theo|digital

I’m chillin’ on a blog tour promoting From the Garden to the City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology by John Dyer. A post from me every week, plus more at host site: ChurchM.ag. Check it out..

Chapter 4: Definition

The history of technology is a wide landscape and John Dyer gives us a perfect fly over.  He writes that Aristotle is one of the first to use the word technologia, but he means it as systematic study (logia) of grammar, speech and writing (techne as a craft or art).  Tekton in Greek were essentially craftsman (Jesus’ father Joseph was this! “Carpenter” is too narrow a translation).

The word eventually becomes the skill, study, tools, and things made with the tools.  And things start off slow until 1650. Dyer divides it like:

He’s got a lot more in there, but I want to address Dyer’s definition of technology, which he writes is:

“the human activity of using tools to transform God’s creation for practical purposes”

I love the emphasis on the humanness (as opposed to “other than”) of technology, and the theological lens of Creation.  But I’m uncomfortable by the language of “practical purposes” here.  Dyer is using this to distinguish these tools from, say, art (a distinguishing factor I’d need to quibble with… but that’s not too important).

My issue is that the definition is particularly forced when it comes to communications technologies… and I Dyer provides an example at the end of his chapter of calling home using cell phones as “practical” and “transforming creation” that seems a bit stretched to fit this tool-oriented definition.

His solution, I think, is to see that humans don’t only work, but that they also classify and play and commune in ways that create identity categories distinct from tool using. The way we communicate with each other in family and society is establishes meaning in a way that is independent from our making. By McLuhan’s definitions of technology as extensions, our communicative thoughts and intents are amplified and extended into an environment that is difficult to describe as “practical” but easily identifiable as “human.”

From oral language to chirography to print to mass literacy to the telegraph, radio, TV, and the internet, I think the thread of history of communications technologies may stand on their own… uniquely human and theological but not practical in this sense.

John, did I get you wrong on this?  What do you think?

(Also: more at ChurchM.ag)

Facebook took an interesting step Thursday against the cultural flow of the social graph as we know it. It has to do with our perception of time.

The printed book has always subtly preferred the past. Books, once published, become relatively unchanging bouys in the river of time. And the most important ones stay right there where they were dropped, which is why we were always taught in school that the year and author are the two most important things to cite when writing our research paper.

However, digital information culture as we’ve known it so far doesn’t work like this. Its time-orientation is toward the present: what is happening NOW. (Aside: It doesn’t flow quite as fast as “live TV”–it’s more viscous time syrup, with memes taking 24 hours to move to talking status, etc. More on this [pdf]). Searches give you a snapshot of what currently exists on the web, not what existed a five years ago. Aside from WayBackMachine, the web resists the “holding action” that defines print media.

This is why the 15th ed of the Chicago Manual of Style said that when you cite web pages in a research paper, you can stop putting “accessed on” in the citation. It’s meaningless, they said. It’s not likely that you can return to the website at that date. You can only access it as it is today.

So Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg introduced a new landmark feature for profiles called Timeline (watch the F8 keynote address). It tracks not only the years since you’ve been on Facebook, but lets you go fill in the gaps of your life, adding kid photos and important life events.

In some ways this adds an oddly historical view to an ahistorical world. For contrast, they’ve moved the live feed to the right of the screen: the perfect image of what is Now, with updates dropping off the cliff moments later.

But this is a digital take on a print orientation. I haven’t seen the actual timeline, but it seems that you can add data all across the timeline at once–say, all the 3-mile runs I’ve taken in the last years. But if I change my mind, in 1-click, I can remove them all as well. Not just the ones in the future, but the ones in the past as well.

This is not the old naive historiography that sees past events as unchanging anchors to be uncovered, nor is it post-modern history that seeks to reveal the forgotten past voices crushed by power. It moves past both of these, to view of history as data layers to be added or removed at will. We modify history not because we seek alternate views or are coming closer to the truth, but simply because we must. In an infinite world of information, there are infinite ways to tell the story, and only some of the layers can float to the top.

How will digital natives write history? Mark Zuckerberg just helped shape that.

I’m chillin’ on a blog tour promoting From the Garden to the City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology by John Dyer. A post from me every week, plus more at host site: ChurchM.ag. Check it out..

