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3-4 pg essay

Whatam I looking for in this essay? Let me briefly list the key points:

1. Evidence that you have carefully read, taken notes on, and thought about the
assigned reading for the module: deeply embedded in your essay is an “annotated
outline” of the content you wish to cover. That outline should be somewhat visible to
the reader. Typically, your essay should have 3-4 key points that you elaborate upon
in full, robust paragraphs. Make sure that you provide ample quotes and references
from the assigned reading itself (cf. point 2 below). Think of this essay as a “proof”
that you have actually read and studied the specific assignment and NOT COPIED
AND PASTED FROM OTHER INTERNET RESOURCES. Copying online sources is
the “kiss of death” in this class. DON’T USE OTHER SOURCES IN THE
COMPOSITION OF YOUR READING ESSAY–STAY FOCUSED ON THE
ASSIGNED READING ONLY.

2. Elaboration of the key ideas that you wish to cover in the essay: This elaboration is
supplemental to the main ideas. It “puts meat on the bare bones” of the essay. How
can you supplement your main ideas? You should quote from the assigned reading
itself (include the page number(s) from the assigned reading when appropriate).

3. I am looking for a discussion that is approximately 3-4 pages single-spaced, space
between paragraphs, in length. You should write out your essay on a word
processing program such as MS Word, or the like, and copy and paste it into the
FORUM dialogue box. DO NOT POST MODULAR ASSIGNMENTS BY
ATTACHMENT.

(1) to help the professor understand how you are integrating the content of the class
into your own way of thinking and life experience.

(2) to engage more deeply the work of other classmates.

Thus, this essay revolves both around the assigned reading and the work of other students
in your group. After you have “proven” that you have done your assigned homework in the
CONTENT ESSAY, you now take the next step in the learning process. What do you find of
particular importance in the essays of your fellow student learners about the content of the
assigned reading? Again, what did you learn from them (as opposed to the original modular
reading assignment)? What did you agree with, or disagree with, and why? Have they
inspired you to do further done further online research on your own? Be imaginative! Be
creative! One hopes that you now have a new perspective on religion, a “new window” so to
speak. How are your perspectives evolving in this class? You can even go back and review
an earlier module and reframe some of your earlier ideas now that you have added to your
knowledge base in each successive learning module. You may even review the FORUM
postings in previous learning modules. This DIALOGICAL ESSAY should be approximately 1

1/2-2 pages in length (about half the length of the READING essay). REMEMBER: While
subjective in nature, don’t just “shoot from the hip” in this essay—it will be quite evident if
you spend the requisite amount of time really processing the material…!

Step One: Read ALL of the essays submitted by fellow class members

Step Two: Isolate 3-4 main and/or important ideas from these essays

Step Three: Discuss these ideas in a good solid paragraph each

Step Four: Embellish these ideas with further research, either online or in the library

Step Five: Compile all of this is one good solid essay that is approximately two
single-spaced pages, space between paragraphs (12″ typeface)

i G o d s
H O W T E C H N O L O G Y S H A P E S O U R

S P I R I T U A L A N D S O C I A L L I V E

C R A I G D E T W E I L E R

H O W T ET E C H N ON O L OL O G YG Y S H AH A P EP E S O UO U R R

S PS PS PS PS PS P I RI RI RI R I TI TI TI T U AU AU A L L A NA NA N D D S OS OS OS O C IC IC IC IC IC I A LA LA LA L L L L L L I VI VI VI VI VI V E SE SE SE SE SE S

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Craig Detweiler,

iGods

Published by Brazos Press

a division of Baker Publishing Group

P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-628

www.brazospress.com

Printed in the United States of America

transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the

prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Detweiler, Craig, 1964–

IGods : how technology shapes our spiritual and social lives / Craig Detweiler.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-58743-344-3 (pbk.)

1. Technology—Religious aspects—Christianity. 2. Social networks. I. Title.

BR115.T42D48 201

261.5 6—dc23 201302513

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®.

rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

Scripture quotations labeled KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.,

All illustrations are the work of Brandon Scheirman.

The image that appears in the illustration on page 44 was taken by Matthew

Yohe (Matthew Yohe/Wikimedia Commons/cc=BY=3.0).

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 7 6 5 4 3 2

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Craig Detweiler, iGods
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C o n t e n t s

Acknowledgments

vii

Introduction 1

iGods

1. Defining Technology

2. Apple 4

Aesthetics First

3. A Brief History of the Internet 73

4. Amazon 79

Personalized Abundance

5. Google 105

Algorithmic Authority

6. A Brief History of Social Networking 1

7. Facebook 1

Authentic Frenemies

8. YouTube, Twitter, Instagram 171

Audience Participation

Conclusion 19

The Telos of Technology

Notes 2

Index 2

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Craig Detweiler, iGods
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vii

A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s

While writing appears to be a solitary craft, it is built upon the work and words

of others. Like research and technology, advances arise by merging previous

ideas into new forms, shapes, and applications. Yes, there are moments of

blinding insight, unexpected breakthroughs, and divine sparks. But they arise

in an incubator formed through reading and studying, teaching and testing,

reflection and prayer.

I am grateful to the communities that made this book possible. First and

foremost, I am grateful for my wife-for-life, Caroline Cicero, and our children,

Zoe and Theo, who endured far more of this book than they deserved to.

Whatever romance they may have harbored about the glamour of the writer’s

life is long gone. But hopefully, in its place, they have seen there are no shortcuts

when it comes to finishing a book. Despite technological advances, writing

remains a long and winding road that proceeds at a snail’s pace.

This book was road-tested on the Pepperdine University students in my

Introduction to Media class. They are a vibrant, living laboratory, the heavy

users and early adopters who helped me tailor this manuscript to their pas-

sions and needs. I am heartened by their enthusiastic response. They want to

discuss these important issues and long to go deeper in their reflection and

discipleship. Special thanks to Brandon Scheirman, a brilliant student and

talented designer, who created all of the original illustrations for the book.

I am indebted to my editor, Bob Hosack, Lisa Ann Cockrel, and the team

at Brazos/Baker Academic who embraced this concept and were remarkably

patient. It is tough to finish a book about an industry that changes daily. I am

attempting to craft a timely tale rooted in timeless truths. Thank you to my

many partners on this endeavor.

So many books have been written on faith and science, but the relation-

ship between theology and technology is a newer, burgeoning field. Marshall

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viii

McLuhan and Walter Ong were pioneering thinkers, way ahead of their time.

Their robust Catholic faith informed their prophetic understanding of the

shifts from oral to literary culture and the retribalizing e$ects of electronic

culture. David Noble’s The Religion of Technology o$ers an essential his-

torical overview. Albert Borgmann approaches faith and technology from

a philosophical point of view in the seminal Technology and the Character

of Contemporary Life. Jacques Ellul and Ursula Franklin o$ered insightful

critiques of the technological society, challenging the Christian community to

resist the totalizing system. I am so indebted to these remarkable scholars for

how they’ve influenced my e$orts to forge a theology of technology.

I will not focus on how faith is disseminated via technology. Distinguished

scholars analyzing religion on the internet include Brenda Brasher (Give Me

That Online Religion), Heidi Campbell (Digital Religion), and Rachel Wagner

(GodWired ). Lynn Schofield Clark has studied the impact of digital tech-

nologies upon families (The Parent App). Those who have articulated how to

shift church practices to coincide with technological shifts include John Dyer

(From the Garden to the City), Jesse Rice (The Church of Facebook), Eliza-

beth Drescher (Tweet if You Heart Jesus), and Brandon Vogt (The Church

and New Media). Dwight Friesen reframed our understanding of church for

a networked world in Thy Kingdom Connected. Douglas Estes pressed for-

ward the furthest with the implications for twenty-first-century ministry in

SimChurch. Pastoral concerns and cautions have been articulated by Quentin

Schultze (Habits of the High-Tech Heart), Shane Hipps (Flickering Pixels),

and Tim Challies (The Next Story). Leonard Sweet recovers the early days of

Christianity as a social movement in Viral. I am energized by the emerging

scholarship of Brett T. Robinson found in Appletopia. Jesuit paleontologist

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s notion of the noosphere inspired Jennifer Cobb in

her CyberGrace. She posits a world in which we evolve, thanks to technology,

toward a higher consciousness, perhaps to a more Godlike calling. While this

hopeful vision is attractive, it doesn’t address how technology can also bewitch

and blind us. Technology has given us the ability to improve our conditions

but also the power to destroy ourselves via bombs or chemical warfare. We

can enjoy the benefits of technology while still remaining skeptical of what

happens when we become iGods of our making.

A similarly diverse spectrum—from caution to enthusiasm—is found among

technologists. Nicholas Carr may bemoan The Shallows, our less-than-deep

thinking thanks to the internet, while Clay Shirky celebrates the Cognitive

A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s

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Surplus arising from our collective intelligence. Both messages have found

broad audiences. I am intrigued by the words of warning coming from artificial

intelligence researcher Jaron Lanier (Who Owns the Future?) and Eli Pariser

of Upworthy.org (The Filter Bubble). They experienced the early, unchecked

promise of the internet but now worry about the standardization that arises

from a consolidation of power among a few techno-lords. MIT psychologist

Sherry Turkle shifted from an enthusiastic embrace of The Second Self to a

position of caution and concern in Alone Together. Whether coming from a

specifically religious or avowedly sociological perspective, the debate about

our technological shift is rampant. I appreciate both words of warning and

practical advice on how to incorporate social media into church practices. But

I find myself more interested in the theological questions of where technology

is going. What is the telos of our commitment to faster, smaller, and more?

How do we retain an embodied faith in a digital era?

The most advanced technologist and theologian leading this conversation

is Kevin Kelly. From his work on the Whole Earth Catalog to his editing at

Wired, Kelly has reported on each stage of our computing era. He suggests

that the emerging question isn’t where we are headed but What Technology

Wants. I am fascinated (and frightened) by that notion. It sounds a long way

from seeking the will of God or asking, “What Would Jesus Do?” Is technol-

ogy a distinct entity, birthed from our need for comfort and calculation, now

surpassing us in far more than chess games or Jeopardy? I vividly recall the

cold, calculated horrors of HAL, the computer gone amok in 2001: A Space

Odyssey. And who wants to have their every keystroke or phone call monitored

by advertisers or government agencies? Yet, I also must acknowledge how

many magnificent breakthroughs in science and engineering have raised all

our standards of living. Technology is increasingly shifting from something

outside us to a partner and monitor inside us, an evolutionary upgrade. I am

grateful that Kelly has gone before us, reassuring us that we need not fear the

future, especially if theologians and ethicists work with technologists.

This book arises from ancient mysteries: Why did God give us a brain and

why are we called to be fruitful and multiply? When we apply our talents to

the task of planting, harvesting, and creating, we get more products, more

ideas, more leisure. So are we slowly creating heaven on earth, fulfilling God’s

hopes for us? Or are we repeating the errors of Eden, making ourselves the

center of our world in unhealthy and unsustainable ways? The short answer

is “yes.” The longer explanation follows.

A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s

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xxx

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Craig Detweiler, iGods
Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2013. Used by permission.

I n t r o d u c t i o n
iGods

Nothing is permanent, but change!

—Heraclitus, 4th century BC

Resenting a new technology will not halt its progress.

—Marshall McLuhan, 1969 1

Technology is most e$ective when we fail to notice it, but our faith in technol-

ogy is so pervasive it is often blind. Consider an average day: We expect our

alarm to go o$. We believe our lights will turn on. We expect the shower to

run. We trust appliances to chill our milk, heat our co$ee, toast our bread,

and clean our dishes. We depend on trains to run, buses to roll, our car to

start. We trust our radio to play and our GPS to guide us. The elevator will

carry us to our floor. Our computer will retrieve our files, print our docu-

ments, and deliver our email. The microwave can cook our lunch or reheat

our dinner. Our phone can order pizza to be delivered. Our thermostat makes

sure we are warm in the winter and cool in the summer. We are comfortable.

