{"id":4678,"date":"2014-06-18T15:06:07","date_gmt":"2014-06-18T21:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=4678"},"modified":"2014-06-18T20:05:51","modified_gmt":"2014-06-19T02:05:51","slug":"technology-as-a-force-of-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=4678","title":{"rendered":"Technology as love"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a few years now, I’ve used summertime laziness as an excuse to recycle some of this blog’s old posts. The following post\u00a0was originally published<\/a>, under the ponderous\u00a0headline “God, Kevin Kelly and the Myth of Choices,” in July of 2011. The influence of tools on human possibility is a central theme of <\/em>The Glass Cage<\/a>, so it was interesting for me to reread this post in the wake of writing the book. If I were to rewrite the post now, I would shift the focus away from technological progress as a force in itself and place a much greater emphasis on how\u00a0the design of particular\u00a0tools determines whether they\u00a0open or foreclose opportunities\u00a0and choices for their\u00a0users.<\/em><\/p>\n

I suspect it\u2019s accurate to say that Kevin Kelly\u2019s deep Christian faith makes him something of an outlier among the Bay Area tech set. It also adds some interesting layers and twists to his often brilliant thinking about technology, requiring him to wrestle with ambiguities and tensions that most in his cohort are blind to. In a new\u00a0interview<\/a>\u00a0with\u00a0Christianity Today<\/em>, Kelly explains the essence of what the magazine refers to as his \u201cgeek theology\u201d:<\/p>\n

\n

We are here to surprise God. God could make everything, but instead he says, \u201cI bestow upon you the gift of free will so that you can participate in making this world. I could make everything, but I am going to give you some spark of my genius. Surprise me with something truly good and beautiful.\u201d So we invent things, and God says, \u201cOh my gosh, that was so cool! I could have thought of that, but they thought of that instead.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I confess I have a little trouble imagining God saying something like \u201cOh my gosh, that was so cool!\u201d It makes me think that Kelly\u2019s God must look like Jeff Spicoli:<\/p>\n

\"spicolifasttimes\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But beyond the curious lingo, Kelly\u2019s attempt to square Christianity with the materialist thrust of technological progress is compelling \u2013 and moving. If you\u2019re going to have a geek theology, it seems wise to begin with a sense of the divinity of the act of making. In creating technology, then, we are elaborating, extending creation itself \u2013 carrying on God\u2019s work, in Kelly\u2019s view. Kelly goes on to offer what he terms \u201ca technological metaphor for Jesus,\u201d which stems from his experience watching computer game-makers create immersive virtual worlds and then enter the worlds they\u2019ve created:<\/p>\n

\n

I had this vision of the unbounded God binding himself to his creation. When we make these virtual worlds in the future \u2014 worlds whose virtual beings will have autonomy to commit evil, murder, hurt, and destroy options \u2014 it\u2019s not unthinkable that the game creator would go in to try to fix the world from the inside. That\u2019s the story of Jesus\u2019 redemption to me. We have an unbounded God who enters this world in the same way that you would go into virtual reality and bind yourself to a limited being and try to redeem the actions of the other beings since they are your creations \u2026 For some technological people, that makes [my] faith a little more understandable.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Kelly\u2019s personal relationship to technology is complex. He may be a technophile in the abstract \u2013 a geek in the religious sense \u2013 but in his own life he takes a wary, skeptical view of new gadgets and other tools, resisting rather than giving in to their enchantments in order to protect his own integrity. Inspired by the example of the Amish, he is a technological minimalist: \u201cI seek to find those technologies that assist me in my mission to express love and reflect God in the world, and then disregard the rest.\u201d One senses here that Kelly is most interested in technological progress as a source of metaphor, a means of probing the mystery of existence. The interest is, oddly enough, a fundamentally literary one.<\/p>\n

The danger with metaphor is that, like technology, it can be awfully seductive; it can skew one\u2019s view of reality. In the interview, as in his recent, sweeping book,What Technology Wants<\/em>, Kelly argues that technological progress is a force for good in the world, a force of \u201clove,\u201d because it serves to expand the choices available to human beings, to give people more \u201copportunities to express their unique set of God-given gifts.\u201d Kelly therefore believes, despite his wariness about the effects of technology on his own life, that he has a moral duty to promote rapid technological innovation. If technology is love, then, by definition, the more of it, the better:<\/p>\n

