|
Kip from Napoleon Dynamite sings the following to Lafawnduh, "Yes, I love technology, but not as much as you, you see... But still, I love technology... Always and forever."
Our culture has a love affair with technology. Technology is ever present and ever new in our post-modern world. Christians tend to have one of two reactions to technology, as they do other new things. Either they embrace it uncritically, or retreat from it and condemn its use. One blog writer calls embracing technology uncritically giving it a "bear hug." And he calls retreating from technology giving it the "the cold shoulder."
Both of these approaches are problematic for members of the Christian community, whether young or old. Why? Because God has given us a mandate to fill the earth and subdue it. This cultural mandate involves creating and cultivating. Both the creating and cultivating are to be done with an eye toward loving God and loving people. Through this we bring glory to God and enjoy Him and His abundant gifts.
I am interested in exploring a "third way" of looking at technology, through "the side-hug." As thoughtful Christians, we want to critically engage technology, use it as a means of glorifying God and enjoying Him forever, while avoiding idolatry and fear-filled retreat.
Consider this passage from "The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future." by Mark Bauerlein
...young Americans are energetic, ambitious, enterprising, and good, but their talents and interests and money thrust them not into books and ideas and history and civics, but into a whole other realm and other consciousness. A different social life and a different mental life have formed among them. Technology has bred it, but the result doesn't tally with the fulsome descriptions of digital empowerment, global awareness, and virtual communities. Instead of opening young American minds to the stores of civilization and science and politics, technology has contracted their horizon to themselves, to the social scene around them. Young people have never been so intensely mindful of and present to one another, so enabled in adolescent contact. Teen images and songs, hot gossip and games, and youth-to -youth communications no longer limited by time and space wrap them up in a generational cocoon reaching all the way into their bedrooms. The autonomy has a cost: the more they attend to themselves, the less they remember the past and envision a future. They have all the advantages of modernity and democracy, but when the gifts of life lead to social joys, not intellectual labor, the minds of the young plateau at age 18. This is happening all around us. The fonts of knowledge are everywhere, but the rising generation is camped in the desert, passing stories, pictures, tunes and texts back and forth, living off the thrill of peer attention. Meanwhile, their intellects refuse the cultural and civic inheritance that has made us what we are up to now. pp. 10
I think Bauerlein is onto something here. When I was a kid, there was boundaries in time and space to our interaction with our friends. These boundaries were built into life. Today, there are physical boundaries for some. But there are no virtual boundaries. Everyone is a mere text message or tweet away.
Obviously, these virtual relationships impact students in a variety of ways, but perhaps the greatest consequence is this narcissism through the window of peer attention that technology breeds. Calvin commented that the human heart is an idol-making factory. We have not shortage of idols, and our hearts will make idols of anything. Here we discover that technology is not so much an idol, but a medium through which students grasp the thing their heart truly desires - the captivity of the affections and attentions of their friends - self-worship veiled amongst friends, texts, images, twitter and facebook. The author here relates to the anemic affects on the pursuit of learning and citizenship, but the anemia extends to the soul and the spiritual lives of our students.
How will we help them break free from this "generational cocoon?" How do we loosen the grip that the "thrill of peer attention" presents.? What do you think?
 Justin
*Much of this description, including the terms "bear-hug, cold shoulder, and side-hug," are taken from Justin Buzzard's blog. |