We feel self-su%cient. We did not need anyone’s help to make this happen. At

no time did we need to pause or even consider how these appliances worked.

Conveniences once well beyond the reach of royalty are now standard fare. As

dutiful servants, these technologies perform their services without acknowl-

edgment. They are virtually invisible. Thank you technology for making our

life so simple. Forgive us for taking you for granted.

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Craig Detweiler, iGods
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Our faith in technology is impatient. It does not tolerate delays. If bad

weather befalls O’Hare Airport, tempers flare. When the Apple map in the

iPhone5 failed to deliver results, heads rolled within the company. If our cable

service is cut o$ (or the power goes out during the Super Bowl), Comcast will

hear from us! Our faith in technology allows little room for error. We often

exclude the events in the natural world (such as weather) in our expectations

of technology. As psychologist Rollo May noted, “Technology is the knack

for so arranging the world that we do not experience it.”2 We may not realize

how our faith in technology can blind us.

Our faith in technology connects us to long lost friends. It also enables

us to avoid people we’d rather text with than talk to. It is our hiding place.

Our faith in technology is so widespread that we feel we must be always

available, always connected. Technology demands our attention.

Our faith in technology is so complete that we place devices into our chil-

dren’s hands at earlier ages and stages. We train our kids to look down rather

than up.

Our faith in technology is so passionate that we rarely question the wisdom

of our embrace. We text now, worry later.

Our embrace of technology is so boundless that we have poured staggering

riches on those who brought us these magic devices.

Futurist Arthur C. Clarke noted that any “su%ciently advanced technology

is indistinguishable from magic.”3 We marvel at the results without analyz-

ing how the trick was accomplished. We may be tempted to bow down to the

magic box, ascribing secret powers to the technology. We may also applaud the

magician who performed the trick. When it comes to technology, we celebrate

the icons of Silicon Valley as iGods worth emulating. We reward them for

granting us superpowers. With a smartphone in our pocket, we can transcend

the bodily limits of space and time. We can send and receive, buy and sell,

upload and download with a swipe of our finger.

In this book, we will discuss the magic technologies that we may consider

Godlike. We will also study the trails blazed by tech leaders like Steve Jobs—

the original iGod. We will also consider the temptations o$ered by Google

and Facebook and Twitter to build our digital brand, to become iGods of our

making. An iGod can be a technology, a technologist, or the person bewitched

by the power promised by the gadget. A healthy perspective on technology,

unmasking the magic, may make us more appreciative of the craft involved.

In examining how technology improves our lives, we may even come to a

I n t r o d u c t i o n

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Craig Detweiler, iGods
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deeper understanding of the glory of God. In other words, a better grasp of

the iGods we fashion and follow can lead us toward the God of Abraham,

Isaac, and Jacob.

Perhaps we should pause more often and thank God for the gift of technol-

ogy. Before we pick up a fork, we could be grateful for the toolmakers who

preceded us. We may marvel at Google’s internet-connected glasses, but we

can also appreciate any invention that clarifies our vision—from the reading

glasses that accompanied my fortieth birthday to the sunglasses that keep us

from developing cataracts. When we get a flu shot, the doctors have antic-

ipated the future of disease so e$ectively that they can give it to us (and protect

us!) ahead of time. We don’t think about our artificial hip or pacemaker; we

just incorporate them into our bodies and move on as satisfied semi-cyborgs.

Technology at its finest is easy to adopt, quick to implement, and bound to

be underappreciated.

Comedian Louis (Louie) C. K. jokes about our sense of entitlement regard-

ing technology. He marvels that “everything is amazing right now and nobody

is happy.” Louis mocks those who get impatient when they have to wait a few

seconds to get a cell phone signal . . . FROM SPACE!4 The fruits of technology

are often ingratitude and impatience. We don’t want to be short-tempered

and demanding, but we have come to expect technology to be at our beck

and call. Could a deeper understanding of technology broaden our sense of

appreciation? If we receive technology more as a God-given gift and privilege,

could we grow in gratitude? How might stepping away from the conveniences

of technology sharpen our perceptions and quicken our spirit?

This book is about how technologies entertain and enthrall us. We are teth-

ered to our mobile devices. They comfort us when we’re lonely, reassure us when

we’re lost, organize us when we’re feeling out of control. They are an electronic

security blanket, a way for families and friends to feel close despite the distances

that may separate us. They o$er an easy way to pass the time between things,

when we are waiting for something to start or someone to show up. We can

sink into our cell phone when we are bored, when we are scared, or when we

are eager to share some great news. However, delight can devolve into devotion.

It is good to be connected to family and friends, but when we cannot resist

the urge to check updates or upload a photo, we are veering toward idolatry.

Idols serve our needs according to our schedule. When we call, they answer.

They give us a false sense of being in control. But over time, the relationship re-

verses. We end up attending to their needs, centering our lives on their priorities

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Craig Detweiler, iGods
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and agendas. Most idols begin as good things, from a modest improvement

to a lofty goal or something we long to acquire. When we gaze on our idols,

we see ourselves di$erently. We can picture ourselves driving the car, winning

the award, taking the bow. Over time, we can become so attached to the image

of ourselves being reflected back at us that we lose perspective.5 When we

shift from thinking about something occasionally (a romantic relationship, a

promotion, a possession, our family) to obsessing over it constantly, we are

turning an idea into an idol. It becomes the thing we cling to, that gives our

life purpose and meaning. Idols are anything we’re so attached to that we can’t

imagine living without.6 Tim Keller challenges us to take stock. What would

we hate to lose and feel lost without? Where do our thoughts wander in our

free time? Who or what can we not wait to check in with?

The iMac begat the iPhone and the iPad, and each one starts with me—or

rather “i.” They enhance our ability to connect and to serve, but they can

also create an inflated sense of self, believing the entire world revolves around

“me”: iVoice, iWant, iNeed. The ability to broadcast ourselves from anywhere

to anyone at any time gives us an electric charge. In an age of status updates,

personalized shopping, and lists of followers, we are experiencing the rush of

becoming iGods of our own making. Updating our profiles can be exhaust-

ing. The pressure to perform can be demanding. Why are devices designed to

broaden our reach and elevate our personal brands so enslaving?

When Moses descended from Sinai with the original tablets, the crowd was

dancing around a golden calf. On the long journey toward freedom out of

Egypt, they had forgotten who they were and whose they were. In the first com-

mandment, God appropriately insisted, “You shall have no other gods before

me.”7 The second commandment warned against worshiping graven images

(no matter how sleek, cool, or trendy they may be). Biblical history reveals

how quickly the Israelites bowed down to foreign idols, shifting allegiance

toward the latest innovations introduced by conquerors and kings.8 Images

of lines of people outside the Apple store awaiting the latest iPhone dance

through my mind. The apostle John concluded his letter to the early church

with the cautionary warning, “Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.”9 As

parents, we put an iPad in our children’s hands to get through road trips and

plane rides. Kids can scroll before they even speak. John Calvin said, “Every

one of us, even from his mother’s womb, is a master-craftsman of idols.”10

As soon as we remove one, we elevate another in its place. Despite their lofty

promises, idols can end up sucking the life out of us.

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Craig Detweiler, iGods
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This book celebrates the wonders of technology and sings the praises of Apple,

Amazon, Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. We will consider what im-

portant everyday problems these technologies solved and ask what is our proper

relationship to these technologies. In examining why we place so much faith in

their abilities, we may rediscover our original calling. We want to appreciate

the gift of technology, but we also desire to put the iGods in their proper place.

Writing this book has forced me to measure my own technological devotion.

We value speed and e%ciency while the Bible upholds patience and kindness.

When we start the day with electronic updates, we may forget how “great is his

faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning.”11 Where shall we express

our hopes and fears? If we post our concerns on Facebook, we may forget to

cast our cares on the Lord, the one who sustains us in our sorrows.12 Should we

find our comfort in a gadget or in God? If our goal or calling in life is to glorify

God and to enjoy him forever, should we fill each moment of boredom with an

electronic input to keep us entertained? Almost all of Jesus’s most important

teaching happened on the journey between destinations. After his disciples

had experienced something, Jesus took the time before the next encounter to

reflect on the meaning of what had just happened. He put things in context,

revealed the bigger picture, and imparted eye-opening wisdom. The insights

were so memorable and so deep that they were passed on via word of mouth

with such clarity that they could still be gathered in the Gospels almost one

hundred years later. When we go from experience to experience, from Gmail

to Facebook to Tumblr to YouTube, we crowd out those moments where the

Spirit may have something significant to convey. We replace God-given inter-

ludes of pause, rest, and reflection with the goat version of Taylor Swift’s “I

Knew You Were Trouble” (look it up on YouTube). Nobody laughs harder at

“Goats Screaming Like Humans” than I do. However, it is tough to build a

life around viral videos and memes. They are a welcome respite—a celebra-

tion of the weird wonder of God’s creation and a quick laugh amid daunting

days—but if we are going to go the distance, we need more enduring wisdom

than “McKayla is not impressed” or “Charlie bit my finger.”

Hyperconnected and Distracted

As a college professor, I am amazed by how stressed and overscheduled my

students appear. They never seem to have enough hours in the day to get

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everything done. They arrive in class looking exhausted and bleary-eyed.

They are often in the middle of a relational drama that is playing out in real

time, either on Facebook or via instant messaging. It may be a fight with a

roommate, the end of a romance, or a plea from a parent. The constant tug

of electronic inputs keeps them from being focused. We are hyperconnected

and easily distracted, always available and rarely present. When Jesus saw

the crowds in ancient Israel, he had compassion on them, recognizing them

as harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.13 I want to alleviate

my students’ stress.

In my media and communication classes, I insist that students close their

laptops and turn o$ their phones. I want to capture that elusive and essential

commodity: attention. We can’t think, learn, or get in touch with our feel-

ings unless we’ve focused our attention. The social contract is clear: be here

now. I even try to teach in a manner that defies note taking. My class is a

lived experience that cannot be replicated, captured, or reduced to any other

medium (although numerous e$orts are under way to deliver education online,

including the 2013 TED Prize winner, Sugata Mitra’s “School in the Cloud”).

What happens among our community of learners at Pepperdine is designed

to spark thought that will reverberate until the next class session.

However, when it is time for midterms or final exams, I encourage students

to bring their laptops to class. My tests are open book, open notes, open

computers. They are even welcome to text message their friends. In real-world

scenarios, the challenge is assimilation: sorting through too much information

as quickly and wisely as possible. A timed test, surrounded by information,

approximates the kind of decision making we face every single moment. With

too many sources, where should we turn for advice? Which authorities do we

trust, and when do we stop gathering information and start crafting it into

something uniquely our own? My classroom illustrates a key tension for every

person and every family: When should we immerse in and when should we

withdraw from the information torrent (or is that “tyrant”)?

We love our iPhones, but we fear that they are distracting us. We want

our searches answered instantaneously by Google, but we feel overwhelmed

by too much information. We relish the chance to connect with friends via

Facebook, but we wonder how much privacy we may sacrifice via public

posts. Viewed from one angle, technology may seem like a savior to so many

social ills. It lifts us out of ignorance. It provides access to all. It can unite

us, it can heal us, and it can make us one. Plenty of us still worry about the

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totalizing e$ects of technology. Does entrusting all our information to a few

central databases and companies open up the possibility for new forms of

domination? Those who have seen regimes attempt to consolidate power

via disinformation worry whenever a few entities control the airwaves. We

solved the problem of too much information by giving a few key companies

too much of our information.

