who write on social matters have not yet learned to imitate the physicists by always including Time among the dimensions. In order to understand fully what Man's power over Nature, and therefore the power of some men over other men, really means, we must picture the race extended in time from the date of its emergence to that of its extinction. Each generation exercises power over its successors: and each, in so far as it modifies the environment bequeathed to it and rebels against tradition, resists and limits the power of its predecessors. This modifies the picture which is sometimes painted of a progressive emancipation from tradition and a progressive control of natural processes resulting in a continual increase of human power. In reality, of course, if any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after it are the patients of that power. They are weaker, not stronger: for though we may have put wonderful machines in their hands we have pre-ordained how they are to use them. And if, as is almost certain, the age which had thus attained maximum power over posterity were also the age most emancipated from tradition, it would be engaged in reducing the power of its predecessors almost as drastically as that of its successors. And we must also remember that, quite apart from this, the later a generation comes—the nearer it lives to that date at which the species becomes extinct—the less power it will have in the forward direction, because its subjects will be so few. There is therefore no question of a power vested in the race as a whole steadily growing as long as the race survives. The last men, far from being the heirs of power, will be of all men most subject to the dead hand of the great planners and conditioners and will themselves exercise least power upon the future.

The real picture is that of one dominant age—let us suppose the hundredth century A.D.—which resists all previous ages most successfully and dominates all subsequent ages most irresistibly, and thus is the real master of the human species. But then within this master generation (itself an infinitesimal minority of the species) the power will be exercised by a minority smaller still. Man's conquest of Nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, means the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men. There neither is nor can be any simple increase of power on Man's side. Each new power won by man is a power over man as well. Each advance leaves him weaker as well aas stronger. In every victory, besides being the general who triumphs, he is also the prisoner who follows the triumphal car.

I am not yet considering whether the total result of such ambivalent victories is a good thing or a bad. I am only making clear what Man's conquest of Nature really means and especially that final stage in the conquest, which, perhaps, is not far off. The final stage is come when Man by eugenics, by pre-natal conditioning, and by an education and propaganda based on a perfect applied psychology, has obtained full control over himself. Humannature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man. The battle will then be won. We shall have `taken the thread of life out of the hand of Clotho' and be henceforth free to make our species whatever we wish it to be. The battle will indeed be won. But who, precisely, will have won it?

For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please. In all ages, no doubt, nurture and instruction have, in some sense, attempted to exercise this power. But the situation to which we must look forward will be novel in two respects. In the first place, the power will be enormously increased. Hitherto the plans of educationalists have achieved very little of what they attempted and indeed, when we read them—how Plato would have every infant "a bastard nursed in a bureau", and Elyot would have the boy see no men before the age of seven and, after that, no women,¹ and how Locke wants children to have leaky shoes and no turn for poetry²—we may well thank the beneficent obstinacy of real mothers, real nurses, and (above all) real children for preserving the human race in such sanity as it still possesses. But the man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique: we shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out all posterity in what shape they please.

Analysis
I understand the concepts of power and direction as Lewis writes of them. Each age by choosing a direction cuts off possible futures from successive generations. That is simply true. However, Lewis give this great gravitas but I am uncertain about it because every choice does this. The choice to develop planes empowers some and puts some in a weaker position relative to those that have built and fly the planes. But not building the planes does exactly the same thing. One group has a certain type of power, it is just potentially a different group and power they have is different.

The choice not to use contraceptives creates one world, the choice to use them creates a different world. But they power have trajectories, they both have impacts.

Auldous Huxley

Huxley was a descendant of a line of famous scientists and atheists. His best know work is Brave New World. I decided to start reading BNW again with this blog and the anniversary in view. I read the book like many people across the world in early high school  somewhere around 33 years ago. Obviously what sticks in the memory over that time is some sense that it involved genetic engineering, which reading it again fills the the early chapters. But other than that I could remember nothing.

In contrast to The Abolition of Man this a work of fiction and therefore it is character driven and not necessarily reflective of Huxley's views. Or at least a work of fiction allows and author to play with the complexities of realities rather be offering a 'position'.

For those that similarly don't remember the plot. The one world state now controls the economy, population and takes responsibility for the birth rate through it 'Hatcheries' where children without parents are breed and brought up. There are five types of humans all breed for particular levels of jobs. Monogamist relationships are frowned up as potentially unstable. Nothing is really owned or wanted for. Finally, the taking of drugs (Soma) is essentially essential. The calendar was restarted after a particularly bad war at the date that the first Model T Ford emerged and with it mass production and consumption. The ideologies of Ford, Freud and to a lesser extent Marxism prevail.

What struck me in the reading was the emphasis of the names on socialists (Marx, Lenin etc)) and the economics of mass consumption. There are powerful echoes of 21st century lifestyle. Chapter 3 provides a number of the State's aphorisms:

• ending is better than mending
• I love new clothes
• etc

In general Christianity is largely treated as an ancient forgotten religion which has been done away with but here and there are interesting quotes (p52 in my verison):

"there was a thing, as I've said before, called Christianity. ... The ethics and philosophy of under-consumption ... So essential when there was under-production, but in an age of machines and the fixation of nitrogen - positively a crime against society. ... All crosses had their tops cut and became T's." [a reference to Model Ts]

Churches have been replaced with community sings - an echo the recent developments in England of having atheist churches encouraged by some writings of Alain de Botton.

Analysis

There are many echoes of our current times although obviously the book does not map onto the future. there is enough to make you think.

The BBC radio documentary linked above has a fascinating discussion of the degree to which the book is somewhat utopian of Huxley rather that the dystopia that we naturally read in. Huxley seems both attracted to and repulsed by total State control. But whatever mixed intentions Huxley had in mind we read from the technological vantage point that quickly gaining on 100 years hence.  

