"Tech-Knowledge"

Sunday, May, 21, 2000
Rev. Annie Holmes

Frankie put her hands into the warm sudsy water.  Her hands had been cold all
day.  Standing next to her was her 10 year old son, laughing and joking with
his father as they dried the dishes and put them away.   Frankie mused, they
hadn't done anything like this since they had gotten the dish washer years
before.  But since it had broken two nights ago, they realized they simply
had to do the dishes if they were going to get done.

The water seemed so cleansing.  With each dish she washed, she realized she
was creating a rhythm, husband and son were following along.  Memories
flooded as Frankie remembered she and her sisters washing dishes so long ago.
She even remembered how her one sister would take a clean plate and dirty it
again and put it back on the counter so Frankie would have to wash it again. 
Some times she would wash the same plate 4 or 5 times.  But they would be
singing and laughing and often Franke never noticed until later what her
sister had done.  "This is good," she thought, "we are together, we are
sharing.  No TV, no interruptions."  Frankie was glad, she could hardly
believe that she was glad, that the dish washer was actually broken.
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Martin hadn't take a pen in hand for longer than he could remember. On most
evenings, he would get home from work and start supper.  Then he would log on
the Internet and after supper, chat in the chat room until Abby called him to
help put the children to bed.  Tonight, the monitor on the computer was
broken.  He had to leave it in the shop and realized he felt like he had left
one of his friends at the hospital.

He fingered the space on the desk where the monitor had sat. Computer or no,
he knew tonight he must write to his Dad, as he used to do on the computer. 
Taking the pen in hand seemed strange.  Except to write his name on the
checks he wrote for weekly bills, he realized he really hadn't written much
anymore.  After he completed the letter to his Dad, Martin did something he
hadn't done for years, he walked in the twilight glow down the block to the
mailbox. He lifted the metal lid and dropped the letter inside, the lid
clinging as he turned away. 

After he mailed the letter off,  he went to the attic and found the old love
letters he and Abby had written to each other as they were dating from
different colleges.  He spent the next 3 hours reading through them. 
Memories flooded his brain of all that the two of them had meant to each
other.  Passion and love for his wife of 15 years burned in him again.  He
mused, would his children have as much of a thrill reading through emails as
Martin had had reading those love letters? He replaced the faded red ribbon
on the letters and returned them to the old shoe box.  Martin vowed to write
more letters in the future, even after the computer returned.
________________________________________________
Nate listened as his two young sons argued in their room upstairs.  The
fighting had gotten worse in the last couple of weeks.  He knew everyone had
been together in the house for too many cold winter months.  He slowly walked
up the steps to see what the fracas was about tonight. Once again it was who
cheated whom on the Super Ninetendo.  Nate hated all the video stuff anyway. 
As he opened the door there they were, wrestling around on the floor each
grabbing the control pad and kicking each other.

Nick stepped in,  turned off the game and ordered both of them to get their
shoes on - they were going for a walk.  Kicking and hitting and sticking out
their tongues at each other, the boys put on their coats and out the three of
them went, dog in toe. 
Nate made them run as fast as they could to the corner.  There were stars
bright and clear and clean everywhere in the winter night sky.  He showed
them the belt of Orion and told of the story of the mighty warrior of the
sky.  He showed them the Big Dipper and talked some of the myths and legends
of the North star.  "Wow, cool!" the boys said.  They threw snow balls and
sang Old McDonald Had a Farm, at the top of their lungs.  Laughing, arms
around each other, 3 souls connected on a winter night - when Nate turned off
the Nintendo.
_________________________________________________

What would you do if for one week there was no electricity?  What would you
do with no TV, no phone, no fax, no computer, no CD player,  no radio,
nothing electric.  How would you spend your evenings?  weekends? What would
you do with the kids, your partner, your free time?  What would you do if you
only had your imagination, a book, a craft, an instrument, each other -  how
would that change the way you would live?

Millions of people complain about the emotional and psychological tolls
exacted by living in a high-tech world where the fast pace seems to leave
little time for loved ones or private reflection.  It seems for the first
time since the 1960's publications tell us, there is a growing public debate
about our technological society and its effects on humans.  The debate has
been re-energized because of three related events:  the publication in 1996
of the Unabomber's anti-technology "manifesto", a book published by
Kirkpatrick Sale entitled, "Rebels against the Future: The Luddites and Their
War on the Industrial Revolution" and Erik Davis's book of last year,
entitled "Tech-gnosis: Myth, magic and mysticism in the age of Information."

All three of these authors remind us, that as technology may extend our
creative powers, it only does so by amputating, cutting off our natural
powers.  Think about that a minute, that could translate into every minute
spent on some technological device, is time you are not spending in the
natural world, connecting so to speak with the soft, animal side of you, Mary
Oliver speaks of in her poetry.