We have been swamped by a tsunami of new technologies, without paus-

ing to consider whether they are good or bad, helpful or hurtful. Are they

making us more thoughtful, more articulate, more loving? I see the benefits

of technology when I can let my family know where I am or send a quick

text message of support to a friend. But I also feel pulled away from them in

order to check for updates and to respond to requests for information, simply

because everything can happen so instantaneously. Our devices demand our

attention. MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle notes how the current generation

is “among the first to grow up with an expectation of continuous connection:

always on, and always on them.”14 We have embraced this shift largely without

considering the implications. Our basic philosophy has been summarized by

William Powers: It’s good to be connected, and it’s bad to be disconnected.15

He describes us as “digital maximalists” operating under a basic maxim, “The

more you connect, the better o$ you are.” Powers notes, “We never sat down

and consciously decided that this was the code we would live by. There was

no discussion, no referendum or show of hands. It just sort of happened, as

if by tacit agreement or silent oath. From now on, I will strive to be as con-

nected as possible at all times.”16 I write this book because I want to pause

and question that aphorism. This is an e$ort to step back, slow down, and

take a long view of where we’ve been and where we’re heading.

iGods

We may be tempted to eschew the electronic kingdom, skip the smartphone,

and forgo Facebook. I am not a Luddite calling us to smash our machines. I

love God, and I am attached to my iPhone. I believe Jesus was a techie and God

calls us to count and to code. You can find me via Gmail and on Facebook,

YouTube, and Twitter. I worked as a tutor in computer programming for

the math department at Davidson College. I then went to film school at the

University of Southern California and became a content creator rather than

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a technologist. I’ve watched Silicon Valley usurp Hollywood as the primary

storyteller and mythmaker for our generation. This is my respectful response.

The only computers I’ve ever owned have been Macs. I remember the giddy

first day that Earthlink allowed me to get online. I recall the visceral thrill

generated by the simple words, “you’ve got mail.” I still have the pullout map

of the world wide web provided inside an issue of MacWorld. It all seemed so

strange and wild and wonderful. I remember the day CarsDirect.com moved

into our Southern California neighborhood. While it became an immediate

internet sensation, to those of us in Culver City, it became an annoyance. How

did they squeeze so many people into such a small building? Employees had

to park their cars on our suburban streets and walk to work—all in order to

sell more cars. Friends of mine got rich working for GeoCities before Yahoo!

bought it. I’ve watched those same friends drop out and move to Indonesia,

leaving the tech scene altogether. While some cashed out, others have contin-

ued to cash in. When one internet start-up failed, they found new suitors to

invest in another.

It has been a wild two decades of booms and busts and booms, of IPOs

and overnight billionaires. We have elevated new American icons to rival previ-

ous captains of industry like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Thomas

Edison, and Leland Stanford. These captains laid the groundwork for our

twentieth-century infrastructure of steel and railways and fuel. They invested

in new technologies that increased e%ciency, hastened delivery, and lit up our

lives. The information era has been ruled by the iGods: Steve Jobs of Apple,

Je$ Bezos of Amazon, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, and Mark

Zuckerberg of Facebook. They beam from magazine covers as the entrepre-

neurs who mastered technology and transformed our lives. The entertainment

industry now tells the stories of these icons who have displaced Hollywood

as California’s most influential export and financial engine.

The iGods got rich by solving problems created by technology such as the

complexity of the original computers, the unmanageability of the internet,

and the sheer excess of information. The first computers primarily processed

numbers. They were designed to make it easy to calculate complex formulas

for firing missiles. Armed forces needed to know how to account for the angle

of the gun, the weight of the bomb, the variables of temperature and wind.

Such complex algorithmic equations took too much time in the heat of battle.

Computers o$ered an ability to calculate fast—faster than the human brain,

faster than a whole roomful of women plugging the numbers into formulas far

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from their husbands on the front. Computers required specialized knowledge.

They operated via arcane languages like Fortran. No matter how BASIC they

labeled it, for the average person it was an unintelligible foreign tongue. How

to make computers easy and natural, warm and humane?

Apple made computers approachable. The Macintosh even sounded like a

friend, “Mac.” Jobs and Apple turned a generation on to the creative power of

computers, shifting computers from number processors to word processors.

They encouraged people to engage in desktop publishing. We could design our

own newsletters, lay out our own fanzines, publish our own novels. Blogging

would follow. We started making our own designs, touching up our photos,

recording our garage bands. Final Cut and iMovie turned us all into filmmakers

as we edited hours of home movies into cool music videos. Visualization via

computers transformed architecture and design, spawning the maker movement

and 3D printing. The DIY revolution resulted in a dizzying array of media,

on our computers, on the web. How do we organize all the music in our col-

lection? What do we do with all the movies we have made? Where do we find

all the books and music we’d like to buy? The iGods of Apple and Amazon

got rich by solving our problem of abundance. They made billions by helping

us control our millions—millions of songs, photos, and books. In a world

of too much, they allowed us to find what we wanted, to make sense of too

much. Our gratitude is immense. Our faith in their abilities is almost blind.

The iGods of Google and Facebook made the internet manageable. Google

gave us the answers we were looking for. Facebook allowed us to gather our

friends. The iGods helped us organize our calendars and promote our events.

We can instantly connect with anybody at any time from anywhere. Such

superpowers can be dizzying. How much do we value such services? Century-

old companies that made trains, planes, and automobiles were eclipsed by

start-ups that transported us across uncharted territories. Apple gave us the

tools to create. Google showed us where to find what we were seeking. Ama-

zon made it easy to buy it. Facebook allowed us to tap into the wisdom of

friends. The demigods of YouTube and Twitter and Instagram turned us all

into broadcasters. Yet, the creators of YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram are

not viewed as iGods because they didn’t solve a problem. They deepened our

problems by creating even more information.

We are just beginning to grasp our ability to gather followers and attract

subscribers, to find an audience via our mobile devices. Who or what is God

in an era where we have acquired such reach? Sam Lessin, project manager at

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Facebook, suggests, “We as a species in the last few decades have gotten three

new superpowers. . . . We can literally remember anything, we can talk to any-

one on earth instantly for free, and we can process huge amounts of data.”17

Will our view of God need to expand, rising above a mountain of data? Do

we need a new understanding of omniscience comparable to the cloud and

omnipresence rooted in “mobiquity,” the ubiquity of mobile devices?

I want us to consider what to do with these newly found superpowers. Like

Harry Potter and Hermione Granger, we must learn how to wield the magic

wand in our hand. The rise of superhero movies may correspond to our sense

of expanding horizons. Google Earth allows us to fly like Superman, zeroing

in on any location we desire. Spider-Man learns that with great power comes

great responsibility. The students of Hogwarts have shown us how to resist

evil—it is a question of character, of wisdom. Trying on technology will involve

some awkward missteps, crashes even. The netiquette of social media is still

being negotiated. We’ve never been so close to so many. We may embarrass

ourselves on YouTube. Twitter forces us to think before we tweet. Facebook

should cause us to consider what it means to be a neighbor. How do we love

our friends and followers when there are hundreds of them?

I am not equating Jesus’s principles with business a la Bruce Barton who

quipped, “Christ would be a national advertiser today, I am sure, as He was a

great advertiser in His own day. He thought of His life as business.”18 However,

I do want to discover what these tech and business entrepreneurs understood in

order to grasp how people of faith might respond to our context with similar

creativity. Christianity was a social movement rooted in powerful symbols,

creative actions, and remarkable word of mouth. It was a global brand that

spread without advertising. The integrity of what it o$ered, demonstrated by

millions of transformed pagans, spoke volumes. Now, having been usurped

by the cult of technology and its fervent evangelists, we must figure out how

to regain our mojo, to tap into our strengths, to remember our first love.

A Theology of Technology

Technology is the realm of engineers. They crunch numbers to build bridges,

make decisions, and create applications for our smartphones. Theology is

seen as the province of the spiritual, a realm of intangible ideas and ultimate

questions. I want to bring these two worlds together, to point out how spiritual

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our designs can be and how material theological concerns should be. Kevin

Kelly has noted “that many people who do not believe in God somehow be-

lieve in information.”19 Technologists play god in their research all the time.

As a theologian, what might I learn from technologists? As a student at Fuller

Theological Seminary, I blended the seemingly incompatible realms of faith

and film. I’ve tried to understand how God can o$er revelatory moments

amid seemingly profane, pop cultural means. Teaching for Fuller’s Northern

California campus and speaking at a Menlo Park Presbyterian Church retreat,

I discovered the growing need for a theological understanding of the burgeon-

ing tech industry. In turning toward technology, I will continue to examine our

lived experiences as an expression of profound spiritual longing. Our posts

on Facebook can be a form of prayer and praise. The device in our pocket

can be a conduit to and from the divine. The same God who worked through

ancient Babylonian and Persian kings can work through today’s tech titans.

By forging a theology of technology, we may even discover why large sections

of the Bible focus on numbers!

David Tracy encourages a shift from theo-logy to theo-logy, a shift from the

study of God driven by reason, to the experience of God rooted in revelation.20

To respond to the age of reason, theologians became much more rational. We

could look at the rise of the iGods as the triumph of computation, algorithms

as Authority. However, I want to suggest that the expansion of their digital

kingdom is also about material abundance. It is a lived experience rooted in

revelation. We need a poetic, God-centered theo-logy to address an age of

acceleration. Our theology must a%rm the physical world amid mental, ra-

tional, and numbering functions. We are more than a gadget, and our ethics

must be found in far more than an algorithm. An embodied faith rooted in

the real world will enable us to resist a gnostic ascent into virtual kingdoms.

God’s first command in the Bible was to be fruitful and multiply. We have

been up to the task. Early church father Tertullian (AD 160–240) noted how

“farms have replaced wastelands, cultivated land has subdued the forests, cattle

have put to flight the wild beast, barren lands have become fertile, rocks have

become soil, swamps have been drained, and the number of cities exceeds the

number of poor huts found in former times. . . . Everywhere there are people,

communities—everywhere there is human life!”21 He worried that “the world

is full. The elements scarcely su%ce us. Our needs press.”22 Two millennia

later, we are equally overwhelmed by our fruitfulness. Our knowledge, our

information, our playlists have multiplied. We have filled our brains with data,

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but we don’t know how to subdue it. Humanity gave names to all the animals

in the garden of Eden, but we can no longer name everything in sight. The

diversity of our world, the proximity of what’s possible has overwhelmed us.

Becoming like God has fried our brains. To use the metaphor of our era, our

hard drives are full and threatening to crash.

Religion used to order our world. It was a way of numbering our days,

making sense of the seasons. A church calendar told us what we should be

thinking about. Changes in the color of the priests’ vestments sent us signals:

sacred times are ahead. In the wake of rampant acceleration, we have placed

our faith in technology to inform us, organize us, and sustain us. We expect it

to function so seamlessly that it can also entertain us at the same time. Silicon

Valley is ruled by numerical e%ciency that rewards faster, cheaper, smaller,

and more. This techno-monarchy, mediated via electronic devices connected

to the internet, has overwhelmed us with abundance.

Such abundance can be frustrating and even maddening. In Genesis 1, Father,

Son, and Spirit brought order to chaos, separating light from darkness, land

from sea. Having set the stage, God commanded us to be fruitful and multiply.

Now, we are drowning in a sea of creativity. We have too many books, songs,

shows, and stu$ to choose from. We are distracted by our choices, burdened

by too many friends, and overwhelmed by too many options to enjoy. So what

was God’s response to too much fruitfulness and creativity? Rest. He enjoyed

the splendor. He spread it around. He invited us all to the party. Can we learn

to admire our handiwork, to revel in all that the internet o$ers, to be grateful

for another day, another click, another virtual connection?

