what sin is, right?
Right. Yes. What I tried to do in iGods is kind of
go back to the core questions that the compa-
nies that dominate our lives — whether they be
Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple — I tried to go
back to the core ideas that drive the companies
or that drive their decision making. So with, say,
Google, they are trying to organize information.
They are trying to help us find our way around the
internet, how to read this massive, unending book
that is the web pages of the world.
With Facebook, they actually started with the
question of how to connect to each other, which it
seems like a good thing, like, “Oh, how to make it
easier to connect each other; that’s kind of lovely.”
But how did they go about it? They asked us to
answer the question, “What’s your status?” That
was the original question. They immediately said,
“Well, a status update is just telling people where
you are and what you are doing.” Ok, but am I
also seeking status in that? Am I seeking to kind
of being known? Am I just revealing who I am, in
a kind of neutral way, or am I seeking something
from others that maybe they can’t deliver? Am
I seeking a certain kind of validation? A certain
kind of notice? A certain kind of love that per-
haps a software isn’t designed to deliver. Can we
be saved by better code? I don’t know. It may be
putting too much faith in our technology. We
are asking it to do more than it possibly can. The
title iGods is really asking that question. To what
degree have we both idolized the billionaires
who have created these technologies and to what
degree have we placed too much faith in these
technologies’ ability to answer life’s most press-
ing questions and our deepest heartfelt needs?
And then to what degree have they promised us
a certain kind of “divination,” to make ourselves
into igods of our own making through this pur-
suit of, say, followers in the case of Twitter or even
just simply friends in the case of something like
Facebook. Can we really feel both liked and loved
through code? The promise is sort of there. Gosh,
I can like and be liked. I can love and be loved in
my clicking on these buttons, and yet it hasn’t
quite delivered that deeper transformative satis-
faction that I think only both a transcendent and
very present God can deliver.
Absolutely. That makes it come to mind
that we are relational creatures, but I
guess it feels good to be liked. But does
that really, is that really, what we have
to replace human interaction? It is like
when you are looking out of a window and
the physics of it is that you are not actu-
ally seeing those things beyond, it’s going
through a glass and then you are seeing it
refracted through the glass and then you
are seeing it, and I don’t want to get all
complicated in science, but that’s kind of
the way that this is as well. Someone likes
you, but that’s not actually someone liking
you. That’s someone pushing a button.
It’s kind of a relationship, but it doesn’t express
the fullness of the human experience. I sort of
feel like it could be that people of faith, as people
who believe in the importance of the body, who
believe that we are created by God, who believe
in the power of a hug, who believe in the power of
physical presence in the same way that Jesus took
on human form and said, “I’m going to incarnate
the Gospel for you.” We are going to be people
who continue to believe that physical presence
makes a difference. We believe in the power of
a cup of cold water. We believe in the power of
chicken soup. We believe in the power of sitting
with someone through a season of grief, not just
clicking a sad emoji in social media. We know
that’s not sufficient. Prayers via social media are
great, but presence, actually getting in your car,
going over to someone’s house, sitting with them,
taking them out for a cup of coffee, taking them
to the airport, actual physical acts of kindness, of
hospitality. Acts of grace, of sacrifice, be this kind
of aroma of humanity, this kind of rare and beau-
tiful thing that we increasingly both long for and
can’t get through our devices.
I’m sure they will come up with another tool that
does that for us, but I doubt it’s going to feel as
good.
“In parents handing
devices to adolescents, to
their children, without a
manual, without a users
guide, we have in a sense
trained a generation to
look down rather than to
look up.”
There was that robot companion movement,
right? No one was ever going to feel lonely, because
we would all have kind of robot friends, robot
dogs, to sit with us. It hasn’t quite worked out that
way, has it?
It’s creepy. I originally read iGods, which
was part of the inspiration of this issue,
because it clarified how people are so
caught up in “self” and their devices. We
are talking about how they are getting
their relations from a like button, but
they actually forget that there are people
around. I mean, sometimes people will be
standing in a crowded room, or even be in
a conversation or visiting someone, and
then they are off to their devices. With
personal interaction people send subtle
clues that they need to talk about some-
thing important, or need that hug that
you were talking about, and they don’t
really see those others clues because they
are too busy. I think that turns around on
them, as well, when there are times where
they might actually need a real person,
but that person is too busy for them. And
what are they busy with? Seeking a rela-
tionship through technology while they
have someone sitting with them. Are we
losing our humanity to this tool?
In parents handing devices to adolescents, to
their children, without a manual, without a users
guide, we have in a sense trained a generation to
look down rather than to look up. That looking
up is both to the person on our right and on our
left, a person perhaps in front of us, and then even
more to looking up to God and to sort of look up
for our direction. Most days we start with the digi-
tal device. We check in with what’s been going on
online rather than aligning ourselves to God. The
need to, perhaps, power down in order to power