Technology as a Powerful Practice (Part 1)

This is the first part of a two part series I am doing on Technology and Gospel Order.

There seems to an over-saturation of new forms of technology today, log online and see the many “tools” for making social connections, collaborating with others, and sharing knowledge and life experience. Take for instance Wikipedia.org, an online collaborative reference site that has been found to be as accurate as the Encyclopedia Britannica. The argument goes that the collective intelligence of everyone editing a “Wiki” exponentially exceeds the expert-knowledge of those who for Britannica. People gather together on Wikipedia as a shared-space to collaborate together on a topic they find meaningful to them. This names the advent of what Henry Jenkins in Convergence Culture calls “participatory culture.”

Social aspects of the web are becoming increasingly popular, just three years ago only 1/3 of the people in a class I was an aid for knew what a blog was, today it’s far more unanimous. Awareness is not a problem any longer, but what is a problem is understanding how as Christians to interact with these new technologies. The fact is, the virtual reality of digital media is increasingly encroaching upon the real of the physical world. First I explain how technology is a power, and because of this the variety of options the church has in responding. Taking one particular stance, that of “parry-participation” I argue that a theology of gospel order acts as the Christian counterpoint to participatory culture.

Follow up:

Technology as Power

If modernity is based in top-down hierarchy these kinds of online communities signify a move towards decentralization; if our society has been built up by the dichotomy between producer and consumer, then the 21st century is marked by a blurring of these into a more “participatory culture” where consumers become the producers of the kinds of things they like to consume; and if early forms of communication theory were based on a "broadcast" model which maintains control on a one-directional flow of information, than the web has deconstructed and interrupted this flow. Thus our world is rapidly being dominated by a continual technological reformation.

This is the world the church finds itself in, at least as it in the West, a culture that is increasingly dominated by technology as power. I am using 'technology' here broadly so that it includes the Web, as well as things like TV’s and other “consumer gadgets.” Technology is itself a power in our society according to French Philosopher and Christian Jaques Ellul. Ellul is very critical of technology, which he sees as a power that ultimately undermines and determines the direction and ends of humanity. One commenter sums up Ellul's thought on the subject:

"[Technology] is a means of power...and not subject to human values. Although it originally enhanced human freedom, building civilization by enabling people to overcome natural and social constraints and necessities, Technique [technology] has become human fate and a form of necessity. What used to be a means to freedom for humans has become a condition of slavery. In the terms of Ellul's theological writings, Technique is a contemporary idol that attracts human faith, hope, love, and devotion; a locus of the sacred in a supposedly secular society."

What is the crucial point to be gathered here is that the very fabric of our lives is mediated through technology, from the mechanized tools used to build our homes, to the cars we drive, to the computers we so regularly use contemporary life is filtered through technology. While, Ellul in my view is overly critical of technology to the point of reducing everything down to seeing the world caught in a cycle of technological-determinism. His point that technology is a means of power is instructive for the church.

A power reconfigures, and reassigns life under patterns that are congruent with its own particular ends. Walter Wink argues that the biblical notion of powers can be understood in three ways: the systematic, the temporal, and the physical. Technology is systematic in its universalizing tendencies to collapse space and time through increasingly complex networks on institutions. A great deal of orchestration is necessary for me to be able to instantaneously converse with friends in Australia and Britain while sitting in a coffee shop in LA. Second, technology collapses the temporal by increasing our ability to control time. The web relativizes time as well as enables us to delay it. We get emails instantaneously, but can freeze time by deciding when to respond. On the web there is no past everything is present. Finally, the physical realm is dominated by a plethora of physical gadgets enabling us to access the virtual. Further, the physical is affected by the increasing amount of time we spend connected to the virtual through the physical. Technology dominates the physical through domination. A dominated existence is "a life lived according to the dictates of the Domination System. The term as it is in the New Testament in no way denotes rejection of the body. It refers to existence robbed of its authenticity by the imposition of domination" (Wink 1992:62).

The Church And Its Relation To Technology

But we should push further still. If technology is a power, it is an institutionalized power. Web and technology companies are an ever-increasing institution in our society, one only needs to say the words Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, or Apple Inc. to make the point. If technology is institutionalized than it is a powerful-practice. Powerful-practices are as James Wm. McClendon defines them “…Even those principalities and powers that our society institutionalizes (its hospitals, schools, police departments, religious institutions, [technology firms]) are rightly identified as (MacIntyrian) practices” (McClendon 2002:179). It is helpful to frame technology in this light because we in turn see that the church itself is a power-practice, or a counter-power if you will.

If both the church and technology can be understood as potentially opposing powerful-practices how ought the church interact with technology? The first option is to treat technology as a commodity. We embrace as consumers whatever the latest and greatest gadget is in the name of utility and relevance; utility because it can help bring people in, relevance because irrelevance is the single greatest fear for the church-as-a-people-of commodity. Second, the church can seek to manage technology and keep it under control. The problem with both these options is that they do not recognize the implications of technology as a power and will themselves be reconfigured for the ends necessary of what we could half-jokingly call the imago tech rather than the imago Dei.

The third possibility is avoidance and/or ignorance. In either case this view operates under fallacy that we can remain untouched by "culture" and that maintaining group identity through isolation is the way forward. This is a reversal of the first view. The strength of this position is that it recognizes the power of technology but does not discern technology as an institution. If technology is an institution, a powerful-practice, it is in the air we breathe, we cannot escape its broad-sweep. The final option is to parry technology through participating in it but reorder it under the reign of God. This group acknowledges the universality of technology within the world, but resists its tendencies to reconfigure and dominate life under its particular ends. In one way, you might say this group remains indifferent in their attitude towards technology. They resist through engaging with technology but in a manner that rejects its own end goal and instead joins up with God's redemptive work within the system. This advocates what Ryan Bolger has put forward, a kingdomlike movement within technology:

“Kingdomlike movements provide a contrast to all other powers, even religious ones. They are not focused on a single issue; rather they provide a contrast to all aspects of life – in the culture, in the economy, and within the social and political structures. When Christians live an alternative logic within these powers, they begin to transform those same powers. Kingdomlike movements unmask the powers by naming them and living a different way within them. They demonstrated that the powers are not the ultimate authority. Because of the reign of God, these powers can no longer dominate” (Paggit 2007:134-135).

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Click here to go to part two.