REALationships: Our Relationship with Modern-Day Technology
Artificial Intelligence.
Relational Bots.
High-powered devices.
Our relationship with personal technology is REAL.
We interact with sophisticated digital machines.
We consume massive bytes of online information.
We seem to be always connected online.
It is interesting to note that our relationships with personal technology can be healthy. Modes of productivity, the ability to connect with others and be informed about our world, are like nothing before in human history; and yet, at the same time, modern-day forms of technology can be extremely unhealthy as personal technology isolates us from each other, hooks us into damaging modes of information, manipulates our thought processes, and can even damage our souls.
Perhaps these are some of the reasons governments want to ban the harmful relationship with modern-day technology for younger generations. (1)
With this being said, here are some thoughts on our relationship with personal tech.
Curated Truth.
At this point, modern technologies curate information. It cannot create information. This is the difference between unconscious and conscious realities of how we consume information.
As human beings, not human machines, we are designed to not JUST consume information, but to interact with information that leads to truth.
We see this in the Genesis narrative, (2) Jesus as God, (3) and practiced through the One Another Commandments in the Early Church. (4)
If we consume only information that does not lead to the truth, we fall into an information trap. (5)
Information Promptings.
In addition, our addiction to curated information is shaped by our personal promptings. Meaning, our interaction (and perhaps addiction) with information is to consume INCREASING amounts of personalized information.
In other words, we can create emotional, mental, and even spiritual modes of connecting with information. In short, we “fall in love” with our own promptings of information.
We begin to think our information is the truth.
It is interesting to study how human beings can think, ponder, and come to believe that a lie is the truth. It is called the “Illusory truth effect.” (6) Meaning, if human beings interact with curated information enough, based on our own personal promptings, we begin to think our truth is the truth.
This is, however, not true.
Even ChatGPT – which scours massive amounts of information in seconds – can lie to us. (7)
This is why we are,
Created to create.
As human beings, we are not designed to download the entire knowledge of human existence. We are designed to have a relationship with knowledge, which leads to truth.
In the Biblical narrative, this means we are designed to discover knowledge that leads to truth (ultimately, Jesus) and to bring glory to God in what we create.
Ultimately, towards human flourishing.
This is the REALationship we are designed to have.
Rather than to consume, we contribute.
Rather than personalizing, we are transformed.
Rather than isolate, we glorify God.
What is your REALationship with modern-day tech?
(2) Read Genesis 1-2
(3) Jesus’ revelation to humanity that HE is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Meaning, there is a relational component to information that leads to human flourishing that is in Jesus, not curated information and/or platforms which
(4) And to be practiced today. I call them the Practices of Jesus. The 100+ times we are encouraged to practice the one another commandments in the New Testament, historians and theologians suggest the root cause of this is Jesus’ famous message – in fact, perhaps, the MOST famous message of all time – recorded in Matthew 5-7.
(5) Which has been defined by a 19th-century philosopher as the “Schopenhauer Folly.” https://ericweiner.medium.com/the-19th-century-philosopher-who-predicted-data-overload-67eee2af7497
(6) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect
(7) https://help.openai.com/en/articles/8313428-does-chatgpt-tell-the-truth
