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.

Another example of how piracy has actually energised bands and the music industry to innovate.

My view is that while we do create tools, our tools do end up recreating us aswell. The internal combustion engine was a human invention, but its invention did have a profound effect on us too.

In his book Exclusion and Embrace theologian Miroslav Volf talks about creation in Genesis as a process of ‘separation and binding’: the water and the land are separated, humanity is bound in stewardship of the earth. Nic disagrees, but I think that this is a helpful metaphor for a good relationship to technology: we are bound to it – we cannot live without it – but we are also separate from it.

Now, using the ideas covered in the series of posts on ‘Bad Faith’, we might view this from another angle: our relationship to technology should have both facticity and transcendence, and it is when this duality collapses on either side that we see problems occuring. In a recent interview an Oxford Professor of Neurology expressed real concerns about the effect increased screen-time could have on our brains. Without practice at decoding the subtle and complex messages in face-to-face communication (nuance, tone, context, pheromones, gestures) our brains will perform worse in this area – and this could be a viscious cirle as embarrassment could lead to further withdrawal.

But, in my view, there is a parallel danger. By experiencing so many more relationships through media like Facebook or Twitter we risk collapsing the complexities of ‘the other’ into pure facticity: they become seen by us as no more than the sum of their status updates, and we also risk seeing ourselves in that way too. As Pete has pointed out, we are much more mysterious than that.

The danger works the other way too. Our status updates don’t mean nothing – they do communicate something of who we are, and to ignore them and claim separation from them is to collapse into pure transcendence – we are above all that.

Neither is true. We are separate from our social networks (virtual and ‘real’) but bound to them too. The art of living in technological ‘good faith’ is going to be negotiating the line between these two states, and avoiding the temptation to collapse either side.

I’ve added to the problem by writing this. And you’d added to it by reading it. But perhaps together we need to raise awareness to encourage the data storage industry to do more in terms of energy saving through more natural cooling systems and greener energy consumption. I’m going to start by looking to move my web-hosting over to a green supplier. Not sure which yet, but AISO seem to be doing the right thing.

Yes you read that correctly.

Actually, the thinking behind the project, or at least post-event justification, is to slow technology down, as a form of discipline or meditation. You send your email in the normal way, and this is then stored in a device in the snail’s tank. When a snail, fitted with a RF chip, crawls by, the data is loaded onto the chip. When that snail eventually passes another device, the information is passed from the RF chip, and the mail is delivered as usual. You therefore have no idea when your message is going to eventually be delivered.

Completely barking. But rather nice.

Sound, on the other hand, is a far more difficult sense. It doesn’t ‘shadow’ well, and is extremely difficult to insulate against, far harder than light. Noise is therefore a far more antisocial thing than colour or design. If my neighbour paints their house fuscia, I needn’t think about it much. If they play loud music, I have no option.

Cities are noisy places, and I think this does contribute in no small way to the general tension, and thus propensity for anger and violence, that cities are also guilty of. Traffic noise is perhaps the most pernicious, particularly since it is almost impossible to control (the infuriating 2-stroke scooter been driven past has long gone before any law-enforcement might arrive) and is also so widely accepted.

But perhaps help is on its way. Mathematicians and scientists have developed a theoretical material which would cloak an object in total silence. The implications for this are enormous. Houses that are properly sound insulated. Engine casings that would render vehicles quiet. Headgear, even, that would drop you into a calm oasis of silence amidst the noise and haste.

I wish them all the best in the trials that are to come. And want to sign up for a sheet of it to go over my back fence. Or round the boom-box in the boot of my neighbour’s car.

Most of the people he seemed to help were suffering depression, or from ME. The film followed him ‘helping’ one woman who had chronic fatigue and ‘couldn’t go on’, though half way through the first attempt she started buttering a bagel, and announced her house-mate was due back any minute. This sent the guy packing quick-sharp: what he is doing is clearly illegal, and this was taken up in the film as the FBI chased him for extradition to Ireland to face charges of assisting a woman in Dublin to commit suicide.

It is possible to see Exoo as a very prolific serial killer akin to Harold Shipman – a British doctor who ended the lives of perhaps 215 people, most of whom were nearing the end of their lives too. Certainly, it seemed he got some sort of thrill out of ‘fulfilling his calling’ – which is precisely how Exoo saw things.

One thing he would do for all his clients (‘because’, as he said many times in almost Pythonesque comic style, ‘you’ve not done this before’) is give them a copy of ‘Life After Life‘ – a video detailing the near-death experiences of a bunch of characters (some of whose stories didn’t quite seem to hold up).

Exoo’s reasoning is that ‘death is a great adventure to a wonderful place’. And this is where things get interesting. Because if, as Christians or otherwise, we really believe in some after-life, then should we be critical of Exoo, or of euthenasia at all? (He claims that Jesus practised some sort of suicide, which Stanley Hauerwas refuted, before being able to come up with any proof text to show God didn’t approve of suicide.)

I was watching the programme with someone I am close to, who trained as a nurse. She mentioned that in practice, in hospices and elsewhere, euthanasia is pretty common.

She then revealed that as she had watched her father lie dying of cancer in the 60′s, his GP had passed her a suitable amount of morphine and told her to ‘stop his pain.’ She thought about it for a very long time, and then did gradually increase his dose to relieve his pain, knowing that this would kill him.

I personally think this was an incredibly brave and humane thing to do. I don’t think it excuses Exoo, or his associate who does the same for a $7000 fee (Exoo takes no money) but I do think if we are to state that we believe in an after life, we need to do so in an active sense, by which I mean making sure that we fully value this life, and don’t simply cheapen it as a blip before the ‘real’ version begins, while permitting people the option to humanely end life at an appropriate moment in a dignified manner.