When philosophers, apologists and other thinkers labour to
destroy certainty, attempts at coherence and confidence in logic, the
scepticism they produce sends many into crisis and the response can range from
the robust to the frantic, the diligent to the foolish.
One of the most common arguments I hear (and often at that)
from within Christian circles is that scepticism is wrong because if the world
adopted this view then we could have no inventions and no technology. They will
usually buttress this reductio ad
absurdum by arguing that it's a good thing their auto or aeroplane mechanic
wasn't a sceptic.
This argument rests on several fallacies.
First it fails to acknowledge that scepticism carries
different motivations as well as varying ends. Some employ it as a means to nihilism.
Others like this author believe it helps to delineate and define the nature of
faith and the limits of human knowledge. Scepticism in a Christian context is
never absolute. There is an answer and a meaning to life and the universe but
it's not accessible through sense and experienced based rationality or some
form of logical predication.
While there are indeed some forms of scepticism that
challenge such ideas as 2+2=4, usually the focus isn't on the objective nature
of that reality but rather its basis, its meaning and how the reality can be
integrated (or not) into a larger body of coherent thought or even a grand
unified theory.
In one sense the engineering appeal is completely misguided
and has really nothing to do with the issue. Knowledge is not reducible to
mathematics and physics. Logic and rationality may have an order to them, or at
least attempt to construct one, and yet the
nature of such questions hardly follows the same mechanistic and rule-based
order as is exhibited in mechanical engineering.
The appeal is therefore an example of non sequitir.
Ironically in another sense, and one quite apart from what
I'm suggesting here, it is a type of scepticism that actually drives scientific
and technological development. Inductive experimental logic that is sceptical
of rational coherence-based assumptions is at the heart of scientific
exploration.
Now that can be dismantled. Because ultimately the
inductionist builds arguments upon unsubstantiated coherences. While they might
claim their predications are warranted based on past evidences, they
nevertheless rely not only on mind-constructed and dependent relations
(rational coherences) but inference which essentially relies on transcendental reasoning.
The very warrant they appeal to is based on coherences often referred to as
laws which cannot be located in the spatio-temporal realm but are instead ideas
or mind-constructs. And yet as ideas they cannot be probed as to their nature.
Are they absolute objective mechanisms? What is their origin and purpose? Are
they random? How can you account for uniformity and sustainability? Are they
social conventions? How then can they be relied upon as constants?
In the end, their inferences and coherences, so necessary to
all thought and predication do not rest on the very sceptical induction they
pretend it does.
Ultimately though, no matter which angle we consider this
question, the logic contra
mystery/revelation argument based on a scientific/engineering analogy is
exposed as fallacious.
Not only is empirical-mathematical engineering insufficient
when it comes to understanding the nature of epistemology and the various
questions such an inquiry will engender, such a reductionist philosophy is able
to produce little more than what can be described as 'shallow' inventions.
Through trial and error the forces of nature are harnessed and manipulated and
yet what knowledge is really gained?
This form of epistemology provides no context and thus no
ability to relate. This question of coherence is at the heart of knowledge and one must therefore question what knowledge
is really being gained in these inventions? They may indeed make life more
convenient but is knowledge really
advancing? I contend that's a more difficult question to ponder.
Without a means to relate, to distinguish objects in an
objective sense, how can there be any hope for not only contextualisation but
interpretation? Questions of meaning and thus ultimately knowledge itself begin
to grow foggy.
What are we left with? Tools and gadgets that neither really
help mankind nor satisfy.
Man can produce technological tools and devices but rather
than view this as a warrant for the place of logic within a framework of
confident epistemology, we have to say we're not really that impressed.
Certainly it cannot be denied that mankind has produced some
fairly impressive machines but life (knowledge and existence) is more than
gears and sprockets let alone ones and zeros.
