Vern Poythress:

A capable cell phone today has more computing power than the computer that took the Apollo astronauts to the moon. It gives instant access not only to your friends’ voices but to all the information on the internet. Are you keeping up or falling behind in the race for the latest electronic fashions?
Science and technology get a lot of attention because of the new gadgets they spin out. I love science, because it displays God’s wisdom (Proverbs 8:22-31). I love technology, because it shows what great gifts God has given to us, and what great human capacity God has given us to exercise dominion (Genesis 1:28-30). But I see hopes placed in science and technology that they cannot fulfill. Science, it is said, will solve the problems of world hunger. It will bring world peace. And more and better technology will solve the problems introduced by lesser technology.

Well, sometimes; and in some ways. Maybe science will find an efficient way to harness nuclear fusion to produce clean power—or maybe not. But we can be awash in technology and still be hate-filled or lonely. You can have 200 friends on Facebook and have no one who really knows you, no one who loves you.

Sometimes science only increases the problem. If, instead of seeing the wisdom of God in it, you listen to the propaganda of scientism, it will solemnly assure you that you inhabit a faceless, lonely, materialistic universe that is heading only toward ultimate death. And the gadgets of technology become Band-Aids to cover spiritual wounds and empty hearts. One more electronic game or one more DVD movie or one more pop song holds back the slide into boredom and depression. We search for one entertainment after another to keep back the dread of facing the hollow inside

Last Friday there was a bit of a ruckus on our street.  A high school sits around the corner and when school let out that afternoon, a couple students took it upon themselves to provide a little entertainment for their comrades by getting into a rumble–at first nearer the school (the policeman’s use of all the features on his new-fangled siren package was apparently all he was interested in doing to break it up).  Undaunted, the warring pair relocated the festivities to our neck of the woods.

I’d seen fights before in public school, and the crowds they usually drew.  What was new about this one was how the spectators quickly morphed, whenever the combatants raised their fists, into citizen-journalists.  They, with one accord, all raised their camera phones to snap a shot or record a short video-byte of the ruckus.

Old scenario, new scenery–this time with technology encroaching a bit further into the lanscape.

We’ve pointed  you to Cynthia Rosen’s work before–previously about how the virtual realities we inhabit in the cyberworld might have an effect on our sense of actual reality.  She’s written several pieces about technology recently, the first of which we’ll point you to today.  This one’s about your cell phone.

From our earliest days we have this urge to put on alternative personas or engage in imaginary realities. I would savor pretending to be an astronaut. I would look forward to my buddies coming over in the afternoon to play a simulated war game with all our plastic m-16’s and silver-painted 6-shooters. The interesting thing about our generation is that technology has allowed us to indulge that preference for donning identities not our own and living vicariously in worlds we’ll never travel to. Does the explosion of media for catering to that need have any long-term effects? Here’s an article written in last month’s The New Atlantis about what our penchant for slipping into something a little more. . .whatever you want it to be, might be doing to us. What do you think?