Thoughts on Technology
December 28th, 2011I’m part of a fellowship called Rabbis Without Borders that meets four times a year in New York City. The theme of our conference this December was technology and the rabbinate. Self-described Ludite that I am, I felt challenged by the material, which consisted partly of learning about making better use of social media in our rabbinates, and partly of exploring the larger questions technology challenges us with in general. But I attempted to stay open and receptive during the conference, and to evaluate what came up on its own terms rather than trot out my normal defenses and rebukes.
For some reason, it’s part of my story to resist technology. I held out and didn’t get a cd player until the late 1990s, playing my cassettes proudly, when others were beginning to go digital. In fact, one of my fears about joining Facebook is that I’ve held out this long. Knowing my luck, the second I join, the whole thing will become obsolete, and I reason that I don’t want to be responsible for the demise of Facebook. I wonder why this has been such a part of how I’ve wanted to define myself; after all, I don’t want to resist for resistance’s sake. Nor do I aspire to sentimentality, or want to dwell in the past, or become irrelevant. And yet I often feel like the Grumpy Old Man from the old Saturday Night Live skits, who would howl, after describing some awful custom from decades ago: “That’s the way it was and we liked it that way!”
Of course, one can point out that I’m resisting technology only in minor, symbolic ways. Whether I (or anyone else) like it or not, our new technology makes most of our lives possible. These changes are inevitable. For most people under 30, the digital age is unconscious second nature, it is just how it is. It was pointed out to me during this recent weekend that we had the same debates not only about television, but also about eyeglasses in the 14th century (it was no accident that Spinoza was a lens-grinder!), or the printing press in the 15th! We carry on when any new invention threatens our way of life. We say, oh, things will never be the same again! In some ways, we are like scribes complaining because they were no longer needed after the printing press was invented.
But I know part of my resistance is through my direct experience. I find most technology makes it harder and harder to be present in my life, to move slowly, to notice things. It’s hard enough to be present. We human beings are aversive creatures anyway – we start out trying to escape pain and we keep going from there till we are constantly jumpy and ready to distract from whatever is happening.
Daniel Sieradski, who is an activist and expert on social media, gave two presentations at our conference: one detailing the amazing role social media played in fueling and making possible the Arab Spring, and the Occupy movement; the other sharing the next steps coming down the pike in this digital revolution – a talk he called transhumanism. I found the first presentation inspiring and the second terrifying. Can one can pick and choose with this new technology or if we are being swept away in an inevitable shift in how we live and who we are? Is resistance futile, as aliens have said in sci-fi films, or is there an opportunity for a counter-cultural push back – if so, what would that look like? What would it serve?
My stepfather pointed out to me recently that the old thing we used to do between moments was have a cigarette. While we now are well aware of the dangers of this habit, at least when one smoked they were looking outward with their eyes, tilted in a way that they could receive the world, rather than hunched over and closed off, which is the physical posture of our moment-passing now, as we text, tweet and play games on our little devices. Rabbi Daniel Kramer once posited that the effect the cell phone is having is that it is making it so we feel like we never have to be alone anymore.
And yet, and yet. I’m told that all my posturing doesn’t really matter anyway because it is how the world is. So slowly, I try to open my mind. I got a smartphone last month. I skype, I facetime, I text. I still am holding out against Facebook and Twitter, but to what end? For how long? As part of an exercise at the conference, they asked us to write a sample tweet (which has to be 140 characters or less). I wrote: “I wish I was actually with you.”
Perhaps we can find a way to at least weigh the options when a new technology is introduced rather than just use it because we can. Apparently the Amish would have a community process and weigh the pros and cons of each new technology. For instance, when the telephone came out, they debated and debated and finally voted to install them in their workshops, as that would assist in business, but not in their homes, as it would interrupt family time. They made technology a conscious choice, not some force that was foisted on them without a peep of resistance. At least we can learn to name what is lost, and what the cost might be, even as we change with the times.