In fact it could be argued without too much difficulty that for
every problem solved, ten more have been created. Technology creates leisure
time. This allows for a more 'advanced' civilisation to develop but it also
sets the stage for decadence. Ancient Rome had the same problem. They didn't
have the technology but they had another tool that did their work for them.
Human slavery functioned as technology does today in that it freed a leisure
class from the daily grind of work. The results were not altogether good and
though slavery doesn't exist in the same way technology does, they both have a surprisingly
high human cost.
Generally speaking our culture does not praise those who
self-sacrifice. The zombie-like mantras regarding 'the troops' are shallow and
superficial. And though not a few have been brainwashed in this regard I think
a good number of people know (deep down) that these people in camouflage are
not 'defending our freedom'. Defending the system... maybe. As far as
self-sacrifice, words of praise are doled out and yet the truth of the matter
is the people that go into the military for the most part do so because they
don't have other viable options. The military is very appealing to the poor and
downtrodden, for those seeking a kind of stability and structure. They are
praised but at the same time looked down on. Successful people don't enlist in
the armed forces nor do they want their children to do so.
Our culture certainly does not praise godliness. In fact it
abhors it. But our society does praise the innovators. As our society becomes
more dependent on technology, increasingly people define themselves and find
their meaning through gadgets and various online applications.
Thus it's no great shock that someone like the late Steve
Jobs is particularly venerated and adored. He's praised as a visionary, a
leader, an innovator, someone who has 'improved' lives and helped to advance
civilisation.
The focus (I contend) is actually all wrong and this is why
someone like Jobs is praised. In reality he should be loathed and hated as
someone who must certainly sit atop the list of anti-social criminals and destroyers
of culture.
Jobs spent his life in the production of shallow trash. He is
by no means alone in this. A creator of vapid empty meaningless pseudo-art,
Jobs did little more than transform once useful tools into toys. Technology
under his guidance was turned into a type of faux-magic in which people were
fooled into thinking they were experiencing a type of empowerment and
deification.
Buying into Jobs vision many believe that in using his
gadgets and their spin-offs they are mastering the elements. Through cheap
superficial pixilated expression they are somehow deluded into thinking they
are elevating the self.
The paragon of brilliance, Jobs was in fact a destructive
fool. He dazzled everyone with his tactile interfaces that were in fact a
denigration of human experience and communication. The touch-screen computer, a
cheap-thrill toy that cannot be used for anything serious was wed to the pocket
telephone. Empowerment? Hardly.
The Silicon Valley wizard is instead revealed to be a
snake-oil charlatan.
Society praises him. They should be burning him in effigy and
erasing his name from memory. A vile vain fool, Jobs enslaved the masses to a tawdry meaningless sensate drug, helped open the door to mass-manipulation,
surveillance and totalitarianism. Individualism is an illusion. Everyone has
been fooled. There is no artistry to the stupid device you're carrying. It's
now the mark of consumerist materialism and a sign of conformity. What's hip,
cool and modern is built on an ugly foundation of resource exploitation,
semi-slave labour and an economically destructive system.
It is in fact a base technology that cheapens communication.
Ideas are reduced to cartoon hieroglyphics, sparkly video clips and words that
scroll by so quickly that people are losing the ability to read simple
paragraphs or watch something that isn't turned into a high-paced action
segment. Texting has debased and destroyed the art of writing and the means
for people to effectively communicate. People used to rightly decry what email
was doing to communication. That was nothing. Now we have a generation of young
people coming up that can't talk on the phone or carry on a simple one-to-one
conversation.
People have been duped. Jobs grew rich promoting his
self-interest and manipulating people through marketing ploys. Like a pyramid
rip-off Ponzi scheme his methods have trickled down to the masses so that now
everyone seeks to emulate his marketing deceptions.
There are serious moral elements to this technology, how
it is used and what it does in terms of relationships and the way it presents
information. But were already far beyond these questions. They should have been
addressed and dealt with a generation ago. But our culture blindly follows the
latest thing and having been taught to consume and worship those who create
consumer products (especially the tech variety) there was no way these questions
could be entertained before it was too late.