Jean-Luc Marion writes in terms of excess—the overwhelming charity of

God that infuses our life. He revels in the captivating presence of God that

arrests our brain. Irish philosopher and storyteller Peter Rollins suggests that

our sense of being overwhelmed by these challenges could be a good thing:

A revelation worthy of the name involves epistemological incomprehension . . .

what we have encountered cannot be understood within our current intellectual

structures. Second, there is experiential bedazzlement . . . a type of oversatura-

tion in which our experience is overcome. One is overwhelmed by the incoming

and short-circuited by it. Third, there is an existential transformation. When

a revelation occurs, the person who is receiving it is never the same again.23

This resonates with our experience of abundance, our sense that there is simply

too much of everything to process. Rather than trying to control it, perhaps

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we need to learn how to simply embrace or receive it. Revelation is God’s

download to us. Theology is our upload in appreciative response; neither may

fit in a status update or a tweet.

We obeyed God’s first command; we filled the earth, but we couldn’t

subdue it. Adam and Eve tried to possess all knowledge, but such presump-

tion proved deadly. Their e$orts to dominate the garden of Eden got them

kicked out. We face a similar temptation today. Control seems to reside

in our fingertips; access to all is packed into a digital device. The flood of

resulting information feels more like a form of judgment, threatening to

drown us. We needed a lifesaving ark. As Noah once rescued the animals,

so Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter became the lifelines to

keep us afloat. They appear magical (even godlike) because they solved our

abundance problems. They put a filter around the flood, making the flow more

manageable. Apple’s computers arrived like a rainbow, assuring us that all

was safe. Google extended an olive branch that told us it was safe to search.

We lionize their leaders as oracles who can foresee the future, programmers

on high. These technological icons became entrepreneurial idols—the iGods

we adore.

The primeval prologue in Genesis concludes with a cautionary tale about

attempts to become like God. Noah’s o$spring included Nimrod, a mighty

hunter whose kingdom began with Babel. They built a tower in Babel to reach

heaven and make a name for themselves before God leveled such presumption.

History has come to judge such self-seeking as Nimrod’s folly. Today’s tech

leaders built platforms to elevate our status. Apple has given us the illusion

of control—packing our friends, our followers, our schedules, and our diver-

sions into one essential device—the iPhone. We poured riches upon these

techno-lords in appreciation. The iGods of Amazon, Google, Facebook, and

Twitter have responded to our praise by o$ering us a form of divination. We

can extend our brand, broaden our reach, and spread our Klout by joining

the digital parade. Yes, it can be exhausting to be an iGod. The electronic din

can resemble the confusion that followed Nimrod’s folly. At Babel, everyone

was talking, but no one could understand. They were confused.24 The iGods

continue to insist that active participation in virtual technologies ensures a

lasting impact. We will make a name for ourselves; our profiles will live on.

Technologists have faith in the future and confidence in progress. They await

the coming of the Singularity, when machines surpass humanity, our tweets

become eternal, and world peace prevails. Technology is an alternative religion

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where faith in progress is manifested in a faster, smarter, more e%cient world.

Such cyber-utopianism, reflected by rave reviews in Wired, seemingly knows

no bounds.

The distribution of the abundance remains a problem; not everyone is

plugged in. While the iGods have prospered, those outside the platforms have

yet to be lifted up. Automation has decimated large segments of the former

middle class.25 The annual TED (Technology/Education/Design) conference

is an admirable e$ort to promote “ideas worth spreading.” TEDsters are

committed to solving hunger, combating poverty, eradicating disease. It is an

ambitious and inspiring movement rooted in human potential. I hope it sparks

far more lifesaving arks than misguided towers to the sky.

Jesus showed us there was more than enough to go around. He fed five thou-

sand people with two fish and five loaves of bread. He blended crowdsourcing

with communion. We have never been closer to one another before—more

aware of strife and hunger, able to respond more quickly to need. We are still

growing into our calling as stewards and shepherds and cultivators. Despite

the pain in our past, we are heading toward a massive party, celebrating the

mystic sweet communion of Jesus and his bride, the church. So we must plant

and harvest toward the great banquet, preparing the bottomless cup of wine,

baking the baskets of bread overflowing.

We need a theology of abundance to deal with the outcomes of our technol-

ogy, the massive fruitfulness that the Creator God baked into us. We need a

theology of abundance equal to the grace and generosity found in the blood of

Jesus poured out for many. We need a theology of abundance commensurate

with the superabundant presence of the Holy Spirit that can flood our senses,

short-circuit our rationale. Unfortunately, our economics is built on a model

of scarcity, and our theology feels equally impoverished.

We’ve argued about who’s in and who’s out, separating, while God called us

to simply gather everybody, two by two. The confusion that pulled us apart at

Babel has been reversed by the cohesion of the Spirit, speaking to and through

every tongue and tribe and nation. We’ve been focused on what we don’t have

while Jesus multiplies the two fish and five loaves he’s already provided. We’ve

been hoarding when we should have been sharing. Our technology allows us

fewer claims to ignorance. The age of accountability and metrics is here. We

can study the numbers, but we must remember that each number is actually

a person, created by God, worthy of our attention. You are not a number or

an outcome. You are not a gadget. You are far more than your social profile.

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While the algorithms o$er pictures of our collective behavior, discipleship

still comes down to a life on a life. We are children of God, called to love and

serve God’s children. Let’s figure out how to live out our faith in tangible ways,

each hyperaccelerated day.

Key Words

Key words like access, aesthetics, abundance, algorithms, authority, and au-

thenticity will drive our discussion. The first big hurdle on the internet was

access. Companies like AOL and Earthlink competed to dial us into the world

wide web. Smartphones gave access to people and countries that never expe-

rienced a landline. Our machines o$er us more access and more computing

speed at more a$ordable prices every day. We are so busy texting that we rarely

pause to question if access is always preferable. We exchange our privacy for

access, and we may be losing our sense of agency in the process.

Another key word is aesthetics. Steve Jobs’s commitment to aesthetics

turned amateurs into professionals, and the Macintosh unleashed a torrent

of creativity from desktop publishing to editing home videos. Users developed

an eye for design, admiring the gadgets that hold our electronic information.

We’ll also discuss abundance. If nothing else, today’s technology can be

described as abundant! Communication originated as a one-to-one, person-

to-person, aural activity. Then the printing press made duplication scalable,

and the electronic era allowed one radio station or television network to reach

millions.26 Next Apple made computers accessible to nontechnical people,

and the iPhone transformed us all into broadcasters. Never have so many

people been able to create and distribute so many words and images. We are

uploading our videos and updating our statuses in dizzying ways. We are

inundated by too much information (of our own making). We desperately

need a theology of abundance to figure out how to respond to this strange,

new problem.

To solve this information overload, we have turned to algorithms. The engi-

neers at Google created algorithms that gave us the ability to comb through the

thicket of the world wide web. They brought order to a chaotic environment.

Complex mathematical equations now drive our decision making, from what

to buy, to which route to take, to whom to date. Algorithms filter our news

and answer our questions.

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Our traditional sources of authority are shifting, from people to programs,

from God to Google. Google knows where to find answers, but does it un-

derstand my individual quirks and taste? Who can we trust as an authority

in a time of too many options? Amazon recommended what to read. Netflix

told us what to watch. Thanks to Twitter, we learned to follow the crowd,

but the signals are still mixed. Should we click on the most viewed, the most

emailed, or the most liked?

Authenticity was a vexing problem on the internet until Facebook gave us

the ability to gather all our favorite people, those we know and trust, in one

convenient place. We also made new friends thanks to old friends’ recom-

mendations. Our networks expanded and Facebook didn’t let us hide behind

pseudonyms or avatars. We were challenged to put our history, our education,

even our religious beliefs out in the open. Such authenticity felt exhilarating

until Facebook started exploiting our friends’ recommendations, turning our

trust into commerce.

This book explores the problems generated by abundance, the promises

o$ered by algorithms, and our ongoing search for authenticity. Social media is

such a relatively new phenomenon that we’ve barely had time to consider how

it is redefining community. We have plugged into our smartphones without

a sense of how they a$ect our relationships to family, friends, and even the

Almighty.

Who Should Read This Book?

We vacillate between feeling empowered by and powerless in the wake of the

iGods’ influence. Digital natives have all the tools in hand but may benefit from

some perspective. Parents, teachers, and pastors wonder how to compete with

the electronic distractions. The ease of access, the pace of acceleration, and

the division of attention show no signs of abating. We are all rats who seem

to have signed up for the same race—acquiring more bits and bytes than we

can possibly process.

For those who already feel overwhelmed by too much information, this book

will include tales from an accelerated culture. The mobiquity of smartphones

(adopted by ever younger users) guarantees that the next generation will have

more access to more information at earlier ages. In an era of too much in-

formation, the need for discernment and wisdom will be greater than ever.

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Consider this book an active resistance to a thoughtless embrace. I want to

awaken our senses, to make room for thought, for contemplation, for beauty,

for God. How might Christians recover these ancient and timeless virtues in

a wired era?

This book is for parents, teachers, and pastors. As a parent of two digital

natives, I wrestle with questions of what is appropriate and when. We used to

worry about the age of accountability. Now, we measure rites of passage ac-

cording to when they get their first cell phone. And should it be just a phone?

What about the ability to text? Is internet access a problem, making a phone

too smart? Once the phone enters the teenager’s (or child’s) life, what are

the times and limits? Should it be used only for emergencies? Pulled out of a

backpack only during lunch and between classes? What about using the phone

in a bedroom? Should it be turned o$ at night?

Educators too wrestle with how to teach children who enter their classroom

with a phone in tow. Assignments and pedagogy must change to accommodate

a generation that has all the basic answers at their fingertips. Innovators like

Sal Khan aim to replace higher education altogether (or at least to make it af-

fordable to all). As technology disrupted the newspaper business and the music

industry, could the Khan Academy (an online library of educational lectures)

undermine colleges and universities? We must figure out how to incorporate

smartphones and tablets into our educational process. And, surprisingly, less

may turn out to be more.

Finally, how should pastors respond to parishioners who make their primary

connections via Facebook? Youth ministers are already engaged in online min-

istry. As virtual communities continue to flourish, faith communities are still

figuring out how to respond. Surveys have found that the larger the church, the

broader their embrace of new technologies. To organize a crowd, they turn to

electronic mail and social networks. To underscore a pastor’s sermon, they rely

on video screens and stage lighting. Churches often buy the latest gear out of

instinct rather than theology. This book is an e$ort to hit pause, to challenge

us to consider how technology shapes worship, before we consider how our

worship should shape a congregation. Hopefully, this book will answer such

practical questions in a thoughtful and theological way.

While I acknowledge the pastoral and parental concerns, I am primarily

interested in the theological shifts accompanying technological upheaval. I

see most of us buying phones for our children without pausing to consider

the changes that will happen in their thoughts and practices. Students are

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awakened by their cell phones in the morning and say goodnight on Facebook

and Twitter. While this book is informed by know-how, I want us to know

why. It is primarily a theology of technology. We will consider the history and

the philosophy of technology in light of spiritual implications. We will study

wildly successful companies in an e$ort to uncover our enduring questions.

I am hopeful that the results will be worthwhile for students and teachers,

pastors and parents. Questions at the end of each chapter are designed to

provoke face-to-face group discussions.

The Goal

British economist E. F. Schumacher wrote in his prescient 1973 book Small

Is Beautiful, “Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology

towards the organic, the gentle, the non-violent, the elegant and beautiful.”27

Many books have been written about how millions of dollars were made

(and lost) during the dot-com bubble. These books profile the people who

rose so quickly from obscurity to infamy. Plenty of how-to manuals discuss

launching a company and capitalizing on social media. This book will in-

clude some history, some descriptions, but mostly analysis—not just how

these companies came to be but what these technologies are doing to us and

through us. This book is an e$ort to grasp how technology alters our hearts

and minds. We need to understand how Google works but also what Google

does to our understanding of who we are and whose we are. I want us to

consider what that smartphone in our pocket can and can’t accomplish. I

hope readers will be challenged to move beyond data and information gath-

ering toward understanding and wisdom. The goals of system analyzers and

technologists mirror those of professors and priests. We want to shift people

from data to wisdom.

