Being Spiritually Alert in the Information Age
"To the blind, all things are sudden." -- Marshall McLuhan
Introduction
Hi. My name is Bob Braswell. Commander Duane Wheeler asked me to post
an "address" to the Cyberpowwow.
For those who've never met me before, even virtually, I should
probably tell a little about myself and why Cdr. Duane asked me to
contribute. I have a Ph.D. from Florida State University (go
Seminoles!) in Communication Research and Theory, but I assure you
that THAT is not why Duane asked me. As part of my job as Special
Assistant to the Executive Director of the Division of Foreign
Missions, I have written about the changes required of missionaries in
the information age, but I don't think that's why Duane asked me. I
moderate some missions-oriented e-mail conferences. I used to be Sr.
Commander of the Royal Rangers at Central Assembly in Springfield. And
I know Ken Hunt. But not even the combination of these is the real
reason Duane asked me. I think the real reason was Duane wanted a
long-winded post to add content to the Cyberpowwow, and he knew he
could count on me!
Regardless of why I was asked, I want to quickly reassure everyone
that I'm not writing just to fill space. On the occasion of this first
powwow in cyberspace, I am writing to urge Rangers everywhere to be
alert, especially spiritually alert, to the meanings and uses of the
new technology that is available to us. We need to be alert to the new
opportunities the technologies create, alert to the side effects of
adopting them, alert to the underlying meanings of our interactions
with the technologies, and alert to the potential pitfalls along the
way.
Be Alert to Opportunities
I think Duane would like me to spend the most time on the first point:
We need to be alert to the new opportunities the technologies create.
Maybe I can cover it briefly, though, since in order to read this, the
group I'm talking to has already blazed some trails into cyberspace.
Each of you has already been exposed to more hype about what is now
possible, and what will be possible in the near future, than I would
be comfortable with repeating here. What is left for me to point out
is simply that almost any technique or gadget has some usefulness to
the Kingdom of God if we are alert to look for it. And especially if
an innovation is communications-related, it will have some meaning and
usefulness for the Church, because the task of the Church is a
communications task. We =communicate= with God in prayer and worship,
with each other in fellowship and discipling, and with the world in
preaching and evangelism. For anyone whose purpose is to reach, teach,
and keep boys for Christ, any technology that extends your reach or
your effectiveness in teaching has obvious potential benefit. So when
we hear about a new technology, whether hardware or software or idea,
one of the things we need to do in alert response is ask ourselves how
we, as citizens of the Kingdom more than of cyberspace, can wisely
employ that technology to better fulfill our purpose to the Glory of
God.
As one example, witness RangerNet. It uses technology to overcome
geographic barriers to a sense of community. If the Ranger community
is no longer geography-bound, we can be part of it whereever we are.
We really do need each other. This is a scriptural principal as well
as a very practical one. I hope you have lived and worked with an
awareness of a need--and a responsibility--to communicate with your
pastor, parents of your Rangers, district personnel, networks of
coworkers, and even, at times, headquarters. None of us is as smart,
as talented, or as well-informed, as a team of us working together. I
hope we don+t fear the interdependence of true teamwork.
What am I talking about here when I speak of community? Obviously we
can't achieve the same friendship bonds via e-mail as if we went on a
long campout together. But imagine the best parts of a campout -- all
the friendships and conversations that develop in tents and around
campfires and across tables of outdoor-cooked food -- continuing on
throughout the year regardless of where you are. Imagine checking your
e-mail and finding, on a regular or even daily basis, personal notes
from friends you made at a district event -- personal notes that will
actually keep coming because you will actually answer them because it
is so cheap and easy to do so. Imagine further finding messages
containing the text of an ongoing round-table discussion with peers
and commanders on issues of interest to you; reading the material and
knowing the others who are reading it also, how they are likely to
react, and knowing that you can choose to reply or just wait and see
how the conversation develops. Unless you have regularly participated
in an electronic discussion group, you may not be able to appreciate
the sense of community it can foster.
