This seems bad. In fact, it probably is bad, or at the very least it's an overreaction, mis-reaction, or reaction that does not address the root causes of the problem. Still, I'll let others detail the problems and potential solutions. I'd rather think about why this is such a big deal. Why does it matter that we are so connected? And perhaps more pertinently, is it a good thing or a bad thing?
These are two very critical questions, but they are also misleading. There is this assumption that the internet serves the grand and universal purpose of connecting us, demonstrated by Facebook, Wikipedia, Youtube and Twitter bringing us closer to news, information and each other. In some ways this is rather obviously correct. I learn about people who I haven't seen since high school and interact with them on an occasional basis on Facebook; I read articles on wide-ranging subjects on Wikipedia; I follow news outlets that are thousands of miles away. I can find information that used to take hours of perusing through books (if you were lucky enough to have a suitable library) in seconds on Google or Wikipedia and, in spite of what many have claimed, the information is most often fairly reliable. If I wanted to meet new people I could do that on an online dating service or chat board (well, maybe not in Hallock, Minnesota... but that's another story). Nowadays you don't even need a computer to do this. Smart phones, tablets, and other devices have made it impossible to play a fair game of bar trivia, or for that matter find a moment's peace away from email or texts.
The problem I have isn't that these are bad things. They aren't. Instead they are good things that are mistakenly construed as ends to themselves. Facebook can strengthen relationships, but it is the human beings behind the web that create the relationships in the first place and give them any depth or breadth that they achieve. You can meet a new friend on a chat board, but that person does not exist on the Internet; they are a living, breathing human being whose consciousness has extended into "the cloud," though their person, in fact, remains in Bangladesh--or wherever they may physically be.
This is because we are distinct from the Internet. Now this may seem a simple statement of fact, but as we progress deeper and deeper into the messiness that is relationship with one another and technological innovation it behooves us to wonder: Could the internet someday be all there is? Today, the internet is only part of our existence, if often a big part, but one day might we all do our jobs at a computer, live at a computer, workout at a computer, interact with one another by computer, receive meals via computer; in fact, might we one day simply be computers? Some (Raymond Kurzweil, for example) have suggested so.
This gives me great pause for several reasons, some theological and philosophical to be sure, but my overwhelming reservations don't regard whether such a thing is possible but whether such a thing is ethical. There's an uneasiness in my gut that tells me this is a rather crude understanding of human being. We tend to look back on the Dark Ages as a time when arts, culture, Democracy and progress gave way to disease, filth and warring nation-states; but I wonder if such a world isn't exactly what we're heading for with our people connected with the vacuousness of the Internet at the cost of connection with the physical things that previously defined our selves. Might it not be that the technology we so love, and seem now to require, has imperceptibly been making us worse people little by little?
I don't know, but I have some guesses. I find that communion not just with the abstract but with the physical is always much more centering than the quasi-relationality of being "logged on." It is always better for my spiritual, emotional and physical well-being to have moments, days or even weeks devoid of Internet connectivity. I am always more refreshed, always better able to see God at work in the world and always more in love with life with those times separated from the big connector that is the worldwide web. With that said, I acknowledge that I am a single person and no universal indicator of emotional or spiritual well-being, but I have a sense that I am not alone in this sensitivity.
There is something profoundly different about visiting a mountain top compared to viewing a panorama of the same vista on Flickr, and the reason for this is in no small part due to the effort it took to get there. Life is, in no small part, about striving for goals, for bettering relationships, for working at the challenges that come our way and interacting with the physical world that fuels us. Someday it may be possible to grow a garden online and taste the food it produces, but this is at the cost of the work to get there. Our techno-crazy world seems to have forgotten the blessing that is the toil to move from point A to point B, assuming that a super-highway, physical or technological, is always the best road. Yet, I think not. In fact, I know not. Life is sometimes best served by putting around, by disconnecting from the tools that have made things easy and reconnecting with the earth and everything it gives us--not least of which is one another.
So I have deep reservations but not about some bill before Congress. My surpassing concern is that we are assuming too much about what is good and what is bad, about what builds up humanity and what destroys it, and finally about what makes us human and what degrades human being. The Internet is a tool but one that is often too easily wielded. The irony of reading this on a blog is not lost on me, and I hope it is not lost on you either. May we be connected, but truly so, authentically so, emotionally, spiritually, mentally and also physically so. And may you see that logging off isn't disconnecting at all, but reconnecting with a locale that has been your primary place of residence all along.
No comments:
Post a Comment