Recently my wife has been castigated by friends and family
for refusing to text and carry a smartphone. We're not anti-technology. That's
not the point. My wife was actually an early mobile phone user. She purchased
one back in the mid-1990s long before most people had them. At that time it was
largely government and business people that had them. Many still had car-phones
as opposed to proper mobiles.
But what a shift in values! She remembers on a couple of
occasions getting a call in a restaurant. Everything stopped. Everyone was
staring. It was embarrassing and a borderline faux-pas.
Today we have to endure people on the phone in the
supermarket, cluelessly disengaged from the world around them as they push their
cart down the aisle, blabbing away or texting. Oblivious to everyone around
them, there's a loss of older forms of communication like speech and
eye-contact. An older generation would have marked them as flat rude and that's
what they are.
Why? Because the heart of good manners was to give
consideration to the other person. When you went out into the world you thought
about other people. The world wasn't all about you. You wished to be respectful
and treated with respect. This is why you didn't go out in filthy clothes or
show up at a store, office or restaurant looking like a slob. This was taken to
extremes and some got ridiculous about it but at this point in time the basic
idea has been lost.
The use of the mobile phone in public is an ethical issue.
It's an application of morality. In terms of human relationships it has most
definitely hurt society and if I am to love my neighbour and treat him as myself
I out of necessity must weigh how such devices are used if they're to be used
at all.
Likewise recently I was in a coffee shop with my wife and a
man a few tables away was busy talking away on his phone. He obviously had set
up shop, turned his table into an afternoon office. He talked away, got up,
paced around and generally disturbed everyone else in the restaurant and was a
distraction to our conversations.
He was rude and should have been asked to leave. But I doubt
he would have understood why. He was a self-centered self-absorbed jerk.
This is what Steve Jobs, another self-centered and absorbed
person has given us. He didn't invent the cellphone but he is the undisputed
father of the modern smartphone... which has only taken all of these moral
issues to the next level.
I have several friends and even some family members that I no
longer talk to. I've grown weary of trying to hold their attention while they
attempt to converse with me while watching a ballgame or conducting retail
transactions in stores. They're rude to me and certainly rude to all the other
people around them.
Is this empowerment?
Someone could argue that the technology isn't inherently the
problem. It's people. I can grant that to a degree but the nature of the
technology, its immediacy and now the nature of modern social media, especially
when wed to a phone/pocket computer is something that I don't think can be
justified.
If I'm talking to someone and they keep looking at their
phone every thirty seconds I usually wrap things up. They're not a person to be
taken seriously. They are in fact to be pitied. I was intrigued and pleased not
long ago when sitting in a waiting room, I ran into a pastor I knew from years
before. While we sat talking for maybe ten minutes his phone just continued
making a racket. Various pings and boings continued to interrupt our
conversation. Obviously he was getting texts and updates and yet he exhibited
considerable self-control and did not look down even once but held my eye.
But even then... the thing was so distracting that at one
point we both broke into grins. It was ridiculous and he knew it.
I know, I know. You can turn off the sounds. Are there ways
the technology can be used that are better? Certainly. There are always better
ways but that's not really the point.
The whole culture of texting has created its own protocol
which I consider to be anti-etiquette. Rather than exhibit self-control now
people function on a stream-of-consciousness basis. When something pops into
their head, they zip a message off to you and you're expected to reply. In fact
you're rude if you don't get back to them pretty quickly. I know of several
adults whose teens and even adult kids all but go into a meltdown if they don't
answer texts within minutes. They grumble about it but to my amazement... they
do it. They keep texting.
This technology is base because it rests on rude and
anti-social assumptions. The person texting you expects that their receiving
party will prioritise them.
All the old etiquette regarding calling during dinner time,
after hours or on the weekends is long gone.
All too often, even business related messages are things that
could have easily waited. Immediacy creates its own ethical demands and one
must question just how ethical they are.