The sense of community would be worthwhile if that was the only
benefit, but that is just the beginning. The real power is not the
=feeling= of community, but what can be accomplished by the community,
working as large and small networks of like-minded people who pull
together because they want to and choose to and are interested and
motivated to do so. I believe there is more potential for the Kingdom
in these grass-roots networks than in everything Christians have
adopted out of management textbooks over the last three decades.
Be Alert to Side Effects
Second, we need to be alert to the side effects of adopting
technologies. {Every technology has side effects.} For instance, I'm
writing this on a word processor. I remember when I used to use a
typewriter, I used to write as briefly as possible because I was
afraid I'd make mistakes and have to retype {Every technology has side
effects.}. I preferred to leave out a paragraph that was possibly
important {Every technology has side effects.} rather than take the
chance of having to type that paragraph, not only once, but multiple
times if I messed up the page. But now, if I think of an important
point, I might repeat it several times just because it's so easy
{Every technology has side effects.}.
Some of the side effects of technology are predictable if we pay
attention and know what to look for. You may remember Marshall
McLuhan, the 1960s media guru, as the guy who said, content is
irrelevant; "the medium is the message." McLuhan+s theory revolved
around his insight that our communications technologies are more than
just tools, even more than metaphors of our time, but actually define
and shape us, changing the way we think.
McLuhan+s approach was to try to look at the attributes of a specific
medium and predict how using that medium would change us as a society.
For instance, by 1967, before there was a generation who had grown up
with television, he predicted that the effects of television on such a
generation would include all the following:
1. a desire for instant gratification;
2. an emphasis on personal experience and a de-emphasis on acceptance
of responsibility;
3. the decline of organized religion and the rise of
experience-centered, doctrine-free connectedness to spirituality (what
we now call "new age religion");
4. the breakdown of ethical systems as they fail to keep up with and
guide the use of "media" (technology).
Note that these predictions weren+t made based on the content of what
was being shown on TV in the 1960s -- for McLuhan, content was
irrelevant. He based these predictions on the attributes of the TV
technology itself and the way cooperating with those attributes would
change TV viewers.
McLuhan also predicted that side-effects of modern communications
technology, including computer-mediated communication, would include
the following (as quoted from Counter-Blast (1969)):
"Acceleration of information movement can have, as one of its
consequences, a multiplicity of jobs for everybody. Joblessness as the
consequence of automation may well mean the end of the single job for
the single lifetime, and the switchover to a multiplicity of jobs for
every lifetime." (p. 28)
"In the Age of Information, media . . . are in themselves new natural
resources increasing the wealth of the community. In the Age of
Information, the moving of information is by many times the largest
business in the world." (p. 37)
"The wild broncos of technological culture have yet to find their
busters or masters. They have found only their P.T. Barnums." (p. 54)
Do you find it hard to believe that McCluhan made all these
predictions in the 1960s, before there was such a thing as the
Internet? He didn't do it by any supernatural means, but by being
alert to the side effects of technologies.
Some of the side effects of technology are harder to predict. For
instance, in recent history in the United States, how has the
introduction of television news changed the meaning and workings of
democracy? Or how has the introduction of the Model T and the
subsequent widespread adoption of the automobile changed courting and
dating behaviors and morals? Or what about our attitudes toward laying
down one's life for a cause versus dying in a senseless accident? Did
anyone imagine in the 1920s that we would be involved in a war in
Southeast Asia that would claim 47,355 U.S. servicemen's lives from
1957-1990, producing enough outrage to change our society and our
government and our willingness to fight for our country, while in 1985
alone 52,375 would die in automobile accidents and our only sense of
outrage related to our cars would be about having to wait in line at
the gas pump? (Statistics from the Statistical Abstract of the United
States, 1991) I'm not trying to make a political statement about the
war in Vietnam or the automobile, but to provoke us to be alert to how
side effects of technology can have far reaching societal, and
sometimes eternal, effects.
Be Alert to Underlying Meanings
Third, we need to be alert to the underlying meanings of our
interactions with technology. Somewhere in the interaction of direct
effects and side effects of technology, a meaning begins to emerge.
