I’m aware of the cult of mac dangers of sychophancy today… but also wanted to mark the passing of someone who did have a big impact on who are and how we live today, both positive and negative. This speech, given to Stanford graduates in 2005, is moving and prescient, but what I want to focus on this section:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.

There’s something powerful about this, but also troubling. Yes, we need to see our own finitude as a motivation to make the most of the life we’ve been given, and to be the best person we can. But the troubling flip-side in Jobs’ philosophy is the culture of constant upgrade – and it’s ironic that his death comes so soon after the hyped announcement of Apple’s latest product. The iPhone4 is SO last year. I’ve heard so many people discussing whether they will get rid of their 4 in order to get their hands on a 4S in a couple of weeks…

This is absurd. Yes, we must see death as a healthy change-agent, and the old must be cleared to make way for the new. But also, and this is where Apple has been at the vanguard of the sickness of consumer capitalism, we need to re-learn how to make the most of what we have, rather than obsessively get rid of things in order to upgrade to the latest and ‘best.’

Jobs fought valiantly against cancer, against uncontrolled growth and multiplication of something healthy into something tumorous and dangerous. So as we celebrate his life and legacy, and think of his family grieving after a horrible illness, I think it’s appropriate to take a moment to think about appropriate consumption, and the gadget footprint we may be leaving in discarded phones, laptops and other devices… RIP.

(HT Barry for the great image)

An excellent article in the New York Times the other day – ‘Hooked on Gadgets and Paying a Mental Price‘ – which explores the mental and relational cost of screen-addiction, plotting the story of one family who are all, in their own way, too hooked on gadgets:

Mr. Campbell continues to struggle with the effects of  data-deluge. Even after he unplugs, he craves the stimulation he gets from his electronic gadgets. He forgets things like dinner plans, and he has trouble focusing on his family.

His wife, Brenda, complains, “It seems like he can no longer be fully in the moment.”

Scientists say juggling e-mail, phone calls and other incoming information can change how people think and behave. They say our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information.

All of this is, inevitably, changing the way our bodies work. We are in co-evolution with our tools, and always have been.

Computer users at work change windows or check e-mail or other programs nearly 37 times an hour. The nonstop interactivity is one of the most significant shifts ever in the human environment, said Adam Gazzaley, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco.

“We are exposing our brains to an environment and asking them to do things we weren’t necessarily evolved to do,” he said. “We know already there are consequences.”

It is the consequences of our deeper interaction with digital technology that continues to fascinate me. If technology is affecting the way we relate to one another, it must also be affecting the way we relate theologically, and also how we perceive ourselves as persons.

It is these themes that I pick up in ‘Other’ – and here’s an excerpt, which I hope will give a little flavour of the book – available on a nice discount at the moment here.

Despite our now inextricable reliance on digital telecommunications, combustion engines and synthetic chemistry, we are not, at our core, automata. Perhaps this is what our Sabbath should be: a day to turn off.

Writing on the limitations of technology, Ivan Illich, the radical Marxist critic of technology and education, noted that ‘only within limits can machines take the place of slaves; beyond these limits they lead to a new type of serfdom.’ Commenting on this, Aaron Falbel writes that

‘Genuinely human acts have more and more been replaced by the operation of machines, institutions and systems. Everything from procuring the food we eat to dealing with the excrement we leave behind, from birthing to dying, from healing to moving – has been designed, rationalised, engineered…’

I think these are powerful words for us to reflect on and respond to as we head further into universal wireless access and always-on connectivity. We need to be better aware of our co-evolution with our devices. We make them, but they are also remaking us – and in the worse cases this can lead to a chronic shallowing of the Self.

I have often been to Church gatherings where, in a room full of people, there is virtually nobody there. There are people in the room, but with their Macs open or their gazes focused on Blackberrys and iPhones, they are mentally elsewhere. It appears to be a kind of defence mechanism: if I were to commit to being fully present in this space I would have to be responsible for it, and deal with what is being said. But if I remove my attention a little…

It is no different to the sorts of workplaces many of us inhabit, modern offices so brilliantly satirised in Joshua Ferris’ novel And Then We Came to the End, ‘a story about sitting all morning next to someone you deliberately cross the road to avoid at lunchtime.’