So, if you spend a combined 8 hours a day on the computer, the cell-phone,
video games etc. this also includes TV, movies, that is 8 hours of your life
that you have not connected to the life-giving, sustaining and renewing
connections that only the natural world can give.  From the emphasis that
surrounds us, of the benefits of technology, is also the false magical claim
that somehow engineering and technology will create a world that is peaceful,
virtuous and wondrous.  Davis reminds us that this is a tricky dream though
it seems a mighty difficult dream to shake. 

What we must remember, in this fast-paced growing technological world of
ours, is that with each technological step we take as a human race, there is
a benefit and a price.  My question is; are we racing so fast to some
supposed boundless potential within the world and ourselves that we are not
sufficiently counting the cost?  Are we so blinded by our computer screens
that we cannot see what is happening to us?  Are we so deafened by
commercials and jarring music we cannot hear what is happening to us or our
earth? The earth, nature do not compute.  The seasons do not move at the
fast-paced, unrealistic, hectic rhythm of technology.  Are we losing the
greatest lessons if we expect life to react as a computer does?

The advance of computer technology has generally been perceived as a positive
development.  Ardent proponents for technology tell us that sophisticated
computer networks will make it easier to communicate, to live more
comfortably and to spend our time more wisely.  But others, including those
in recent publications, are more skeptical about high-tech civilization. 
Will there be time for solitude?  Will we have any privacy in an increasingly
wired world?  Will life in cyberspace be beneficial or detrimental to our
sanity and our happiness? How necessary is high-tech?  The article  reminds
us that Tolstoy wrote War and Peace without a computer.  Shakespeare, had no
help from a laptop as he wrote his plays and his sonnets.  However did he do
all that without a spell-check and a thesaurus?

The author, Kirkpatrick Sale believes humankind should begin reassessing its
relationship to technology before it's too late.  For him, technology is a
forerunner of social disintegration that will have catastrophic effects on
society, the environment and the economy.  Sale examines the legacy of the
Luddites, British textile workers who, in 1811 and 1812, responded to the
disruptive changes of the Industrial Revolution by attacking and smashing the
agents of those changes, the knitting machines that had taken away their
jobs. For 15 months the Luddties went around London and destroyed machines
and would later meet at the local pub and boast of their exploits.  Some of
their activities got out of hand when some of the Luddites also assassinated
factory owners. 

The author Sale says that we are entering a Second Industrial Revolution. 
Central to both these revolutions is the basic idea that human decisions get
made because of technology, rather than technological decisions being made
because of humans.  Sale explains that technological advances do not change
the fundamental nature of humankind rather, such developments tend to
intensify the differences between social groups.  Improvements in technology
may even allow tyrants and others intent on doing evil to wreak more havoc
than they otherwise might. Did not President Clinton, just this week ask for
millions more to fight the war against terrorist emails?

Many of us are able to purchase a home computer system.  This sermon was
typed on the church computer and printed on a lazier brother HL-645 printer. 
But to be honest with you there is much in the technological world I find
frightening.  Frightening that is, until I realize that each technological
advance that I make in my life, is my choice, my wish and somehow I believe
and have put into practice that I will not purchase any technology if I have
not evaluated it with the goal of my life as being a balanced, natural,
person.

And questions come from all over the globe, as technology matures, questions
like; are speed and efficiency the values of a technological society and not
the human society?  There is a fear that a more technological society will
severely need to limit individual and communal freedom and autonomy in order
to function.  Could we become so complex we could ultimately collapse under
our own weight?  Will global warming, loss of cropland, air pollution and
acid rain combine to further unravel the industrial society?

The goal of this sermon is not so much to tell you of my fears of technology
(and, as people close to me know, those fears are large)  or that technology
is evil, rather this sermon is an attempt to be a reminder that we take
seriously our power to choose technology carefully and that we keep one
premise in mind, that is - does the purchase and use of a particular
technology further the human community and the soft animal part of us,  or
only isolate us and our families more from the business of being human and
being participants in the human community.

Picture in your mind's eye these two scenarios from author Mark Helprin from
Forbes Magazine, Dec. 2, 1996
Its August, 2006, California
You are a director of a firm that supplies algorithms for the detection and
restoration of damaged molecular memories in organic computation.  Try
putting that on a business card.

Last year you raised $2 billion, most of which was devoted to the purchase of
computers and laser armature looms for the growth and manipulation of organic
components.  Though your entire company is housed in a single 10,000 square
foot facility and has only 90 employees, it records assets of $9 billion and
annual revenue of $32 billion.

All transactions are accomplished through data links, licensing, sales
billing, remittances, collections, investments.  A customer can make a
purchase, receive your product and pay you as fast as he can speak orders to
his computer.  As your product begins immediately to work for him the money
you've earned begins immediately to work for you, in perhaps Czech dormitory
bonds that compound interest hourly.