A future without courage

What is perhaps most striking to me an utterly surprising is the similarity of vision. Both works write of a future when conditioning has removed courage from men and women.

Lewis: And all the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more 'drive', or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity'. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

Lewis: But the man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique: we shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out all posterity in what shape they please.

Huxley's book is essentially a book about the man moulders and the scientific technique. Of Soma bliss rather than facing the tedium of work, of people like Bernard Marx who know the lies but has no courage to stand against them.

As we develop ever more technological helps how do we encourage Christian virtues in the knowledge that they ARE difficult?

Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and Robotics

The ideas behind this particular blog are still a tumbled jumbled mess, I don't have the categories yet to think on this topic. What even to call this blog Dawn of the Robots, Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Robot Ethics, 3 Laws of Robotics. But I hope the title and its juxtaposition captures the problem.

Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

On this last Sunday our Pastor was preaching on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, it was a good sermon. You can listen for yourself here. The main point is that the Knowledge of Good and Evil is all about independence - independence enough for moral reasoning and independence from God. But listening I began to thinking about stories that have been running through the media lately on recent hopes for drone technology. 

The ethics and issues surrounding the use of drones in warfare is getting serious and Amnesty International is campaigning around the ethics of drones.

Firstly, existing large aircraft such as the F-16 can now be retrofitted as drones. This changes the game in terms of payload, distance and speed. Secondly, and more seriously, the U.S. (mainly) wants to develop technology for fully automated warfare. Lethal Autonomous Robots are still someway off, but maybe not too far. Currently the trigger is in the hands of a human, but soon it  may not be. Now this won't be close to what we may call High AI, this will beLow AI driven by recognition software and decision rules algorithms that though complex are still too simple for moral reasoning. There is the usual arguments about why this is good, obviously it is particularly good for the technology industries building these things, but for me any argument that they are good is spurious on a single point - the decision to take a life as bad as that is should cost another human something.

Peter Nowak's book Sex, Bombs and Burgers argues the rather commonsensical notion that war, food and porn drives much modern technology. And so it seems to be true here. But, that our first real attempts at AI should break the suggested 1st Law of Robotics (ie A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm) and with the history of science fiction exploring unintended consequences of machines that are too literal such as 2001 or gone a muck - The Matrix; these developments are particularly galling.

Drone warfare is happening way too fast and without enough of the public becoming engaged in the changes. Do we really want to give up moral decisions to robots. Having made our own bad decision back in the garden with our own creations we aren't going to 'let them decide'. Well actually this isn't exactly true, instead we are going to make them our killers. Even now the operators of Drones even at a distance still suffer from war illnesses which should be no surprise. 

Robot ethics in general

There is a nuanced discussion of Robot ethics and legal status here http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/morals-and-the-machine/4881302
As a Christian it didn't come close to discussing all the issues that robot ethics raise (to be fair it is only an hour long) but my mind kept racing ahead yes but yes but..... back in Genesis yada yada yada. But the academic engineer, who I must admit I have some sympathy for kepts arguing for robots to replace humans in dangerous, dull and dirty jobs (DDD) - but who is making that moral judgement academics who prefer to think than do and companies that want to save a buck because the 3Ds have typically been relatively well paid jobs. How many of the people doing those jobs have been asked what they think of their job.

Noreen Herzfeld maybe right that high AI is someway off, but I am thinking that Christians need to start having urgent discussions about the 21 Century. She seems to be definitely correct that AI is a response to Cosmic Loneliness.

I have been seriously blogging on technology and Christian faith for a little over a year now and I want to say that the more I explore the topic the more it grows and the more I am bewildered by the change we are rushing into. Not frightened, because I God still holds the future but alarmed by how deaf Christians are to the change. In 2011 Laity Lodge in Texas held a conference on technology and Christianity (read Dave Stearns blog on it) - I didn't go but I have listened to the MP3s. Then last year 2012 Seattle Pacific University ran a conference on the Digital Society most run by IT practioners. You can probably still download audio of this event from Itunes U. I was at the this second event and thought it was great, but a year on as I look back I am profoundly struck by how preliminary these discussions were. It was like attending a Christian conference on Sci Fi, the topic was fun and interesting but there seemed an otherness, an unrealness.

I am not a luddite, I am not Ellulian, I am not a Borgmannite, as should be clear from summer series this year that perhaps technology should be seen as Go'd idea all along. Mostly, the implementation of modern technology is some really excellent stuff, some mixed messy stuff (see VanderLeest's Joe Lost his Job http://www.calvin.edu/weblogs/deusexmachina/joe-lost-his-job/ ) but there is also room to say some technologies are bads.

Mostly as Oz Guinness would say I want Christian to think. In case Christians haven't noticed yet TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE is here and it ain't going away. What even are the questions what are topics for discussion how do we engage the minds of the digital natives on Faith and 21 Century. Its real and its real important.

Writing on Christianity and Technology Fears

During the summer Virginia Heffernan an ex technology writer for New York Times wrote on her blog that she was a creationist. The blog entry could have been better written but she did an interview with Q on CBC which is actually well worth listening to.

But the reaction to her announcement was rather vicious and out of proportion.

This gives voice to my own silent voice. Does blogging on Christianity and technology in a serious way, thus revealing that I am a Christian jeopardize my ability to get contract consulting work?

Although the study of technology in society today is a growing field of inquiry and there are many of academics who are Christians. Indeed, there are many who are interested in technology of many faiths nevertheless is it a risk?

Given the current perceptions of Christians do non-Christians get that I can take science seriously and still be a Christian?

A whole bunch of questions there, but I will continue.