by Teri Ong
I am not a person who has to be always connected to technology. I am probably the least connected person on my block. I don’t even post my own blogs – my son has to do it for me. I don’t carry a cell phone unless I am going more than 70 miles from home. (I’ve never liked spending time on the phone at home, so why should I carry one with me?) I don’t even know how to text or Twitter and I don’t Facebook. Everything I read is in a real book, newspaper, or magazine. So my opinion in this post has a decided slant. And, yes, I consider myself as much a dinosaur as C. S. Lewis did when he took his last position in Cambridge. But I do not think he is bad company.
Last night I read a real magazine article called “Your Brain on Tech.” Did you know that 78-80% of Millennials, Gen-Xers, and Baby Boomers want to be “constantly connected”? Did you know that 75% of Millennials (today’s teenagers) said “a week without Wi-Fi would be worse than a week without coffee”? In a survey of iPhone users, one in three had broken up a long term relationship via text message? An Intel study showed that 75% of people think it is okay to use phones and laptops in public restrooms?
The author of the article questioned, “Is there some reason I can’t just go offline?” Cultural anthropologist Genevieve Bell speculates, “In Western culture we are measured by the value of our network.” [ YBOT, p. 58] Every time we get a new text or e-mail it reminds us that we are still connected (at least ephemerally) to the big “I” in the sky.
I think some of our 24-7 fascination with and dependence on connectedness is related to the fact that as a society we gave up trying to set aside one day a week for God. We are too self-important to lay down our work and/or our own leisure-entertainment for a few hours a week, and that self-importance has spilled over into the realm of “e”-relationships. What does it take to give God a few hours of our time each week? Humility – that’s all.
To think that people are just dying to know what I ate five minutes ago also takes only one thing – pride. How did we come to think that people on a global scale would want to see pictures of our surgical scars? Does it really matter if I know where I can save 20 cents a tank-full on gasoline? And I certainly hope I steer clear of the 38% of respondents in one survey who post Tweets about their intimate moments.
My husband preached this morning about controlling our words. One of his texts was, “When there are many words, transgression is unavoidable. But he who restrains his lips [or his thumbs!] is wise.” Proverbs 10:19 The flood of senseless and silly words on the internet and other electronic media has not made us a more godly and self-controlled people. In fact, we have seen numerous fulfilments of God’s prediction, “The one who opens wide his lips comes to ruin.” Proverbs 13:3 In recent days high-profile media people and politicians have lost their jobs because of ill-advised words that made it to the world-wide-web.
There may be some small signs that we are becoming sated with impersonal and incessant communications. One recent comparison demonstrated that a person in 2011 sees more images in one day than a person in 1800 could expect to see in a lifetime. But for all that, digital images must be producing limited returns since the new trend in retailing is to put human beings in silly costumes and have them dance around on the street with signs in their hands. At least in some marketer’s mind, one human being is worth 1000 pictures and probably 1000 words too.
Maybe you are thinking, “Here I am reading this diatribe against electronic media on electronic media! I’ll show her – that’s the last time I will read her blog!” It’s okay with me because I always read it out loud and in person to you at the Inklings meeting anyway, Annie! And in the spirit of Ecclesiastes 5:2 – “…God is in heaven and you are earth; therefore let your words be few”– I will quit now while I am ahead!
Reference:
Christina Tynan-Wood, “Your Brain on Tech,” Family Circle, April 1, 2011, pp. 56-60.
