technology – Allaxis Partners

Conscious of Marshall McLuhan’s famous statement, “the medium is the message,” a friend recently shared these thoughts with me:

We are about to enter into a new phase of virtual technology. The iPhone 13 mini is supposed to be the end of the line. What is next is goggles. Someone from my high school reunion wrote me that she is “hooked” on OCULUS II. In keeping with the insight that “the medium is the message,” I think we can say that we become what we do. If we spend our time doing virtual things, we will become virtual people. If we spend our time doing things in the physical world, we become real people in that world.

There is no better time than Christmas to reflect on our use of digital media, for Christmas (at least in its original, non-commercial meaning) is the commemoration of the earthly birth of Jesus Christ, whom His followers believe to be God—timeless and bound by nothing created, able to alter created matter instantaneously by His word alone. From a faithful perspective, the birth of Jesus transformed the world. Even from a secular perspective, it altered the course of human history in a profound way—not instantaneously like a “viral” but ephemeral GIF but slowly and enduringly over time, person to person.

The myriad bits and bytes zipping across cyberspace supported so many relationships and so much work during the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. Digital media were a gift in so many ways, chiefly in helping us avoid infection while maintaining relationships. But in what ways are digital media detrimental to us? How is a remote relationship different than a local one? What dimension do we lose when a relationships shifts from 3D to 2D? What are the human limits for remote relationships? How many can one maintain before the time they take negatively impacts one’s local life? Who gets to define what “community” means and how? Lots of questions, but these are questions of our time.

Along with Jesus’ passion, His Nativity is for faithful Christians one of the greatest expressions of love in 3D—and a paradoxical “scandal” of particularity—local, yet drawing magi from afar and angels from above. As we gather during these days—whether at a church or a home, whether for a dinner or a party, for Christmas caroling in our neighborhood’s streets or hot cocoa in a cul-de-sac—we convey the message of these days in the truest way: in the medium of our flesh.

There’s a difference between knowing someone and knowing about someone. It’s the difference between persons and pixels.

The Greek word for “person”—prosopon—also means “face”. Before the digital era, if you wanted an image of someone’s face, you had to hire a painter or sculptor to create it. Then came photography and now—digital images, which are essentially visual displays of data.

Digital images are getting better and better, and as a result, the conversation about digital privacy is getting louder. As Seth Godin asserted in a recent podcast episode that inspired this reflection, people don’t like to be surprised by what a stranger could know about them.

But knowing about someone is not the same as knowing a person.

What’s the difference? Being present. Being attentive. Being curious. And the magical reciprocity that happens when while listening deeply to someone else, you get to know yourself again or in a new way, simultaneously affirming the humanity of both yourself and the other person.

We will make the digital images even clearer and the machines even more efficient and the robots even smarter. Because we can. Marketing based on personal information will get even more precise. But as this happens, I hope we will ask ourselves the kinds of questions the Amish ask and avoid falling into an unconscious Faustian pact with technology:

What might I lose from buying a product or service that is done by a machine rather than a person? Is what I might gain worth what I might lose? Where else could I get what I might lose?

If they don’t already, the computers will eventually know more about us than we know about ourselves. But they will never know us, for we are unique and unrepeatable mysteries, always changing and becoming someone different. Of course, we will try to program this into the algorithm, trying to close the gap between a person’s rate of change and the data trail left by that change. But the created thing, no matter how powerful or intelligent it becomes, will never truly know its creator.

Because to know a person truly is to know that you can never truly know that person.

Click here for Seth Godin’s thoughts on digital privacy.

Click here for a short article about the Amish and new technologies.

Tag Archive for: technology

Pixels and Persons