Take again the example of the automobile. To Americans, our cars are
transportation, the direct effect of the technology, but that is not
the real meaning of a car. The car is also used by many young people
as a convenient portable location for practicing fornication, a
side-effect of the technology, but that is fortunately not the meaning
of a car. The meaning of a car in America is freedom. Symbolically and
practically, whether conquering distance or escaping moral
accountability, it is an instrument of personal freedom. And any
lawmaker who wants to regulate the way Americans interact with our
cars had better understand that, because if s/he treats it as mere
transportation and behaves logically based on that understanding, that
lawmaker will not remain long in office.
If technologies acquire underlying meanings for us as we interact with
them, what's the meaning of the PC? As most of the world has figured
out by now, the PC is not mainly about getting more work done. The
meaning of the PC is about the self-perception of individual power and
productivity that comes with mastery of the machine (even if the user
spends so much time playing Solitaire, test-driving shareware, and
changing screen savers that s/he actually gets less work done).
What's the meaning of the Internet-connected PC? Community power and
productivity? Not in my view. I believe the networked PC represents
enhanced individual power through access to the resources of the
community and through publishing our ideas to the community. What's
yours is mine, and what's mine is mine: your webpage and my e-mail
inbox are my reference resources, and my web page and your e-mail
inbox are my pulpit.
We should not be surprised if, in a culture that has idolized personal
freedom and individual power, the technologies that "catch on" are
those that push us further in the same direction. But we should not be
cynical or discouraged, either, for we as Christians are not forced to
misuse the power that technology puts into our hands. If we are alert
to the underlying meanings of technology, we can make choices about
how we will use it and avoid the temptation to follow our culture in
abusing it. For the Christian, there should always be the option and
the tension of rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is
God's. And if we find ourselves consistently falling off that
tightrope, there is always the Amish option.
Be Alert to Potential Pitfalls
If technologies acquire underlying meanings for us as we interact with
them, we have to be alert to the fact that it is we who are changing
through our interaction with the technology. The meaning does not
reside in the technology, but in ourselves. Thus we must be alert to
the way technology is changing us, our society, our effectiveness as
servants of the King, and those we would reach, teach, and keep for
Christ.
Having mentioned power and freedom as benefits of technology, and in
fact the underlying meaning of some of our current favorite
technologies, I must address the pitfall of abuse of this power and
freedom.
There are many kinds of power. One of the most misused kinds of power
is the power of authority. When we have authority to do something, we
rarely attempt to cultivate other kinds of power, even though other
approaches would be better in the long run [for the simple reason that
power is an attribute of a relationship and the relationship is often
more important in the long run than the short-term goal we exercise
power to achieve]. Authority is quick and easy: if you have it, you
can use it immediately. Other kinds of power take longer to use: the
power of persuasion; the agenda-setting power of communication; the
power of information; the power of integrity; the power of knowledge,
of wisdom, of building a consensus. Authority which has its reach
increased and its humanity dimished through technology is truly
frightening. No doubt we have all heard the horror stories of managers
firing employees via e-mail and in general using it as a substitute
for genuine human communication.
At the same time, communications technologies coming into mass use
today have the side effect of flattening heirarchies and undermining
authority. This is frightening to those who use authority as their
principal means of achieving their goals--and not without reason. But
it comes like a spring thaw after a long winter to those who have
chafed under authority and find, through technology, greater
independence and freedom from close supervision. This, too, has its
abuses, and I have personally seen coworkers destroy themselves by
abusing this freedom. As Samuel said to Saul, rebellion is as the sin
of witchcraft. Just because it's a quiet rebellion and takes place in
a channel the boss doesn't read doesn't mean it isn't spiritually
deadly.
Even if we choose to reject a technology, we can't necessarily avoid
being changed by it. If a technology comes along and gains societal
acceptance, you will be changed by the very act of making the choice
it forces upon you. Either you will adopt the technology, or you will
reject it. Adopting it will change the way you work and the way you
view the world. Rejecting it will change you just as radically,
potentially even putting you out of step with those you are trying to
reach. Look at TV as an example: some men have tried to harness it for
evangelistic use, others have spent their whole lives and ministries
preaching against it. But nobody has been untouched by it. Thus we
have to be alert to potential pitfalls in both directions every time
we are forced to choose whether or not to adopt a new technology.