Needless to say I will not under any circumstance text with
anyone and I will go without a phone before I carry a smartphone around with
me. I have a burner flip-phone. I'm not anti-technology but I use it in a very
limited fashion. I don't take it into stores or offices with me. It stays in
the car.
I've had several people say that they would never do that
because they want to be available to their kids at all hours of the day and
night. How soon we forget. It was only a few years ago that this technology
wasn't available. I'm not an old man and yet I didn't grow up with any of this.
I remember when answering machines were novel. Offices often employed an
answering service. Sometimes you called people and didn't get a hold of them.
Oh well. You'd just have to call back later.
Leaving my phone in the car for an hour is not going to bring
about the end of the world. Ironically what it has done in many cases (that I regularly
witness) is that it has produced teens and even adults that can't function or
work through anything on their own. They don't learn how to solve problems
because even at twenty-five they're still tethered to mommy via the texting
mechanism.
Social media and the smartphone have only made these things
worse.
An acquaintance of mine told me he refused to have a
cellphone because he didn't want to live that kind of life. I told him I knew
exactly what he meant.
While many feel liberated by this technology, when you don't
have a phone and you don't do social media or text your perspective is quite
different. I don't see liberated people. I see people who are enslaved, zombies
even.
With incredulity I sat across from an old friend and watched
the guy obsessively checking his phone. He was missing half of what I said.
He'll only talk on the phone when he's on the road or out and about... once
again distracted. We'll be talking and suddenly I hear him talking to someone
else, other voices and a cash register.
It's absurd because often we're trying to discuss something
fairly weighty. He can't do it anymore and frankly I've talked to him maybe 3-4
times in the past 5 years. Why bother? I have better things to do with my time.
The original desktop computers were trying to replicate the
idea of a desk. Hence the desktop... what you had out of the drawer and on the
surface to be used. The hard-drive was like the file cabinet etc... This was
how I used to explain a PC to people years ago. It was a tool that could be used for work and other meaningful labours.
Jobs wanted to change all that. He wanted to change how we
interact with the computer.
The touch-screen, especially the variety with multiple
simultaneous inputs turned the computer from a tool into a toy. It's a gimmick
and one I frankly loathe. Tablet computers are a joke. You cannot do anything
serious with them. They're made for play.
Even Jobs, vile creature that he was, seemed to realise this.
After introducing the iPad he later admitted that he restricted his own
children from using it. Why? I'll tell you why. Because he realised what the
thing is. It's not something that helps you grow. It's a toy for the lazy.
Screen-reading has certain advantages but the iPad isn't a proper reader. The
whole experience of interacting with a book, writing things down, taking
notes... all this is lost using a tablet, or any computer for that matter. The
experience isn't the same and something essential to the whole experience is
lost.
I know many a millennial pastor would shake his head looking
at me while I study. I'll have the Bible, concordances and commentaries piled
around me with a notepad. Pages are bookmarked and my wife will attest I've got
5x8 yellow pieces of paper everywhere.
And yet I'm sorry but I contend there's just no way they are
studying and even learning by using all the Bible software and apps. Flipping
open screens and taking digital notes is not the same.
Jobs has helped to create the modern computer interface that
has eliminated visible text and re-constructed the file cabinet and desktop
model. While not wholly gone, the means of interface is quite different. What
was once clear concise and meaningful communication has been replaced by silly
push-button symbols, tactile, childish and child-like visible stimuli. I
suppose some people find his products to be user friendly. Personally I have
hated every Apple product I ever interacted with. My father insisted on
purchasing an Apple II. I hated the thing and was deeply jealous of my friend's
Commodore.
The gimmick aspect of modern touch-screen computing has also
been amplified because of cost considerations. There's a real hostility to
moving parts and buttons. This is why I still carry around my 10+ year old mp3
player that has a 1GB capacity and takes a AAA battery. It has actual buttons
and a physical slide-lock. My kids have ended up with the more modern devices I
have purchased. I can't stand the cheap combo-button functions when it comes to
volume etc. I use the mp3 player at work. I start and stop what I'm listening
to on a regular basis. I don't have time to fight with silly pseudo-buttons that
you have to press 'just so' to get them to work.