Indeed, it is in these spaces, fictional or real, that I have most understood Illich’s words about ‘a new type of serfdom’. We are not surfing the net; it is ‘serfing’ us. Emails are delivered immediately, and must be dealt with now; news can be accessed in real time, and must be kept abreast of; the hundreds in my social networks can be told what I am doing now, and now, and now, and need to be told now… lest I get left behind. The result? We have no time for the other, not while we must quickly chomp down our chicken and salsa wrap. The project of building and maintaining our myriad digital fantasy selves simply leaves no time for it.

For those interested in pursuing this discussion around technology and our humanity, tonight’s Apple event is a must. 7:30pm at The Betsey Trotwood. Manjit Kumar talking about ‘The Quantum Cathedral’ and how the world’s largest machine  – the Large Hadron Collidor – may begin to affect our understanding of what is real.

See you there – remember, free beer and a book to win for those in the know!

Really pleased to announce that we’ve sorted out three new dates for Apple events over the next couple of months.

The idea behind Apple is to get people thinking more reflectively about technology – whether that be digital culture or tool-use. Humans are tool-makers, and the technologies we use form us, just as we form them. As technology becomes more embedded in the functioning of our relationships, it’s hugely important that we think carefully about the effect it may be having on who we are.

The first Apple in this series will see Pete Rollins doing his only London date for some time speaking around the title ‘Despite Appearances, Some Things Are Real‘ and questioning whether our online personae are actually more ‘real’ than we are.

Details: 12th May, 7:30pm, free, at The Betsey Trotwood pub, 56 Farringdon Road Clerkenwell, London. Map here. Do spread the word.

The other two dates (same time and venue)

9th June – Manjit Kumar from Wired Magazine will be speaking on quantum mechanics, multiverses and the nature of reality.

7th July – Anthony Paul Smith from Nottingham University will be speaking on ‘Is the City a Machine for the Making of Gods?’

Spread the word, and look forward to seeing you there. Just exploring the possibility of Greenbelt coming on board and recording these too, so I’ll post if we have audio etc.

Apple are an increasingly intriguing company. They are a huge multinational – bigger than Sony or Samsung – yet constantly define themselves as the trendy outsiders, in opposition to the fat hulking mass that is Microsoft. As Steve Jobs said recently (thanks to Tomal Price for sending me the quote) ‘why join the navy when you can be a pirate?‘

I’d argue that Apple are much closer to being navy boys than anyone would like to admit, and that the ‘outsider’ image is simply a clever piece of corporate spin to make people feel edgy and excited.

In the article I try to look a bit at Apple via the history of their logo. For Apple, this logo-come-halo is all-important. Subtly adorning every product, the Apple device has naturally undergone a transformation in parallel to the corporate image that they want to project. The original logo was an etching of Newton sitting under a tree: nerdy, earnest and complex:

This evolved into the rainbow shades of a bitten apple – which Jobs thought would present a friendly image: the computer as helper.

Now the colours have gone, and all is flattened. Thin, sensual, intelligently simple, sleek… The logos speaks clearly, and we see our own values mirrored in the shiny new surfaces it decorates.

Jobs is clear, the bite on the Apple logo was to stop it looking like an orange. But this particular fruit has always been rich in meaning. The bitten apple is the birth of knowledge and the end of innocence, perhaps even the birth of the ‘i’.

Yet it is also the beginning of something remarkable, and one cannot fail to be caught up in the technologically optimistic world that Jobs presents to the faithful: everything will be alright. He has created, and from the chaos of the modern digital life, he wants us to see that what he has made for us is good.

This is what Apple do so very well: they sell us our desires. Like the icons of old, we will gaze into our iPads wanting solace and communion and equilibrium and connection. What exactly they will offer us is, as yet, unknown, but without disappointment there will be no more demand.

So while few have actually put their hands on one yet, we can guarantee one thing about gazing into the dark glass of the iPad: after the initial rush, it will be disappointing. It won’t heal us.

[Cartoon by Dave Walker.]

In the last couple of posts I’ve been thinking about what the form of texts add to their meaning, springboarding from a book reviewing experiment in The Believer in which the reviewer was given a novel to read which had been stripped of its cover and all meta-data about the author.

I’ve also suggested that what we see in a fundamentalist reading of Scripture is not the ‘word speaking for itself,’ as evangelicals might like to think, but ‘the word gagged’ – it is not allowed to speak, unless it says something that might challenge our unquestioning belief.

So what of the iPad?