The Bible holds up wisdom as a rare and precious goal. It is worth striv-

ing for, setting aside distractions for, doing everything we can to obtain. The

Proverbs of Solomon are collected “for gaining wisdom and instruction; for

understanding words of insight; for receiving instruction in prudent behav-

ior; doing what is right and just and fair.”29 Augustine called it faith seeking

understanding. Yes, we have the information provided by the Bible. We have

the knowledge to understand how it all fits together, to see the big picture of

biblical history, but do we have the wisdom to apply ancient truths to today’s

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situation? G. K. Chesterton famously declared theology as that part of religion

that requires brains. It can feel ponderous or o$-putting, an academic study of

God, but that is not the whole of our calling. We must translate that theology

into meaningful action. Wisdom involves acting on our convictions, applying

the Word of God in a thoughtful and appropriate manner.

If science is an accurate description of how the world works, technology

is putting fundamental truths of biology, chemistry, and physics into ac-

tion. We may not grasp all scientific truths, but we welcome the results that

bless our lives via better technologies. Theology can seem lofty, abstract, or

remote. Like science, it can sound intimidating. Yet, our beliefs invariably

drive our decision making. The goal is to turn our beliefs into practices. Our

head, our heart, and our hands should be aligned in purposeful actions. If

technology is applied science, then faith is applied theology. Karl Barth al-

legedly encouraged young theologians to live with the Bible in one hand and

the newspaper in the other.30 Both those texts are now gathered in a single

device. We are challenged to unlock the Bible contained within our smart-

phone. This captivating device, tied to all of human knowledge, could lead

us to folly or wisdom.

Technology has been largely a nerdy boys’ world, full of pissing con-

tests and monopolizing egos. The press cast Bill Gates and Microsoft as

the techno-villain, trying to control all. Windows was painted as the evil,

unimaginative operating system. Jobs and Apple got plenty of mileage play-

ing the underdog. In countless Mac-vs.-PC ads, Apple juxtaposed the drab,

boring bean counter in a suit with the hip, relaxed Apple user with his shirt-

tail out. Under his wife Melinda’s positive influence, Gates turned into the

most generous, global-minded technologist of our era. Through the Giving

Pledge, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has dared fellow billionaires

toward benevolence. Rather than following the single-minded empire build-

ing of Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg has joined the Gates Foundation by vowing to

give away the billions generated by Facebook. It is interesting that wisdom is

personified as a woman throughout the book of Proverbs: “Do not forsake

wisdom, and she will protect you; love her, and she will watch over you.”31

The entire tech world could benefit from more female influence. Executives

like Marissa Meyer at Yahoo! and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook are mak-

ing headlines, challenging the next generation to lean in.32 The next wave

of iGods may be remembered for their generous hearts and transformative

practices—sustaining wisdom.

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Next Steps

German philosopher Martin Heidegger defined technology as a “challenging

revealing.” I am studying technology as a potential source of divine revelation.

God was the first technologist who put a tool in our hands and challenged us

to till the earth. We’ve been (re)producing ever since. In examining why par-

ticular companies have come to dominate our culture, I hope to uncover the

deeper longings that they unlocked. The success of the iGods is intoxicating.

The promises of technology are alluring. The temptation to become iGods of

our own making is ever present. What can we learn from their best practices

without being blinded by their wealth, fame, and utopian ideals?

A master craftsman is entirely at home with his medium, having full knowl-

edge of its possibilities. The ancient Greeks associated technē with episteme,

since both were forms of knowing. In an artist’s hands, a block of wood could

be transformed into a shoe, a pipe, or a musical instrument. Michelangelo

could see the sculpture contained in the marble, waiting to be revealed. Wind,

water, and oil were ever present. But it took millennia before we recognized

their energizing power. Technology reveals the potential contained in our

physical world. What powers have today’s technologists tapped into and how

might God be working through them?

Chapter 1 will attempt to define technology. Our relationship with technol-

ogy alters our understanding of our world and of God. What we believe is

shaped by the technologies that surround us. I want us to consider the nature

of technology itself—is it a lifesaving gift a la Noah’s Ark or a form of folly

like the tower of Babel? The short answer is “yes.”

Chapter 2 explores why Steve Jobs should be celebrated for creating (with

Steve Wozniak) the revolutionary Macintosh computer. The press subsequently

hyped each new rollout of an Apple product with rapturous headlines and

cover stories. Newsweek declared, “iPod, therefore iAM.” Gizmodo (the gad-

get guide) announced, “The Jesus Phone is finally here.” For the iPad, Jobs

climbed down from Cupertino to deliver tablets from on high. The glowing

tributes that followed his death elevated him to a hallowed position reserved

for few American entrepreneurs. He had become an iGod, both the creator

and the redeemer within the cult of Mac.

Chapter 3 is a brief history of the internet, how the invention of the world

wide web paved the way for ecommerce. Chapters 4 and 5 explain why the

creators of Amazon and Google have also been celebrated for their ability

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to spawn billion-dollar businesses. They tapped into algorithmic authority

to simplify our shopping and solve our searches. I spell out what people of

faith can learn from these inventors. And I also explore what aspects of their

groundbreaking technology we would be wise to resist.

After a brief history of social networking in chapter 6, I delve into an ex-

amination of our favorite frenemy, Facebook. In chapter 7, I discuss why so

many of us have surrendered personal information in order to connect with

friends. I also consider the ways in which Facebook potentially undermines

our friendships, making us lonely and jealous.

Chapter 8 will address the demigods, angling for the iGods’ place. YouTube,

Twitter, and Instagram have all captured a significant audience. These delivery

systems invite us to participate by broadcasting our talents, our passions, and

our whereabouts. Their primary attributes are convenience and speed. They

allow us to communicate quickly, e%ciently, and broadly.

Finally, my conclusion will consider the telos of technology—where is the

drive for smaller, faster, and smarter gadgets taking us? Cyber-optimists have

profound faith in technology’s ability to solve global problems. While Chris-

tians turn to the book of Revelation to envision the future, technologists build

their eschatology around the noosphere (a collective mind) and the Singular-

ity (a technological superintelligence). We will consider where their faith is

misplaced and suggest how we can adopt a proper perspective on technology

to build God’s vision of a heavenly city. We need an embodied, incarnational

faith amidst a digitized era.

Discuss

1. What technologies are you grateful for? How have they improved or
complicated your life?

2. In what ways are you tethered to technology? Is it serving you or enslav-
ing you?

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23
1

D e f i n i n g Te c h n o l o g y

We tend to see God reflected in nature, but my bet is that technology is the better mirror of God.

—Kevin Kelly, “Nerd Theology”1

Jesus was more than a carpenter; he was a techie. The Greek word describing

Jesus’s trade in the Gospel texts is tektōn (τέκτων).2 Strong’s Greek lexicon

defines a tektōn as a worker in wood, a carpenter, joiner, or builder. It may

include a ship’s carpenter or any craftsman or workman. A tektōn may also

refer to those accomplished in the art of poetry, a maker of songs, or an au-

thor. He may be a planner, a contriver, or a plotter.3 When the crowd refers

to Jesus with the derogative question, “Isn’t this the tektōn?” or “Is not this

the son of the tektōn?” most translations refer to Jesus as a carpenter’s son.

It was intended as a cut-down, a way to mock Jesus’s presumption. How can

an unskilled laborer presume to position himself as a prophet? My esteemed

provost at Pepperdine University, Darryl Tippens, pointed out to me the po-

tential double entendre embedded in the question, “Isn’t this the artisan, the

maker of things?” It could also have been read after the fact as “Is not this the

son of the Artisan, the Maker of (all) Things?”4

In his book Pilgrim Heart, Tippens calls Jesus the Great Artist, the model

for how we are to respond to beauty. He writes,

If God is the Master Builder, then Christ is the supervising architect and agent

of Creation: “for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things

an unski

provost

tential do

maker of

son of t

In his

for how

If God

of Cre

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visible and invisible . . . all things have been created through him and for him. He

himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Col. 1:15–17).

Given this original cosmic assignment, it seems appropriate that in his earthly life

in Nazareth, Jesus was a craftsman by trade. Having built the universe, it seems

fitting that, as a human being, he would turn to building houses or furniture.5

In his e$ort to determine Jesus’s occupation, New Testament scholar Ken M.

Campbell focuses on Jesus’s teaching. Campbell found that Jesus makes far

more references to construction and finance than agricultural allusions. Israel

is a land of ample stone but comparatively few trees. Perhaps it is wise to think

of Jesus more as a mason than a carpenter. Campbell notes that Jesus makes

almost no reference to the carpenter’s craft but does refer to the importance of

selecting a cornerstone (Matt. 21:42–44) and the decoration of tombs (Matt.

23:27–28), the importance of building on a firm foundation (Matt. 7:24–27),

and the need to conduct careful cost analysis prior to construction (Luke

14:28–30). Campbell surmises, “In light of all this knowledge of the building

trade it is hard to resist the conclusion that Jesus was involved in construction.”6

He may have specialized, but given the technology of the time, it is easy to

imagine Jesus being well acquainted with winepresses, millstones, olive press

stones, tombstones, cisterns, farm terraces, vineyards, and watchtowers. We

might call such a builder a tinkerer or a jack-of-all-trades.

We may call upon a tektōn to construct a mansion or to fix our roof.

They may carry a wrench and be handy with a hammer. In the entertain-

ment industry (and many churches), a tektōn is comparable to a techie. They

may be involved in lighting or set construction. These stagehands may be

called upon to fly in a set or place props between scenes. Techies are always

equipped with a flashlight. They wear headsets, carry walkie-talkies, and

are comfortable behind a board. Techies keep up with the latest gadgets

and gear. They can assemble homemade computers from component parts

(a Hackintosh!) that run on open source software like Linux. They dress in

black so they can go about their business backstage so quietly and surrepti-

tiously that we only focus on the show. If problems arise, they can usually

patch it up with a piece of electrical ga$er’s tape. Techies are invariably

overworked and underpaid. They may be derided as geeks or take pride

in running with the nerd herd. Often, they are barely noticed. Was Jesus a

carpenter, a builder, or a mason? Perhaps he was a techie, an artisan content

to make others look good.

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Technology Is an Art

While we like to think that our theology shapes our understanding of the

world, our understanding of the world often shapes our theology. The central

metaphors of an era will often shift our notions of God. When Benedictine

monks introduced the mechanical clock, we became far more aware of time.

As we studied the gears of the clock, it became much easier to imagine God

as the great Watchmaker in the sky, setting the planets in motion. What if

the earth revolved around the sun, rather than the planets encircling us? The

Copernican revolution altered our theology. Church leaders viewed advances

in astronomy brought about by Galileo and his telescope as a threat. Eventu-

ally, we spoke more about the heavens than heaven. Our defining technologies

tend to define us (and our beliefs).

If we need a fresh understanding of Jesus’s trade, perhaps we also need a

broader definition of technology. We tend to think of technology as something

shiny and new, what Alan Kay describes as “anything that was invented after

you were born.”7 The roots of technology, however, are ancient, embedded

in the primeval prologue of the Bible. From the beginning, God was bringing

order to chaos, trying to get things under control.

The word technology stems from the ancient Greek technikon, which belongs

to the concept of technē. Philosopher Martin Heidegger describes technē as

“the name not only for the activity and skills of the craftsman, but also for

the arts of the mind and the fine arts.”8 We tend to think of technology as

more science than art, but we often use the term “state-of-the-art technology.”