Once again tools are turned into toys. Actual functionality
is degraded and utility is limited. Touch screen phones and tablets are not
tools meant for serious use, communication or inquiry.
The touch-screen technology wave and the smartphone are base
technologies. They are fraught with ethical problems in terms of socialisation,
manners and communication. One of my wife's family members told her she was
being foolish in refusing a smartphone. She's not keeping up with the times. It
was an amazing statement from someone attending a culture-affirming Dominionist
Evangelical Church. I cannot think of a statement less reflective of a
Christian worldview.
The truth is the technology is immoral and rooted in selfishness.
From start to finish the legacy of Steve Jobs is poison. He
is one of the great villains of the modern era. I truly hate the man and what
he stood for. We should actually be thankful that Providence removed him from
the scene. He had at least another ten to twenty years of potential destruction
left in him.
Am I merely a Luddite? The Luddites continue to be
misunderstood. Their protest was not against technology per se but what it was
doing to society, to individuals and to relationships. They realised the
machines were going to destroy the moral order of society and they were right.
Neo-Luddism though not necessarily a Christian movement also
recognises the moral component to technology. Existence is more than bells,
whistles and endless floods of information.
Likewise I am not impressed with modern gadgetry and the
elevated icons of the tech world. There are times that certain technologies are
useful. For me this is largely in the world of tools. Yes, tools like the
oscillating saw, the laser level or the flexible camera scope that I can stick
into a wall are quite helpful. That said, the proliferation of Lithium Ion
batteries raises other problems. And as with phone culture, the tool culture of
the construction world can become just as snobby and competitive. If one's
tools are 'out of date' then you're almost looked upon as illegitimate. It's
quite laughable.
Nor am I impressed with those who think building an airplane
is answered in the same way as probing the meaning of existence. While it is unfair
to accuse those who employ such arguments of embracing all the negative effects
I have mentioned, I still find the nature of the argument to be wanting.
That said it is no great wonder the pseudo-Christian
Dominionist cult of temporalism/pantheism demonstrates a consistent myopia when
it comes to the social effects and consequences of technology. Once again any
true antithesis (despite their feigned lip-service to the notion) is anathema.
Other points can be made. Technology increasingly resides
power in the hands of specialists. Steve Jobs was so stupid as to think it
would empower individuals. Instead, it is removing power and even access from
the average person. Reduced to a series of ones and zeroes, checked boxes on
terms of service forms, we have become objects of exploitation and
manipulation, forced to conform to the whims and wishes of tech sector
visionaries, their effeminate gender confused millennial engineering corps and the financial backers who
call the shots and reap the rewards.
What's the answer? The industrial and technological
revolutions cannot be rolled back and at this point few would actually want
them to be. But what we must do is think through the moral implications of the
technology we use. How that works out will differ from person to person. I can
respect those who differ with me, and I realise most will, but I cannot respect
those who refuse to even entertain the question and just 'go with the flow'.
How many shy away from wrestling with doctrine or deep
thinking and yet will hand themselves over to consumerist data, tech arcana,
sports statistics and endless political partisan propaganda?
And yet they can't wrestle with the larger questions?
For me, my time is too precious to own a smartphone. Like my
aforementioned acquaintance, I don't want to live that kind of life. If you
don't know what I'm talking about then truly I feel sorry for you.
Others will defend their ownership and use and that's fine
but at the very least think it through. And don't stop there. The smartphone is
just the tip of the iceberg, the visible expression of morally problematic
technology that's clear, prominent and easy for all to see. Do not venerate the
Steve Jobs-like figures in our society. I think they need to be exposed as the
fools they are. I use fool in the moral sense. He was clever to be sure, but I
can assure you it's not helping him at present.