Googling Relationships
By April Terry (personal blog http://faithwarming.blogspot.com)
In the front seat of our car, I sat tuned into my new cell phone complete with the latest data plan. In the back seat, my son was texting a friend. My low-tech husband suddenly felt ignored, rejected, and yes, more than a little lonely. When he finally said something about it, I stopped and shut off my hand-held device and placed it into my purse. “You’re right,” I said, “Son, put your phone away and let’s have dinner as a family together.” We entered the restaurant disconnected, yet reconnected to one another.
I’ve just finished reading a book called, “The Last Christian,” by David Gregory. It’s a futuristic story about a young woman who emerges from the jungle after living all of her life as a missionary with a tribe of natives and emerges into a world where Virtual Reality and other technological breakthroughs have changed the scope of the man’s view of himself, his relationships, and his faith. The compelling thing about the story is how it contrasts the rise of technology in society with the decline of faith and community. One thing in particular that I found particularly fascinating was that in this futuristic world students in college no longer searched for the answers to questions since they already had access to the entirety of human knowledge through technology. Instead, their pursuit was in finding the right questions. If I don’t know something, I can Google it and I am finding more and more that people are more intrigued by questions than by answers. I have to admit that my career is in the field of technology and I was compelled by the ideas presented in this book because I am linked to the world of technology from the pin code of my online bank account to the web access on my cell phone.
I love technology. I love the latest and greatest gadgets and I like dreaming about the future of technology. I remember the low tech days before the web, Facebook, and instant messaging and I honestly prefer high tech. At the same time, I see how technology has changed our way of viewing our relationships and our faith. It has allowed us to be both isolated and distantly connected at the same time. It is a type of intended connection without actually being involved in relationship at all, but it allows us to be aware of what others are doing without having to interact.
It’s the interacting part that is most difficult for people in our era I believe. That’s why technology allows us to step back and have “safe” relationships where we may connect with those we have known a while, or with those we have recently reconnected with, and yet at the same time still remain distant. It is becoming almost an epidemic that people don’t even seem to respond to emails even when asked direct questions. It isn’t the technology’s fault. The changes in our culture allow us to “disconnect” from real relationships and so we do so without thought of the possible repercussions.
Staring into the future, I can see a possibility that relationships could become even more virtualized over time. The danger to this type of cultural shift is that if we are willing to allow our relationships with one another become virtualized, we may also be willing to allow our faith to become virtualized as well. What, then, would a virtual faith look like? Would a virtual church meeting or a web church be able to truly enjoy fellowship? What would evangelism start to look like in a virtualized culture? How does the escalation of technological progress change the way that we interact with one another?
I believe that these are questions that we Christ followers need to start asking ourselves. Since the coming of the television and the radio, our culture has shifted. We spend long hours being entertained by various modes of technology. We love to think about the ways that it has progressed our society, but spend very little time thinking about the possibility liabilities that such a dramatic shift in paradigm could have on who we are, who we love, and who we worship. Technology is changing faster than we humans can react to its side effects and we are letting it shape our culture without thought as to what it is doing to the way we interact with one another.
Since I work for education, we are always in conversation about the ways that technology enhances education in our young people. Apparently, all the studies are showing that children learn better and retain longer when technology is incorporated into curriculum. At the same time, faith communities are rushing to have cool technology incorporated into their worship services. Sure, it gets our attention, but is there an inherent laziness to it?
I have a friend who recently drew my attention to a blog about this same topic on a blog called Cerulean Sanctum http://ceruleansanctum.com/2010/02/tech-the-church-and-the-death-of-community.html. In his post, “Tech, the church, and the death of community” Dan Edelen states:
“I look at what is happening to communication and connection and wonder why we need this tech middleman to work as a go-between that links you and me to real life. I wonder if the depressed person is the one caught in the move away from the kind of face-to-face community cachet that used to fill our relational bank accounts.”
I know why. It’s because it’s easier. Still, I think that at some point we need to logoff from technology and logon to those around us. We can’t afford to be on the sidelines watching our culture drive us into isolation from one another. It feels like we are being driven blind-folded into a future where we have no sense of awareness about where we are going or how it will change us.
At the same time, I hate being an alarmist. I know that there are opportunities for reaching large audiences through the use of technology and I’m game for that. I’m not going to give up my laptop anytime soon, but I do think that I will take a walk this summer in the evenings in my neighborhood and look my neighbors firmly in the eye and wish them a lovely evening. It’s a start, but it’s face-to-face and that’s one small step away from isolation.
June 7th, 2010 · 6 Comments
Categories: DE Thoughts
Randy Siever said
am June 7 2010 @ 3:23 pm
Several comments here were really interesting to me:
I know a lot of my Facebook “friends” are what I call “stalkers”…meaning they are on FB a lot but rarely if ever comment on anyone’s status. They prefer to “be aware of what others are doing without having to interact.” You couldn’t do this, legally, when the only way to do it was by your personal presence (stalking). Interaction was demanded by presence, normally, or it was perceived as creepy.
Of course, large churches tend to allow people to do this while they are present. You can “hide” in the crowd and still see what everyone else is doing…without having to interact. Small churches don’t facilitate this as well.