It reminds us that technology is more art than science, or at least an applied

science dependent on art. (Could this be a key for holding arts and sciences

together?) Heidegger links technē to a bringing forth, to the notion of poi-

esis. It is something poietic, akin to the original understanding of poetry. At

its best, technology is a creative act, merging thought with matter and time.

Creation can be seen as God’s poetry, the realization of word and image,

ideas made manifest.

Can we see computer code as equally poetic and potentially beautiful?

Technologist Kevin Kelly suggests, “If a thousand lines of letters in UNIX

qualifies as a technology, . . . then a thousand lines of letters in English

(Hamlet) must qualify as well. They both can change our behavior, alter

the course of events, or enable future inventions. A Shakespeare sonnet and

a Bach fugue, then, are in the same category as Google’s search engine and

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the iPod. They are something useful produced by a mind.”9 Perhaps we need

to recover the art of technology.

Technology Is Not Neutral

Those who’ve felt the roar of a tank, breathed the gas in chemical warfare,

or experienced the fallout from a nuclear meltdown find it di%cult to call

technology neutral. In the wrong hands, it appears deadly and malicious.

Technology reflects human complexity, both our remarkable potential for

beauty and our frightening power to destroy. We can bless our neighbors

with lifesaving therapies or exact vengeance in a flash of blinding light. The

same technologies that our National Security Agency uses to monitor our

calls and online activities can intercept a terrorists’ plot or snoop on our

private lives.

The brilliant Catholic Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan also

insisted that technology is never neutral. In The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), he

pointed out that “any technology tends to create a new human environment. . . .

Technological environments are not merely passive containers of people but

are active processes that reshape people and other technologies alike.”10 He

spoke in terms of media ecology, noting how technology alters our senses.

His writing was an e$ort to describe the technology we were swimming in.

McLuhan cut through the first flush of electronic media, giving us an initial

handle on how to define technology before it redefined us. McLuhan invited

us to step outside our electronic inputs long enough to gain some perspective,

to consider the delivery systems as the shaping story. We may have faith in

technology, but it should never be blind.

Technology as Applied Science

We enjoy the benefits of technology without understanding almost any of

the science behind it. We rarely ask how an app works; we download it and

go. In his 1984 study of technology and the character of contemporary life,

philosopher Albert Borgmann draws important distinctions between science

and technology. Science defines and explains how the world works. Technology

involves a determination to act transformatively on these possibilities.11 Science

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uncovers real-world principles (like gravity). Technologists figure out how to

apply or overcome them (with rocket ships). American schoolchildren may

lag behind China in scientific test scores while still enthusiastically embracing

each new update of the iPhone. We can be completely ignorant about how or

why something works and yet still relish the results.

Scientist Ursula Franklin sees technology as a process, how something is

done. As a metallurgist, she understands it as a way of doing things, a prac-

tice handed down.12 The prehistoric bronze bells and urns contained in the

Shanghai Museum reveal remarkable sophistication. The Bronze Bo with Four

Tigers from 771 BC merges art and craft, science and technology to form an

enduring musical instrument. The craftsmen may not have understood the

chemistry behind why bronze could be molded when heated, but their artistic

results speak volumes about their humanity. Franklin distinguishes between

holistic processes (like the craft of sewing) and the prescriptive processes

that arose in the industrial revolution. Production is a system formed by a

mind-set. Standards like “bigger is better” elevate unchecked growth to the

highest good. Technology transformed sewing from a handcrafted art into a

machine-driven industry.

Technology Is More Than a Product

We rarely pause to consider the origins of the products or devices we hold

(and that hold us). Borgmann derides the device paradigm that dissolves our

old ways of approaching the world by how things work. In our electronic

gadgets, the machinery is concealed; the circuit board is often beyond our

understanding. The complexity of the device itself pushes us toward con-

sumption rather than comprehension. We are cut o$ from context, both how

it works and how it was made.13 Think about big-box stores like Best Buy,

Walmart, and Costco. We have no idea how the goods are made or how they

get there. Reports of suicidal workers assembling iPhones in China fall on

deaf ears.14 We have no relationship to the people selling the goods either; it

is all anonymous.

Since we don’t know how things are made, we also don’t know how to fix

them. Borgmann remarks that “devices make things disposable. We don’t know

how microprocessors are made or how they are fixed. So we just toss out old

phones. Care, repair, bodily engagement are removed from our understanding

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of the device. So we can only consume it. We can’t care for it, nurture it, repair

it.”15 Old recording and playback devices form a toxic trail behind us. DVRs

replaced VCRs. The Walkman gave way to the iPod. The Blackberry was dis-

placed by the iPhone. Today’s technology will likely be tomorrow’s landfill.

Technology Can Bring Us Together

Technology is the new tie that binds us, that brings us together. From chat

rooms to social networks, we have formed countless virtual communities.

For professionals, technology is how we get LinkedIn. Children congregate

at Club Penguin. Teens prefer the self-destructing messages of Snapchat.

Tech companies appoint evangelists to spread the word about their products.

Newspapers and magazines position for the privilege to report on the new

iWhatever. We line up outside the Apple store, hoping to catch a glimpse or

even touch the hem of the iPhone’s garment. We are so eager for connection

that we willingly bind ourselves to long-term cell phone contracts. We set

countless alerts and updates that interrupt our day. It is not unusual to aban-

don a task for a trip through Facebook’s looking glass. Few things capture

our attention more completely.

What is a person who wants to follow Jesus and Twitter supposed to do?

Are we in a situation similar to the one that Jesus warned against: “No one

can serve two masters”?16 Would he insist that you cannot serve both God and

Google? The former editor of Wired, Kevin Kelly, sees technology stepping into

the gap formed by the decline of religion’s influence. He suggests, “Because

values and meaning are scarce today, technology will make our decisions for

us. We’ll listen to technology because our modern ears listen to little else. In

the absence of other firm beliefs, we’ll let technology steer. No other force is as

powerful in shaping our destiny. By imagining what technology wants, we can

imagine the course of our culture.”17 As noted in the introduction, technology

has become a new religion, a way to make sense of the world.

Technology Is Not a Panacea

In ancient Greece, Panacea was the goddess of universal remedies; we have

faith in technologies to solve our problems. Jonas Salk saved millions of lives

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with the polio vaccine that he gave away for free. I am grateful for the che-

motherapies that healed my wife of Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Simple technol-

ogy like a mosquito net can guard against malaria. E$orts to distribute One

Laptop Per Child were hailed as an educational breakthrough, yet four years

after the program was launched in Peru, test scores in mathematics and sci-

ence remain the same.18 The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves aimed

to reduce respiratory ailments and enhance air quality in India. A study of

15,000 homes over five years determined that after the initial year, few of the

stoves were maintained or still in use. Controversy continues to swirl around

Monsanto’s genetically modified corn. We often don’t recognize the downside

of new technologies until after they’re introduced.

Our fastest growing churches are largely embracing electronic technology—

but often without adequate theological reflection. A Faith Communities Today

survey found that the embrace of technology corresponded to the size of the

congregation. The bigger and wealthier the church, the more likely they were

to incorporate technologies, from stage lights to podcasts. Congregations with

major tech use (electronic instruments, projection screens) also demonstrate

a greater clarity of vision and purpose and more active recruiting among its

members. Pastors must not conclude that technology is a panacea for a dwin-

dling congregation. Scott Thumma of the Hartford Institute for Religious

Research insists, “It is not a matter of having a webpage, a Facebook account

or projection screens, but of using these to enhance and expand the activities

and communal life of the congregation.”19 We cannot place our faith in tech-

nology as the solution to our congregational ills. We need a robust theology

of technology to precede our adoption of lights, cameras, and action. Bigger,

louder, and faster don’t necessarily create deeper disciples.

Technology Can Be a Temptation and a Tyrant

Before cell phones, we had pagers. They were given to traveling salesmen as a

way to track their whereabouts. A pager o$ered a not-too-subtle way for the

boss to insist, “Call me now.” When I was in film school, working for a com-

mercial production company, I remember my manager referring to his pager

as a digital leash. While the production sta$ and interns went away for the

weekend, completely out of reach, the manager was on call, answerable to his

boss and his clients. He experienced technology as a tyrant.

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Now, we struggle to respond to the always-on demands of text and Twitter.

We don’t want to miss out on news or opportunities. So we are always available,

ever reachable. The updates are so constant that we don’t know how to turn

them o$, when to shut down. We wake up to email alerts and say goodnight

on Facebook. We feel more fragmented and harried than ever. Technology

designed to manage our schedules, our relationships, and our environment

has left us feeling out of control.

Devices designed to organize our schedules have made us busier than ever.

Families have fragmented along technological lines. Nights that used to be

spent gathered around the fire gave way to the radio and television, before

splintering into individualized screens. We inhabit the same space but follow

our own feeds. We have an iPhone in our hand and buds in our ears. How can

we hear God (or each other) amid the din?

Researchers at the Barna Group have found that Christians increasingly see

technology as a temptation.20 When asked what tempts us, many Americans

list the ancient sins of gluttony (eating too much), avarice (spending too much

money), envy (gossiping and jealousy), and lust (viewing pornography). Yet,

44 percent of people listed “spending too much time on media” as a gnawing

temptation, and 11 percent tried to resist “going o$ on someone via text or

email.” It is easier to flame someone when they’re not in front of us. Com-

ments on Facebook and Twitter can be riddled with ridicule and scorn. We

love our devices and loathe what they do to us.

Technology Is about Control

Borgmann defines technology as the systematic process of trying to get

everything under control.21 From massive projects like paving a road or

building a dam to smaller projects like cleaning our house or coordinat-

ing our calendars, we are forever attempting to control our environment.

Perhaps we are merely following God, the original technologist. The first

creative act was bringing order to chaos. In the beginning, the earth was

formless and empty. In Genesis 1, God brought shalom to a volatile situ-

ation. Elohim separated light from darkness, day from night, earth from

sky, land from sea. God set the stage for humanity, providing a space to

inhabit and plants and animals to provide for our needs. The results were

good, even very good.

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God blesses humanity and issues instructions: “Be fruitful and increase

in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the

birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”22

Fruitfulness and filling sound like fun. The King James Version challenges

us to “replenish the earth.” It implies we must pour into or even replace

whatever we harvest. If we cut down a tree, we should plant a new one.

However, problems arise from our understanding of subdue and rule—in

Hebrew, kvsh and rdh. Subdue has echoes of a power move when we de-

mand that others submit to our authority or serve as a subjugated peoples.

Does God want us to strong-arm the earth? Lexicons translate the verb

rdh as “have dominion, rule, dominate.”23 Images of conquering armies or

bulldozers spring to mind. Does Genesis sanction domination, treading on

and trampling the earth? This could create biblical justification to kill as

many animals, to knock down as many forests, to siphon as much ore and

oil from the earth as can be found.

Lynn White traced “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis” back

to Genesis 1:26–28. The study provided biblical justification from whence

all manner of unsustainable technology sprang. White wrote, “Christianity,

in absolute contrast to ancient paganism and Asia’s religions . . . not only

established a dualism of man and nature but also insisted that it is God’s will

that man exploit nature for his proper ends.”24 The engines of the industrial

revolution churn from these verses.

The results have been deadly and dangerous. Martin Heidegger suggested,

“Contemporary man’s inveterate drive to master whatever confronts him is

plain for all to see. Technology treats itself with ‘objectivity.’ The modern

technologist is regularly expected, and expects himself, to be able to impose

order on all data, to ‘process’ every sort of entity, nonhuman and human

alike, and to devise solutions for every kind of problem. He is forever getting

things under control.”25 Why is technology such a driven business? Why do

we desperately want to master nature and exert control? When we treat the

earth as an object, we dehumanize ourselves.

Thankfully, theologians like Sallie McFague and faith-fueled activists like

Bill McKibben have helped us see another side to Scripture. The Hebrew

words kvsh and rdh can sanction conquering and control, but consider what

kind of control God demonstrated. Creation arose from holding back chaos.