As you wait in the San Francisco International Airport (having floated there
in the Willie Brown Memorial Blimp) you read on your pager you have 75
messages, you instruct the screen at the airport to send those messages to
your notebook.  You are on your way to Indonesia, which will take you about
an half an hour.  There you will spend several days at the beach, with your
wife, in a primitive resort with no screens.  Still, you made sure they had
back-up email.
"Go to my files," you might say as you sit in the airport," and get me
everything I've said in the last five years about Descartes.  I made a remark
with a metaphor about the law, coordinates and virtual prisons.  When you get
it, put it on the screen in blue.  Take a letter to Schultz and file a copy
at home and with the office."

But as you issue, you must also receive and it never stops.  The world flows
at increasingly faster and faster speeds.  You must match them.  Your parents
and grandparents did not have the power to make things transparent, to be
instantaneously here or there without constraints.  They, unlike you, were
the prisoners of mundane tasks.  They wrote with pens, they did addition in
their heads, they waited endlessly for things that come to you instantly,
they owned far less material possessions  than do you and they bowed to
necessity as you do not.  You love the pace, the giddy, and the continual
acceleration.  Though what is new may not be beautiful, it is marvelously
compelling, and your life is lived with the kind of excitement that your
forbears only knew of in battle and with the ease of which they could only
dream.
__________________________________________________________

The second scenario:
August, 1906, Lake Como, Italy
You are an English politician, a member of Parliament suffering patiently
between cabinet posts, on holiday in Italy.  In the two days it has take to
reach your destination, you have fallen completely out of touch.  The letters
you receive are in ecru and blue envelopes with crests, and varicolored wax
seals over ribbon.  Now and then, a letter will arrive typewritten.  This you
associate with the telegraph office, or official documents.  Most of the
letters that arrive you recognize the author by the penmanship.

During your holiday you will climb hills, visit chapels, attend half a dozen
formal dinners and read many books, several thousand pages all told.  If upon
reading a classical history you come across a Greek phrase, you pause 
because your memory has been trained with lifelong diligence.  You know tens
of thousands of words in your own language and also enough Latin, Greek,
French and German to read the classics.

You cannot imagine a life without hardships and without the saving power of
your imagination.  You have learned to enjoy the attribute of patience in
itself, for it slows time, honors tranquillity, and lets you savor a world in
which you are clearly aware that your passage here is but a brief candle.

I must say although I am deeply inclined to favor the second paradigm, I do
realize we can never go back to 1906.  But I am also inclined to muse on the
thousands of choices each of us has to make to live successfully in the year
2000.  As my life seems to be moving faster and faster, I need to make
choices that honors the person who seeks a balance, an equilibrium, the
natural.

If we are going to be truly honest in our choices, we need to be convinced
that we have the power to choose what technology will touch us and our
children.  Is our goal ease, progress, and advancement no matter the cost to
our communities, and our families of the stress that is created by that
progress ?  In the late 18th century Scottish philosopher Adam Ferguson
reminded us, human beings are most attached to each other where material
conveniences are the least accessible.  Many would agree there is a decline
in civic spirit, in manners, in civility, as there has been a growth in
technology. People do not get out and vote, most people don't know their
neighbors, many invent excuses to avoid jury duty.

As a religious leader I worry for the community of humanity.  I know a woman
who sits in front of her computer on the Internet from 6:30 to 10:30 every
evening she possible can.  I know a family that paid more than a $1,000 for
computer soft ware one month, and barely scraped by to come up with the money
for a family vacation.   I counseled a family on my Internship who had a
daughter who had committed suicide because her 400+ page Master's
dissertation, that had taken her 3 years to write had been wiped out on the
hard drive of her computer.

Isolated incidents.  True.  More prevalent than we ever imagine?  Maybe.  One
of my colleagues wrote in our minister's journal that after his computer had
been down for a week, he realized that perhaps the bane of the new
technologies is not that they complicate our living, but that we allow
ourselves to be distracted from the joy of living in common things.  Common
things like a spiritual practice, talking quietly and not just at
commercials, on the porch with loved ones, walking, reading, sitting near a
fire, learning to play an instrument, crafts, planting a garden, being alone
and quiet with ourselves.

I can't say, hey - I wish I could have been born in another time or another
place.  I too have to laugh with the young mother who heard her child's
prayer at night before she went to bed, as the little girl prayed the Our
Father, she ended the prayer  with the words, "and deliver us some
emails.Amen."  I work on a computer, I listen to CDs, the radio and watch
movies.  But I want to be in control, I want and need to save time for my
spiritual practice, my garden, walking, talking and being caught up in a
sunset. Technology is a tool, a sharp two-sided tool.  Walk cautiously into
Radio Shack and Ultimate Electronics and remember. "You've Got Mail" that's
true, but there are messages for you also in the people around you,  trees,
the rivers, your quiet side of the soul. After you have answered your emails,
take time for those messages too.