\n

I want to increase all the things that help people discover and use their talents. Can you imagine a world where Mozart did not have access to a piano? I want to promote the invention of things that have not been invented yet, with a sense of urgency, because there are young people born today who are waiting upon us to invent their aids. There are Mozarts of this generation whose genius will be hidden until we invent their equivalent of a piano \u2014 maybe a holodeck or something. Just as you and I have benefited from the people who invented the alphabet, books, printing, and the Internet, we are obligated to materialize as many inventions as possible, to hurry, so that every person born and to-be-born will have a great chance of discovering and sharing their godly gifts.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There is a profound flaw in this view of progress. While I think that Kelly could make a strong case that technological progress increases the number of choices available to people in general, he goes beyond that to suggest that the process is continuously additive. Progress gives and never takes away. Each new technology means more choices for people. But that\u2019s not true. When it comes to choices, progress both gives and takes away. It closes some possibilities even as it opens others. You can\u2019t assume that, for any given child, technological advance will increase the likelihood that she will fulfill her natural potential \u2013 or, in Kelly\u2019s words, discover and share her unique godly gifts. It may well reduce that likelihood.<\/p>\n

The fallacy in Kelly\u2019s thinking becomes quickly apparent if you look closely at his Mozart example (which he also uses in his book). The fact that Mozart was born after the invention of the piano and that the piano was essential to Mozart\u2019s ability to fulfill his potential is evidence, according to Kelly\u2019s logic, of the beneficence of progress. But while it\u2019s true that if Mozart had been born 300 years earlier, the less advanced state of technological progress may have prevented him from fulfilling his potential, it\u2019s equally true that if he had been born 300 years later, the more advanced state of technological progress would have equally prevented him from achieving his potential. It\u2019s absurd to believe that if Mozart were living today, he would create the great works he created in the eighteenth century \u2013 the symphonies, the operas, the concertos. Technological progress, among other forces, has transformed the world, and turned it into a world that is less suited to an artist of Mozart\u2019s talents.<\/p>\n

Genius emerges at the intersection of unique individual human potential and unique temporal circumstances. As circumstances change, some people\u2019s ability to fulfill their potential will increase, but other people\u2019s will decrease. Progress does not simply expand options. It changes options, and along the way options are lost as well as gained. Homer lived in a world that we would call technologically primitive, yet he created immortal epic poems. If Homer were born today, he would not be able to compose those poems in his head. That possibility has been foreclosed by progress. For all we know, if Homer (or Mozart) were born today, he would end up being an advertising copywriter, and perhaps not even a very good one.<\/p>\n

Look at any baby born today, and try to say whether that child would have a greater possibility of fulfilling its human potential if during its lifetime (a) technological progress reversed, (b) technological progress stalled, (c) technological progress advanced slowly, or (d) technological progress accelerated quickly. You can\u2019t. Because it\u2019s unknowable.<\/p>\n

The best you can argue, therefore, is that technological progress will, on balance, have a tendency to open more choices for more people. But that\u2019s not a moral argument about the benefits of progress; it\u2019s a practical argument, an argument based on calculations of utility. If, at the individual level, new technology may actual prevent people from discovering and sharing their \u201cgodly gifts,\u201d then technology is not itself godly. Why would God thwart His own purposes? Technological progress is not a force of cosmic goodness, and it is surely not a force of cosmic love. It\u2019s an entirely earthly force, as suspect as the flawed humans whose purposes it suits. Kelly\u2019s belief that we are morally obligated \u201cto materialize as many inventions as possible\u201d and \u201cto hurry\u201d in doing so is not only based on a misperception; it\u2019s foolhardy and dangerous.<\/p>\n

Image: Still from the movie “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a few years now, I’ve used summertime laziness as an excuse to recycle some of this blog’s old posts. The following post\u00a0was originally published, under the ponderous\u00a0headline “God, Kevin Kelly and the Myth of Choices,” in July of 2011. The influence of tools on human possibility is a central theme of The Glass Cage, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4678"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4686,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4678\/revisions\/4686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}