In which an unknown blogger/author expresses my thoughts for me, and I add a barely related parenthetical post-script

From this blog post on Sci-Fi and the Technocratic Impulse:

When we pursue advancements through technology we surrender something in the process. It’s obvious that a device such as the iPhone is more than just a communication tool. It is a culture-shaping tool that can easily master its user if not used carefully and reflectively. It has the power to disconnect and isolate as much as its power to connect.

EXACTLY. I have been thinking this thought for ages, but in an inarticulate way--like a cloud of feeling-droplets condensed around motes of ideas. Every time I attempted to express it (especially in the face of O.'s spiffy smart phone), I ended up sounding like a Luddite. Perhaps I am a Luddite--but I don't think so. I think I just end up overstating my case when it seems like the other party, or perhaps the whole world around me, is rushing headlong into a tech-enabled dystopia. Thank God for other people's writings that say what I want to say but can't!

Another comment as counterpoint: I usually speak in technology's defense when I hear people saying things like "Facebook prevents people from having in-person interactions" and "You can't have a meaningful conversation over IM." I don't think those statements are true--not because I think Facebook and other tech-enabled communicational media don't have inherent limitations (on the contrary, they absolutely are limited) or that they are inherently good. Rather, it's because I think all the agency still resides with us, the users and abusers of technology. Technology doesn't create in us character-traits ex nihilo: it only exposes and fertilizes what was already there.*

(In that sense, technology is like suffering. It is a test of sorts. Suffering exposes weaknesses in my character, and seems to be bringing them into existence. In reality, those problematic beliefs were there in me all along, and it's not the fault of my circumstance (suffering, technology) that I am full of fears and doubts and lies (or shallow communication, self-absorption, etc), but the fault of the sin in me. I should give thanks for the light that comes through the cracks made by the blows of suffering, instead of screwing up all my energy into experiencing the pain.)


*Not to imply that technology is crap. :P

Brief Comment on Our Society

Some facts (or things I think are facts, anyway. I have not verified these rigorously.):

1. People in societies where starvation is a serious problem do not have bulimia or anorexia.
2. People in environments where there are a lot of deadly diseases don't have deadly allergies.
3. People in time periods where they had to struggle just to survive didn't get paralyzed by depression and commit suicide nearly as often as they do in ours.

In my mind, these problems all go together. The common theme is that when humans are not facing any real dangers, they create deadly dangers for themselves, somehow. When outwardly imposed starvation is not a threat, we impose starvation on ourselves through tortured psyches. When death from the outer world is not a threat, we kill ourselves. We need danger, hostility, opposition, struggle. When the world immediately around us doesn't force those things into our lives, we dig them up from our hearts or create them with our culture or bring them into being through our own technology and carelessness.

Obviously, a possible viewpoint is that in those other situations, the people who currently have these unnatural afflictions were weeded out early. Yet another is that those people were around and just not diagnosed. Either of those explanations still leaves the fact that modern Western society is plagued by these issues that do not plague less materially comfortable societies. When the real problems go away, new ones will show up.