So is a relationship that has little to no interaction in any sense a relationship? If so, is it anything like what God had in mind?
Wow. This is DE in tech talk, isn’t it? Being present, paying attention to the other, noticing them and listening to them…that’s what I think of when you say, “log on to those around us”. Very powerful.
I know young people who say they don’t feel it’s rude to be texting someone while they are talking with you, but I disagree. That’s like talking to someone else while you’re listening to me tell my story. I don’t think you can actually listen to me while you’re talking to someone else…at the same time. Rudeness may be a cultural contract, but if someone feels ignored or demeaned by your non-attention, then I doubt there will be much of an interaction, even if face to face.
And this seems to be the point of your post, to me. This is the danger of technology and “vitual” connections.
Josh Hatcher said
am June 8 2010 @ 3:26 pm
I don’t know. I have found MORE opportunities to share and explain Christ using facebook and the internet than I ever had with face to face.
I’m a much better writer than a conversationalist, and this has allowed me to get people asking questions, and to provide them with some answers, and in the process of that , God has moved in people’s lives, and done really awesome things.
people have had “virtual” friendships for thousands of years… they are called “acquaintances”… and they knew about the same information gleaned by “stalking” and “gossip” as they do now.
I think that we do need to teach the next generation to be “social” and not just “virtual” … but that doesn’t mean that one or the other is better or worse, as long as they are in balance.
Randy Siever said
am June 8 2010 @ 8:54 pm
Josh,
Thanks for the comments. Good thoughts and observations. I’m mostly concerned about our ability to actually pay attention to others, which I suppose you can do on FB and Twitter in some way, but which is far more potent (in my own experience anyway) when done in person. We actually teach the spiritual practice of noticing, which doesn’t require any conversation at all (you can also pray for others behind their backs), and I guess you could do this via the internet (actually, now that I think about it, I do this frequently), but still…it seems somehow less, personal, I guess. I think human beings need to be in contact with other human beings, and virtual contact somehow seems far less like contact than physical presence to me. This perspective may be partly due to the fact that I’m an old guy, but it’s also partly a theological point in that humans are made in the image of the relational God who is always present, and who designed us to be connected to Himself and others.
And although I spend an inordinate amount of time on FB and the internet in general, I just have a hard time equating those virtual relationships I have to those I have with people I have at least been present with now and then. I’m not arguing that virtual relationships aren’t “real” but rather somehow “less”. Does that make sense?
April Terry said
am June 9 2010 @ 11:01 am
I hope in my statements that I haven’t made it sound like I am a technology hater nor do I think that we should throw away everything from our televisions sets to our palm pilots into the ocean.
My point is that when technology is changing and driving so much of our lives, why aren’t we asking ourselves what direction it is taking us and what affects it will have on our relationships, faith, and sense of community.
If our culture changed in that suddenly it became the thing for everyone to live 50 feet below the ground in underground caverns, how would that change the way we relate to our neighbors? If our relationships with our neighbors were suddenly cutoff, how would we talk about matters of faith? How would we structure community around a setting like that?
My feeling is that we haven’t asked those questions in regard to this technological revolution that we are in the middle of. When TV and radio hit the world, it changed our relationships and our sense of community in both good and bad ways. We may be more connected to the news through those mediums, but did it make us more connected to our immediate community? How will new technology change those relationships in the future?
It’s not a good or bad question. It’s just a question and it’s important because it means that if we are going to make a difference in faith and in community, we are going to have to have an idea of what will be accepted and what will be rejected.
Randy Siever said
am June 9 2010 @ 12:43 pm
Guilty. I have not asked these questions along the way, and as I do now, I am uncertain about the answers (as my previous comments suggest in all their fuzziness). I have what feel like very significant relationships with a few people on my FB account who I have never met in person…but who I would without question invite into my home as guests if they were to ever come to my town. I suppose, April, you and I are in this category since we have never actually met in person over these past three or more years of sharing this space. So does that make these relationships “less” (as I have earlier suggested) simply because we have never shared physical presence? I can’t (now) bring myself to say it is so.
Technology has broadened the scope of our potential relationships, for sure. I suppose that we can also safely say that it has enlarged the potential for both good and bad relationships, significant and insignificant relationships, real and pretend relationships. The pool of possibilities is the same as in non-virtual pools, but it is a far larger pool. How we behave and move in this pool will affect our relational experience in either case, I suppose.
April Terry said
am June 11 2010 @ 9:42 am
Randy – You’re totally right. You and I are very much techno-friends! We couldn’t have met twenty years ago since our locales places us geographically at odds with one another, but now, in our current culture we can.
However, I bet you didn’t know that I’m a pretty funny person. I entertain my office constantly just for the purpose of making everyone laugh. I can’t do that in writing. I’ve tried, but it comes off like I’m a weirdo. Think how much better we would get to know one another if we ever met (you might still think I’m a weirdo, but at least you would know for sure). I think face to face is always better, but I’ll take techno-friends if there aren’t any other alternatives.
For the record, I’m as fuzzy about it as you are.