The pitfall of failing to recognize an opportunity to apply a
technology to the Glory of God is often recognized by the younger
generation, who are looking for leverage to make their lives count.
Perhaps I need not say much more about this: after all, we are here. I
will just say again that we need to be alert to the opportunity to
apply it for the =Kingdom=, not just =apply= it.
The flip side of the previous pitfall is being too quick to adopt
technology, of being sucked into a cultural whirlpool where we are
ever active but never accomplishing anything of eternal consequence.
This can happen through adoption of and focus on new technologies
without enough attention to side effects, underlying meanings, and
especially Kingdom purposes. This pitfall is more often recognized by
the older generation who may feel they already have leverage to make
their lives count without having to learn to perform their roles in a
new way. In its extreme form, this pitfall of over-adoption becomes
idolatry. If you doubt that, I dare you to contemplate the following
quote:
[It is] far from asinine to speak of the god of Technology--in the
sense that people believe technology works, that they rely on it, that
it makes promises, that they are bereft when denied access to it, that
they are delighted when they are in its presence, that for most people
it works in mysterious ways, that they condemn people who speak
against it, that they stand in awe of it, and that, in the born-again
mode, they will alter their lifestyles, their schedules, their habits,
and their relationships to accommodate it. If this be not a form of
religious belief, what is? --Neil Postman, _The End of Education_
(Alfred A. Knopf, 1996)
Perhaps the greatest and least recognized pitfall is that of disunity.
I've mentioned above that technology often forces a choice on us. When
lack of agreement about how to make that choice becomes more important
in directing our behavior than Christ's command to us to love one
another, we have lost more than our handle on technology. Whether we
realize it or not at that point, we have lost our handle on grace (as
illustrated by Jesus' parable about the servant who was forgiven much
but failed to forgive his fellow servant).
Reminder: Communication basics.
Perhaps the best way to wrap this up is to remind you to be alert to
some communication basic principles that will help you avoid the
pitfalls we've discussed:
You cannot not communicate.
Refusal to communicate when channels exist is itself a communication.
Every communication has a content part and a relationship part.
E-mail especially, since it lacks a lot of nonverbal cues, requires
the communicator to specifically address the relationship part of the
communication or risk having it read in by the reader based on the
lack of relationship cues.
Every communication is to a greater or lesser extent cross-cultural.
Cross-cultural communication is not just between a missionary and the
nationals on the mission field; it can also be between you and your
pastor who isn't turned on to Rangers, or you and your boys who'd
rather be playing video games, or even between you and your spouse.
All the flexibility and determination necessary in any cross-cultural
communication can be needed in any of these situations.
Communication can flow through a variety of channels, but the channels
themselves aren+t neutral.
We all know that some things must only be said face-to-face. Some
channels are much better for creating a sense of community than
others. No single channel is best for every purpose. Choosing
appropriate channels to match the goals of the communication is part
of the responsibility of the communicator. And by all means, Christian
communicators must be aware of the side effects of the channels they
choose.
Thanks to Duane for the invitation to share, and to everyone who has
read this far down for your consideration of these thoughts. I started
this post with a quote from Marshall McLuhan and I'd like to end by
paraphrasing something else he said: "Technology, in the information
age, is as imperceptible as water to a fish." That is to say, we are
swimming in it, but it has become so commonplace that we take it for
granted and don't even notice what it is doing to us and in us. That
is the plight of our culture and of our fellow Netizens, but it
doesn't have to be our plight, because we can be alert to the fact
that our citizenship is in heaven. Everything down here is to be held
loosely, from that perspective, even, or perhaps especially, your
mouse as you click off this message.
Bob Braswell
Dec. 6, 1996
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Last Updated Dec. 6, 1996 -- 7:00 p.m.
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