When we look at a book what the cover and design does is aid our ability to see ourselves in it. The glossy cover acts as a mirror, so that we can see ourselves when we look at it, and see ourselves as the sort of person who would like to buy it.

With a product like the iPad, this mirroring effect has been deliberately maximised. Jobs and Apple have carefully cultivated a sense of anticipation so that our desire for the product is hyped up, and now it is finally released, the whole emphasis of the promotion is a polishing of the mirror – helping us to see ourselves in the product.

So what does the desire for this product say about what kind of person we wish to see?

Thin               Fast                  Robust

Sensual                Simple, yet sophisticated

Enjoyable                  Intelligent                  Desirable

Tough, yet soft edged                  Well Connected

These are the sorts of words that come to the fore. This is the mirror that Apple polishes.

But what of the product behind the mirror? When the reviewer had to read the stripped back novel, they were forced to actually engage with the text in a much more careful way. What is this saying? became the core question, not How is this making me feel?

I wonder, if it were possible to strip away the black polo-neck, to take away the hype and glitz and the Apple mystique and to simply use an iPad with no idea who had made it – what would we make of it then? It’s only then that we would properly be able to ask What does this do? rather than How is this making me feel?

Perhaps then we could think beyond the consumer idiocy of ‘want one, but don’t need one,’ and may be send those few hundred dollars to Haiti instead. In the mean time, ht to The Onion for another great send-up:

Last year was about writing the book, due out in June. There’ll be more of that here in good time. But I think it’s clearer now what this year’s focus could be.

From some of the embers of Vaux a few of us began Apple, a series of conversations around ideas of technology and theology. We met three times over the winter, but for me I think it’s only now that the real direction of that is emerging, and it seems to have crystallised in the comments over the last few posts: “what is to be done?”

What I’d like to see Apple become (and there are other voices and equal influences who may take it other ways) is an evolving praxis around the core interconnected questions at the centre of human survival: how do we move beyond the perma-hunger of Capitalism, and how do we connect to an sustainable environmental agenda. Red Apple, Green Apple.

These do seem to be where the conversation about technology (tool-making and resource use) and theology have to go. In particular, over the last few posts I think I’ve personally hit upon a tension-space I want to map out more clearly:

Christianity has failed because it failed to generate a radical economics. Marx failed because he failed to understand the human spirit.

I am not a Marxist. I am not chasing after an ideology. Rather, I think there may be some energy in the ashes of both ideologies, a burnt alchemy that may create hope from these twin failures.

Experiments, collaborations, conversations… we will attempt to traverse these failed spaces with failures of our own close by. Why? Because the only answer to ‘what is to be done?’ can be ‘not nothing.’

Watch this space for dates, or follow AppleTMP on Twitter. We’ll be meeting soon in London to plot the way ahead. Homework until then: read Cradle to Cradle.

On a different tip, my sister – a fully qualified yoga instructor and pioneer in Christian meditation – is hosting what looks like a fantastic weekend at the beautiful Pickwell Manor in Devon. Called ‘On the Cusp of Winter’ it’s going to be from Friday 30th October to Sunday 1st November. The situation is just amazing, and the retreat is in excellent hands, so do book up. Full details below.

Cusp of Winter Retreat Flyer Oct-Nov 09

Really excited that the a new Vaux production is getting off the ground this Thursday.

‘Apple’ is about two things: technology and theology. We make our tools, and our tools make us. As we head into this new-media networked age, we need to do some careful and radical thinking about the impact virtual presence and enhanced reality is going to have on our theologies. And Apple is setting out to cover some of that new ground.

I’m also really excited that Apple 1 is taking place at Salt, a media production facility in Soho. We’re trying to curate each event in a space that will frame our thinking, so this time our conversations will be amidst the mayhem of a working office, with wine and wifi onhand, and hopefully some live media streams. Future events could be anywhere: theatre, roadside cafe, gallery.

It’s an open invite, so spread the word and come down to Salt, 3rd Floor, 4 Golden Square, London W1F 9HT. Dead central. Easy access. From 7:30.

The evening is entitled ‘i/object – a presentation of devices by people, and people by devices.’ We’re asking people to bring their favourite device, or some representation of it, and we’ll get into how we relate to these machines, and what, if any, is the distance between us and them.

For those of you further afield, follow updates on http://twitter.com/AppleTMP or at the Apple site on http://vaux.net/apple

See you there. Vaux lives