Chapter 3: Reflection
Here, John Dyer lays one of the most important building blocks we need to think of technology and theology.

He starts with the Story, looking at God’s original creation and intent. Adam and Eve and how they were to cultivate the garden. As much as fish were made to swim, humans were made to cultivate. This encompasses both “keeping” but also “creating.”

What do we cultivate? Culture. Culture is “things, images, rituals, and language (Stanley Grenz) that mediate meaning, identity, and values (Barry Jones).

And where does culture start? In the garden.

Theologians know what this means. Commonly we ask the question of things in our world: is this from Creation (and therefore good!) or from the Fall (and therefore a result of sin and broken creation). Dyer is certain: culture-building starts in the Creation. Among other things, we see it in language.

And language is a culture-making tool we use to organize the world. A technology that acts as a lens for understanding and classification and even action (e.g. John Austin’s speech act theory).

Want to read more?  Read the featured post at ChurchM.ag.

ps – Each chapter I read of this one is nearly perfect in its analysis, and I’m increasingly impressed. If you haven’t already, pick it up and read along with me. John Dyer is doing good work here that we need to hear.

I’m chillin’ on a blog tour promoting From the Garden to the City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology by John Dyer. A post from me every week, plus more at host site: ChurchM.ag. Check it out..

Chapter 2: Imagination.
John employs imagination and story for analysis on technology.

Technology is imagining a better world. From robot vacuums to the HTC EVO 4G (my current device, of course mine is hacked and customized), our invention and usage is usually taking us somewhere. Dyer summarizes:

“Technology, then, is the bridge from this world to the imagined one.”

This is fascinating and helpful–we live in a narrative that says: we invent technology to make things better. Hope and a future.

John tells the story of consumerism we are familiar with: fast cars and great deodorant will make you more sexy.

One question? What of serendipitous discovery and pursuit of knowledge? It seems there is a difference between “applied technology” combined with marketing, and human ingenuity that revels in discovery itself.

Another question? Is this human propensity to have technology represent the potential future part of our created image or part of the Fall?

Lots more in this chapter. Read the blog tour post here.

I’m chillin’ on a blog tour promoting From the Garden to the City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology by John Dyer. My post is featured this week at ChurchM.ag. Check it out >>.

**UPDATE:  ChurchM.ag was down for 24 hours, but is now back up.

—-
The downtown intersection of digital technology and Christian theology has been increasingly busy (one imagines sleek futuristic cars on tracks), and John Dyer’s new From The Garden to the City may be the smartest vehicle for clear thought that I’ve seen yet. (For some other recent models, you think of Tim Challies’ Next Story (pretty much a Volvo–all about safety), Shane Hipps Flickering Pixels (SUV–cool, but too easy to roll).

We’re jumping in to Chapter 1: Perspective, and the quickest way in is to check out four quick quotes:

“Alan Kay famously described technology ‘as anything that was invented after you were born’ “
This is why new soccer mom’s can fret about their kids texting all day, but don’t notice that they themselves used to chill on the Princess phone for hours, writes Dyer. Bingo. Older technologies fade into the environment and don’t seem so techy to us. We’re surrounded by examples.

Why is this obvious point so often missed?

Continue post at ChurchM.ag →

I got invited to jump in on a blog tour promoting From the Garden to the City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology by John Dyer. I met John at Exponential 2010 (big ‘ol church planters conference) when I swung by his workshop on the topic. Given how easily I critique in this area, I prepped myself for disappointment, and instead heard one of the more sane and clever presentations I’ve heard.

Dyer, who works as programmer + has a seminary degree, is well positioned to look at this stuff. But his real strength is it looks as if he’s engaging well into Media Ecology, my favorite playground. I do see signs of Postman and Ellul lurking about (paddling a bit more in the pessimistic part of the pool), but I’m feeling good about this one: we may have a well balanced analysis of new communications technologies here.

So 13 of us will be blogging through the book, and each week, one of the posts will be featured by the tour host: ChurchM.ag.

We’re kicking it off (Introductory post on the Preface here), and I’ll have the first chapter next week.

Stay tuned!