"WE LIVE AS if the connections provided by digital technologies are vital,” writes Gaymon Bennett in the cover story, “and indeed we have made them so.”
Guilty as charged. Hang around the Sojourners office long enough and you’ll hear stories about how we used to keep a list of our subscribers in a shoebox and write articles on typewriters. But those days are done: Today our office hosts a congregation of laptops, tablets, screens, cameras, and smartphones that we need to access databases, send messages, and update our website. When a network upgrade happens to knock out the Wi-Fi, we all go home because, well, how could we work?
What does it mean to live this way? It’s a question Sojourners has asked before and will keep asking. In our July-August 2001 issue, we asked David Batstone and Bill Wylie-Kellermann to help us think “biblically, theologically, and critically about technology.” Batstone argued that, for example, the internet is “a communication tool,” that, like anything, could be harnessed for good or evil. Thus, as Batstone argued, people of faith should “build movements to democratize the application of technology.” But Wylie-Kellermann was more skeptical. Channeling theologian Walter Wink, he named technology as one of the “fallen principalities and powers” of this age that cannot be harnessed. “The technological system itself already has a sort of ‘logic’ or ‘intelligence’ by which it moves,” he wrote, “And human control over it is already mitigated.”
In this issue, Bennett takes a careful look at the twisted logic—and theology—that brought us Facebook, iPhones, 2-day shipping, Alexa, and 1,700,000,000 search results in .48 seconds: “Innovation is always good, and more is always better. Create powerful technologies, improve humanity and the planet, and make piles of money. This is the secularized spirituality of Big Tech at work, buffering it against any ability to contemplate its own potential evil,” writes Bennett.
We hope Bennett’s essay makes you think—and not just about the evil “out there” in Silicon Valley, but also about shadows and contradictions that lurk “in here,” in our own lives. It’s important soul work as we celebrate the mystery of Incarnation and prepare to enter 2019 ready to bless all whose lives are linked with ours—digitally and otherwise.
Got something to say about what you're reading? We value your feedback!