In our calling to be like God, we are commanded to subdue the earth in simi-

lar ways. It is closer in spirit to beating down a path or forging a footpath.

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Perhaps we should conjure images of keeping the weeds, the rodents, and the

insects under control. What kind of rule are we supposed to enact? In Gen-

esis 1, God modeled creativity and benevolence, pouring out blessings on

humanity. Throughout the Bible, good kings are contrasted with evil rulers.

Just leaders practice shalom, demonstrating particular concern for the poor

and needy, the widows and the orphans.26 Godly dominion is marked by care

and concern for the least of these. It is rooted in interdependence rather than

personal gain. What a far cry from greedy or tyrannical despots. McFague

notes the contrast between these competing visions of our calling in Genesis:

“The first model sees the planet as a corporation or syndicate, as a collection

of human beings drawn together to benefit its members by optimal use of

natural resources. The second model sees the planet more like an organism

or community that survives and prospers through the interrelationship and

interdependence of its many parts, both human and nonhuman.”27 Genesis

1:28 is a call to responsible rule. While God rests from creating, our job is to

keep chaos at bay.

Technology Should Be about Creating and Cultivating

In Genesis 2, we get a more detailed take on our calling. Man now has a name,

“Adam,” and his first job is to name things, to makes sense of all of God’s

generative activity. Adam engages in sorting, filing, labeling. Maybe not ac-

cording to genus and species but certainly a broad separation between birds,

livestock, fish. Humanity is called to distinguish among living creatures, to

pay attention to our surroundings, to notice the di$erences, to celebrate the

diversity. This process of observing our world, assigning names, developing

categories is at the root of our endless information gathering. Many, many

centuries before Google, we were involved in organizing things, cataloging,

giving each and every thing an identifiable (and eventually searchable) name.

Like Adam, woman gets a particular name, Eve. Before hunting and gathering

came labeling. We were born to organize.

God places humanity in the garden for a dual purpose: “to tend and to keep

it.”28 Tend is a translation of the Hebrew verb abd, which means “to work or

serve.” How do we serve a garden? Some translations insert the agricultural

terms “till” or “cultivate.” The King James Version opts for “dress.” It implies

an active adornment, embellishment, or even improvement. When we tend a

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garden, it should yield far more than when we started. “To keep,” from the

Hebrew word shmr, means “to exercise great care over.” Adam and Eve are

given a responsibility to watch over the garden like a loving caretaker. We are

called to make something more out of what we’ve been given. Our calling

is to care and to cultivate, to create culture in all its myriad forms—from

agriculture to the arts.

It is our job to nurture the earth, to replant what we harvest, to protect the

fish supply, to guard the rain forest. Technology can yield solar power, more

robust crops, and longer life. Thanks to breakthroughs in science, we have

eradicated so many life-threatening diseases. Technology has allowed us to

thrive. It is a God-given blessing, making our world much more habitable.

We have two very di$erent views of technology, of how we are to live in

this world. Genesis 1 could be construed as all-consuming domination, but

Genesis 2 is clearly about cultivation and caretaking. Perhaps these are the

two competing poles of technology—to make us more e%cient consumers

or to make us more thoughtful creators. Technology can be used to exploit

and devalue the earth or it can be a boon and blessing to all. How we define

technology may determine what we do with it.

How Technologies Define Us

Technologies reflect our culture and our values. In his prescient 1999 book,

God and the Chip, William Stahl observes how “it has become common

to define our species as Homo faber, ‘man the tool-maker,’ and to identify

cultures with their technology—neolithic, Stone Age, Bronze Age, Space

Age. . . . We increasingly come to identify who we are by and through the

machines we use.”29 J. David Bolter studied “defining technologies” across

history. Bolter points to the spindle and the potter’s wheel as the central,

defining technologies in ancient Greece.30 Their mythologies are recorded on

gorgeous pots, celebrated by poet John Keats in his “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”

Keats celebrates the timelessness captured in the beauty of the vase: “Thou

foster-child of silence and slow time.” For Keats and the Greeks, the images

encased in the pottery have a transcendent power and an eternal appeal.

We see why the apostle Paul standing in the Greek Areopagus would an-

nounce, “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious.

For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I

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even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god.”31 He stud-

ied their art, their public space, their technology and then connected it to

God’s creation of the world. Paul drew upon Greek poetry, “For in him we

live and move and have our being,” incorporating it into his sermon. But

after saluting their handiwork and praising their poets, he challenged them

to move past idolatry: “Therefore since we are God’s o$spring, we should

not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made

by human design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but

now he commands all people everywhere to repent.”32 Saint Paul respected

the Greeks’ technē but challenged them not to be blinded or bound by it. He

challenged the iGods of his era.

We often don’t realize the ways in which our technologies reflect and a$ect

us. Medieval monks seeking to regulate their prayers and work invented the

mechanical clock. Their theology (prayer is good, work is better than idleness)

o$ered a rationale for technological advance. Historian Ernest Benz pointed

out how frequently medieval iconography showed God as a master mason,

measuring out the universe with a compass and a T square.33 “God as the Ar-

chitect of the Universe” steadies the universe with one hand while measuring

it with a compass with the other.

In his Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas wrote, “God, Who is the first

principle of all things, may be compared to things created as the architect is to

things designed.”34 While the Benedictines sought to define sacred time, they

also inadvertently ushered in the ability to isolate and evaluate it. We began

to view God as the ultimate watchmaker, setting the wheels of the universe

in motion.

In studying the mechanics of winepresses in the Rhine Valley, Johannes

Gutenberg eventually invented the printing press. He could not have antic-

ipated the Protestant Reformation that followed. Yet, the ability to print and

distribute Bibles and pamphlets and maps on a massive scale altered church

history. Instead of people thinking more alike, gathered around a single text, it

sparked the individualism and denominationalism that continue to divide the

church into smaller and more personalized communities.35 In the sixteenth cen-

tury of Francis Bacon, “inventors and mechanics had increasingly invoked the

image of God as craftsman and architect in order, by analogy, to lend prestige

to their own activities: in their humble arts, they were imitating God and hence

reflecting his glory.”36 To be a technologist was to be like God, but we were

beginning to shift the emphasis from the glory of God to the marvels of man.

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Samuel F. B. Morse grasped the enormity of his invention, the telegraph.

His first instantaneous message, sent from Washington to Baltimore in 1844,

was taken from the Bible. Annie Ellsworth, the daughter of the United States

Commissioner of Patents, suggested Numbers 23:23.37 This is a defense of

the people of Israel against a conspiring Moab. Morse transmitted, “What

hath God wrought.” While Morse and his witnesses in Washington couldn’t

have anticipated all the revolutionary changes that flowed from their col-

lapsing of time and distance, the Bible verse suggests many did understand

the enormity of the implications. They gave the creative credit to God, even

as the postmaster general failed to authorize the purchase of the patent for

a paltry $100,000.38 Not everybody recognizes the potential of what God

hath wrought.

Combine the monks’ clocks with Gutenberg’s Bible and we get the Prot-

estant work ethic. Notions of time equaling money culminated in industrial

workers punching the clock. Frederick W. Taylor published the holy book

for American industry, Principles of Scientific Management, in 1911. Taylor

announced a significant shift: “In the past, the man has been first; in the

future the system must be first.”39 Taylor’s emphasis on e%ciency placed

technical calculation above human judgment, reason over feelings, objectiv-

ity over subjectivity, and scientific measurement as the rule.40 As machines

made us more productive, it was di%cult for managers to trace the shifts in

supply and demand. Captains of industry needed up-to-date calculations to

make decisions about where to deliver goods and services. We needed smart

machines to give us spreadsheets that spelled out the productivity of our

physical machines. The success of the industrial era led to the rise of the in-

formation age. Now, machines do most of the thinking for us, and e%ciency

drives nearly all decision making today.

In the twentieth century, our aspirations grew bigger and smaller. Skyscrap-

ers reached for the sky, and scientists split atoms. The triumph of World War

II was tempered by the stark photos and harrowing clean-up that followed.

How could the Nazis have been so evil to target an entire people for extermina-

tion? The barbarism of the Holocaust made us question the notion of human

progress. Robert Oppenheimer had named his atomic bomb project Trinity.

Upon the explosion of the first bomb, he quoted the Bhagavad Gita: “I am

become death, destroyer of worlds.”41 Horrific images from Hiroshima and

Nagasaki made us question our war machine. Public resistance and suspicion

regarding technology followed. During the Cold War, we looked to the stars

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with fear and wonder. The race to dominate space commenced, but an early

techno-enthusiast like Lewis Mumford switched sides, writing The Myth of

the Machine: The Pentagon of Power in 1970. Warnings of environmental

disaster and nuclear nightmares included Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962),

Barry Commoner’s Science and Survival (1966), and Jonathan Schell’s The

Fate of the Earth (1982).42 Collectively, these eco-activists asked, “What hath

man wrought?”

Theologians added to the introspection not just with a loss of faith but

by asking, “Is God dead?” Perhaps the only thing that died was our faith in

bureaucracy and institutions to save us. We saw what we were capable of—and

our evil was frightening. Philosopher Jean-Luc Marion sees this as a positive

development; the death of God is the end of our idolized concept of God, as

something or someone controllable, containable, capable of serving our side.43

Idolatry brings God near, putting power within our grasp. Life was revealed

as far more fragile, volatile, and explosive than we imagined. But what if the

death (or least the absence) of God in the face of nuclear holocaust was a

withdrawal from our idolatry? Such a withdrawal could be a form of reve-

lation. The absence of God could make room for renewed presence. Only

when we start with what we don’t know or cannot control, do we begin to

approach wisdom.

From Counterculture to Computer Culture

Founded in 1968, the Whole Earth Catalog arose as an alternative to the sys-

tem. The first issue promised “access to tools” and featured a photo of the

earth taken by astronauts from space. The catalog encouraged responsibility

for our fragile planet and aimed to reduce our dependence on corporations

for agriculture, for oil, for entertainment. Stanford-educated biologist Stew-

art Brand o$ered a back-to-nature plan comparable to the Amish, which

took people o$ the power and manufacturing grid.44 Hippies in San Francisco

formed a counterculture in opposition to the Vietnam war, racial injustice, and

the overall technocratic society.45 The seminal sixties film Easy Rider begins

when Captain America removes his watch. He will tour the back roads with

no concern for schedules, deadlines, or financial responsibilities. He dropped

out of the system that the industrial revolution and the military industrial

complex had created.46

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For the California counterculture, small was beautiful.47 Individuals

learned to live o$ the land. The Whole Earth Catalog allowed readers to

swap recommendations of useful tools for gardening, carpentry, welding,

and pottery. It was a tektōn’s dream. Writers like Wendell Berry challenged

readers to “think little.” Berry described the practical ethos: “A person who

is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of

the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat

independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself,

the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating.”48 But instead of position-

ing themselves as new Adams and Eves trying to get back to the garden of

Eden, the followers of the Whole Earth Catalog seemed content to farm

on their own, beyond God-given parameters. The do-it-yourself attitude of

the Whole Earth movement included a specific theological point of view.

Brand wrote,

We are as gods and might as well get good at it. So far, remotely done power

and glory—as via government, big business, formal education, church—has

succeeded to the point where gross defects obscure actual gains. In response

to this dilemma and to these gains a realm of intimate, personal power is

developing—power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his

own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with

whoever is interested. Tools that aid this process are sought and promoted by

the WHOLE EARTH CATALOG.49

Note the emphasis on personal power and the ability to shape our own envi-

ronments. This sounds like humanity after the fall—cast out, but determined

to forge a future. The emphasis falls on practical knowledge, useful tools, and

technology. While Berry’s ecological focus sprang from his abiding Christian

faith, Brand placed his faith firmly in us. For the Whole Earth movement, we

may be interdependent for information, but we consider our fate as residing

in our hands, independent of divine guidance or blessing.

Brand’s alma mater, Stanford University, unleashed the engineers that

gave us the first personal computer. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard founded

their company in a Palo Alto garage. Hewlett-Packard released the world’s

first marketed and mass-produced personal computer in 1968. The Hewlett-

Packard 9100A was called a “desktop calculator” but sold for the rather

prohibitive price of $5,000. The greatest technological achievement of our

era may be the single chip microprocessor, first made commercially available

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by Intel in 1971. It has made all of our increasingly complex and intelligent

machines possible. A microprocessor is essentially a minicomputer most of

us rarely see and barely understand. They make our gadgets smaller, faster,

and smarter. The Intel 4004 crammed all the elements that make a computer

think (input and output controls, memory, and a central processing unit) onto

a single silicon chip. Microprocessors are the brains of the computer that

allow data to be processed and delivered quickly. It simulates and stimulates

quick thinking—the transmission of data and information at light-speeds. It

could be pictures from our vacation or the purchase of a book on Amazon.

Thanks to microprocessors, things are being delivered to us or broadcast

by us almost instantaneously. Following the trajectory of Intel cofounder

Gordon Moore’s Law (that the number of transistors on integrated circuits

doubles every two years), microprocessors have gotten smaller and smarter

and faster each and every year. Silicon Valley—founded on transistors, ex-

panded by microprocessors, and enriched by personal computers—became

the locus for our defining technologies. Advanced technology met counter-

cultural idealism.

The Whole Earth Catalog was only published regularly for four years, but

its back-to-nature, small-is-beautiful, do-it-yourself influence has been im-

mense, especially in the information age. Brand explains the unique position

occupied by his movement:

At a time when the New Left was calling for grassroots political (i.e., referred)

power, Whole Earth eschewed politics and pushed grassroots direct power—

tools and skills. At a time when New Age hippies were deploring the intellectual

world of arid abstractions, Whole Earth pushed science, intellectual endeavor,

and new technology as well as old. As a result, when the most empowering tool

of the century came along—personal computers (resisted by the New Left and

despised by the New Age)—Whole Earth was in the thick of the development

from the beginning.50

In 1985, the creative energy gathered around the catalog shifted to the inter-

net with Brand and Larry Brilliant hosting one of the first virtual communities,

the Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link, aka The WELL. It took the conversation

regarding self-su%ciency and e$ective tools online. Kevin Kelly explains, “The

hippies of the previous generation did not remain in their Amish-like mode

because as satisfying and attractive as the work in those communities was,

the siren call of choices was more attractive. The hippies left the farm for

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the same reason the young have always left: The possibilities leveraged by

technology beckon all night and day.”51 The internet facilitated the sharing of

sustainable principles and alternative lifestyle tips far better than a magazine

like the Whole Earth Catalog ever could. Brand reached out to the emerging

generation of computer hackers who shared the same core values: access to

computers should be unlimited, information should be free, authorities were

not to be trusted, formal age and education doesn’t matter (just programming

ability), and computers can create art and beauty and change lives for the

better.52 This is the faith of technologists.

Today, the ethos of the Whole Earth community is infused across Silicon

Valley. At Stanford University’s 2005 commencement, Steve Jobs called the

catalog “one of the Bibles of my generation . . . like Google in paperback

form.”53 Consider the creativity it unleashed in the Bay Area. Steve Wozniak

and Jobs brought a do-it-yourself attitude to their Apple II computer. George

Lucas felt no need to settle in Southern California with his profits from Star

Wars. His special e$ects house, Industrial Light & Magic, stayed closer to

the burgeoning computer industry by settling in Marin County, California.

When a young animator named John Lasseter felt rejected by the Walt Disney

Company, he found like-minded people in the Bay Area. Pixar was started

with backing from Lucas and expanded after the investment of Jobs. By

merging computing power and compelling characters, Pixar usurped Dis-

ney’s hallowed tradition (and earned a $7 billion purchase price). Lasseter

became president of Disney Animation while guiding it from Pixar’s North-

ern California o%ce. Stanford University alums have founded or cofounded

Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo!, PayPal, Electronic Arts, Google, Firefox, LinkedIn,

Netflix, and Instagram.54

These Silicon Valley start-ups follow a similar trajectory: “eureka mo-

ment, simultaneity of invention, formation of a development team, acquisi-

tion of funding, acquisition of momentum, and transfer of management

from inventor-entrepreneurs to management entrepreneurs.”55 Silicon Valley

companies are characterized by informality (like Jobs’s famous uniform of

blue jeans and black turtleneck) and are committed to a flat hierarchy. The

walls in Pixar’s Emeryville o%ces are glass, with animators free to design

their own workspaces. Jobs famously insisted that the restrooms be placed

in the middle of the building so that employees were more likely to interact

with others on their way to the restroom. Casual, idea-laden exchanges may

arise over cereal in the mornings or gourmet pizza at noon. Thomas Hunter

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describes the organizational culture of Silicon Valley as “information sharing,

collective in learning, informal in communication, fast moving, flexible in

adjustments, entrepreneurial, start-up inclined, and thoroughly networked.”56

This is almost a direct echo of the Whole Earth Catalog’s purpose state-

ment. When the TED conference gathers around “Ideas Worth Sharing,” they

transform the ethos of The WELL into videos shared enthusiastically around

the world. They are evangelists disseminating their dreams of technological

progress and the end of world hunger via the internet. It is an admirable,

inspiring, alternative religion.

Our theology once shaped our understanding of technology, but now we

wonder how technology may alter our theology. From each tech company

profiled in this book, we can deduce a creation narrative. They follow a

similar path, from humble beginnings, when the founders were seen as fool-

hardy, to the early test launch when a few more believers came on board (as

additional investors). Many continue to sco$ at a small band of outsiders

taking on an established system (think of young entrepreneur Elon Musk’s

chutzpah expressed in his move from PayPal to Tesla Motors or his SpaceX

program). How could they dare to take on such hierarchy and dominance?

The narrative shifts when the sco$ers are ultimately defeated by those they

previously dismissed (think Apple versus Microsoft). The scrappy outsiders

become esteemed insiders, establishing a new standard. They liberate the

public from a life of dull servitude into greater clarity, purpose, and practice.

Whole Earthers that tried to drop out of the system now run the system,

with so many of us directing our MacBooks toward Google’s searches and

Facebook’s newsfeeds.

Some will recognize the similarities to the biblical narrative, where a creator

God aligns with a marginalized people to take on established kingdoms and

principalities. Jesus undercuts the established practices of his time with an

upside-down ethic that supports the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed.

Such a countercultural power rearrangement was bound to create resistance,

but despite the appearance of defeat, Jesus and his band of devoted followers

rise and overturn the dominant people and paradigm. The outsiders become

the insiders, the powerless are given access and authority. It becomes easy to

see how faith in technology becomes an alternative religion, a way to reverse

the curse of the fall, to provide comfort to hurting people, to o$er us a glimpse

of eternity. American optimism has morphed into faith in technology. The

only problem—technology cannot save us.

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Technology’s Faith

While the Japanese invented the Walkman and Israelis created instant messag-

ing, the computer age has essentially been an American revolution. Thomas

Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum of the New York Times note, “The IT

Revolution was started in the United States. The transistor, communications

satellites, the personal computer, the cell phone, and the Internet, not to men-

tion the PalmPilot, the iPad, the iPhone, and the Kindle were all invented in the

United States and then were brought to the world market by American-based

companies.”57 Our innovations are fueled by American faith, optimism, and

ingenuity. We have much to be proud of but plenty to be wary of. Our strengths

can also be our weaknesses. I can agree with much of the Whole Earth ethos

that encourages the sharing of resources, caring for the environment, and the

practical benefits of technology.

Unfortunately, these countercultural values haven’t always accompanied the

rise of the information era. The massive wealth generated in Silicon Valley

hasn’t been shared. Despite the e$orts of the TED conference, the tendency

to hoard continues to vex us. Technology cannot free us from the grip of

personal and collective sin. Theologian Marcus Borg insists, “The dominant

values of American life—a}uence, achievement, appearance, power, com-

petition, consumption, individualism—are vastly di$erent from anything

recognizably Christian. As individuals and as a culture . . . our existence has

become massively idolatrous.”58 When we place e%ciency before humanity,

we can quickly lose perspective. The speed that accompanies smaller, faster,

smarter can keep us from perceiving things clearly. Technologies meant to

empower us can also blind us.

The computer has become our metaphorical truth.59 Consider how we

describe ourselves. When we’re slow to recall a fact, we might talk about “hav-

ing trouble retrieving that file.” A long conversation or an intense lecture or

sermon might be called “a massive download.” After a particularly draining

day at the o%ce, we might say our hard drives are full. Throughout, we are

likely to think of ourselves as information gatherers, struggling to process all

the data we’ve picked up on a given day. Historian David Noble notes how the

thinking machine “reflected a new form of divine worship, an exultation of

the essential endowment of mankind, that unique faculty which man shared

with God, because of its link to God, not to man. The thinking machine was

not, then, an embodiment of what was specifically human, but of what was

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specifically divine about humans—the immortal mind.”60 The only problem

with that thinking is that we are more than our minds. We have bodies that

need to be fed, nurtured, cared for.

Technology can make us more e%cient farmers, better laborers, more pro-

ductive workers. It can save us time and money. It can give us more free time

but still enslave us. As our devices have gotten smaller, our vices remain just

as vexing. We still buy more than we need and waste as much as we consume.

We get things more quickly, but our tempers and patience have grown shorter.

We’re likely to blow up over tiny inconveniences. The same weapons that we

claim keep the peace can also wipe out entire cities in a single blast. Hiroshima

and Nagasaki show how deadly technology can be. Medicine may prolong

our lives, but it cannot o$er eternity.

In the information age, technology categorizes, itemizes, and atomizes. It

maximizes profits with disregard for people. It bases decisions on data, and

sometimes the facts can be quite cold. Much of the iGods’ dehumanizing

power is hidden. We don’t know why our loan was rejected or our refund

denied. We press “4” to erase or “7” to save, but the odds of speaking to an

operator dwindle. Technology turns everything in its path to 1’s and 0’s, but

we are more than pixels and bigger than our brains. For some reason, God

gave us bodies and dared to walk among us. The incarnation of Jesus is an

a$ront to technologists who view the body as “meatspace” and only cherish

the brain. The earth is worth tilling and cultivating (as the Whole Earth Cata-

logers know), but why? The Christian community believes heaven is coming

to earth, but we don’t need to build platforms to the sky. Jesus and the New

Jerusalem are descending to us in an act of majesty and wonder.

We are just starting to grasp the theological implications of our technological

shifts. When it comes to religion, Stahl suggested in 1999, “The One True Faith

is technological mysticism: faith in the universal e%cacy of technology. It is a

system of beliefs uniting communists and capitalists, tycoons and unionists,

the rich and those who would be rich. At the moment its most potent icon is

the computer.”61 In the decade since, our all-in-one calculator and communi-

cator and broadcaster—the smartphone—has usurped the computer. It is the

magic box in our pocket, a computer on the go. Now, the symbol of power

is an iPhone and the most valuable company on the planet (for the moment)

is Apple. The products will evolve, and the most powerful companies may

change (from IBM to Microsoft to Apple), but the central truth remains: our

economy is fueled and our faith is renewed by technology. We will study the

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leading technology companies as a means of determining what theological

shifts are occurring. We will measure these general revelations against the

special revelation of Scripture to figure out whether they need to be embraced

and encouraged or resisted and reframed.

Discuss

1. How would you define technology? In what ways does technology define
you?

2. How do you picture Jesus? What do you imagine his relationship to
technology would be?

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444444

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_Detweiler_iGods_LC_kf

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