Strictly speaking, this ought to be called “Electronic Ethics,” but the title “Electric Ethics” was just too catchy to pass up.
It’s not hard to find a Christian perspective, or ten, on every issue under the sun. But one issue conspicuously absent from Christian reflection is the issue of how we use our technology. Desktops, laptops, gaming systems, TVs, mp3 players, smartphones and even dumbphones occupy an ever-increasing portion of our time, money, and attention. Nearly 60% of American households own a gaming system and overall time spent gaming is up 7% from last year (source: Nielson Wire). Half of American adults own a smartphone, up from a third last year (source: Pew). Personal and mobile electronic use is clearly becoming part of the fabric of our society, but it’s still difficult to find much in the way of Christian reflections on this technology.
And so this is what I’ll be doing this summer: research on personal electronic use through a Christian lens. It’s probably relevant at this point to explain why I’m using a Christian lens. I’m a religion major focusing on the Christian tradition, and as a result the ethical system I know best is the Christian one. And while the Christian ethical framework is unique and particular, it’s my belief that it can also add a lot to the larger discussion on the ethics of personal computing. I will be exploring several issues, including:
- how personal electronics are markers of social class and creators of social stratification
- the ways in which this technology impacts our understanding and practice of community
- how personal electronics provide ways to escape reality or ease suffering
- the use of conflict minerals in computer construction
- how this technology changes how we think and process the world around us
- the ways internet usage can be detrimental and useful for how Christians worship and gather together
- the impact of the personal electronics culture on the environment
- how the boundaries between nations are influenced by personal electronics
Because I want my research to be as practical as possible, I will interview many of my contacts in the the IT and programming worlds, along with several of my contacts who participate in intentional Christian communities. These interviews will inform my research as I deconstruct our current culture of personal computing, offering reflection from within the framework of Christian ethics. The goal here is simple: to say something practical and useful. I hope to be part of the conversation of how Christians and others can use technology well at an individual, communal, public, national, and global level. Starting in June, I’ll be posting every week with a new topic for discussion. It is my hope that you’ll join me in conversation in the coming weeks. My first posts will focus on defining “Christian ethics” and “personal electronics culture,” and these posts will set the stage for the discussions to follow.
John McLean
John McLean is a rising senior majoring in Religion at Duke University. He is concentrating on textual and theological studies in early Christianity. John grew up in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina and now lives near the Research Triangle Park. He loves woodcarving in his spare time and focuses on traditional woodworking, making hand-carved spoons and bowls. He will be living and researching from Durham, NC, and looks forward to seeing how this project develops.
Hey John,
I like your project and the way you seem to be approaching it–particularly the way you plan to use the blog platform. I wonder if you have any thoughts on this exercise as it relates to your project. You seem to be really integrating technology into your project in thoughtful ways, but I’m looking at this blog that I got to from the Kenan Institute for Ethics’ website and thinking that you’re also kind of beholden to how others want you to use technology.
I recently watched a PBS documentary on the Amish, which I highly recommend because it’s beautifully shot and pretty interesting. One of the takeaways for me was that ignoring most of the last 150 years’ worth of technology may have solved some problems, but notable issues arise when a community turns its back on the world as it is. I was fascinated, but I left unconvinced that the Amish were closer to the answer than other communities of faith (or reason for that matter–I’m being a little cute here…sorry).
Obviously, you’re not focusing on the kind of extreme rejection of technology that I devoted the previous paragraph to, but I’m interested to hear your thoughts on how much power we have to draw the line on technological use. I’m assuming you’re writing this blog in this space because it’s part of the deal for your fellowship. In other words, you’ve found ways to use an exogenous stipulation so that it enhances your project, but there’s still a very soft, benign kind of coercion there.
Looking forward to engaging in future posts!
Christian,
I am writing this as part of a requirement by the Kenan Institute for Ethics, and there is a sort of benign coercion at work here, emphasis on the benign. I’m not at all used to the blog format — I’ve never blogged before and it’s going to take a while before I’m comfortable with the format (this is probably part of the reason I’ve delayed so long in my reply to your comment, for which I do apologize). Having said that, I think I will be able to use the blog format to my advantage for my research.
I watched the PBS documentary on the Amish that you linked to. It was very interesting, but you’re right in saying that the documentary leaves you with a strong sense that the Amish don’t have it right. My goal with this research is to try and arrive at a non-Luddite way to engage with the culture of personal computing.
Our ability to “draw the line” on technological use is limited in some senses by the fact that personal computers, tablets,smartphones, etc, (with the exception of certain specialized applications) are essentially about communication. In the same way that language requires boundaries, our use of computers requires boundaries. It would be impossible to communicate with another without a shared language and thus all the rules that a language requires, and if personal computing is about communication then it follows that the way we use our computers has rules. For instance, the blogging platform has developed a very specific set of rules — don’t follow them, and one’s blog will not gain any viewers. To change the blog platform would require a change in language, which is a broad cultural change. Formatting essays for an academic setting has a set of rules, and so if one wants to submit an academic essay, one must first purchase Microsoft Word or learn to use LaTeX — one must “learn the language,” so to speak. So how we use computers is bounded by the culture within which we use computers. I suppose that’s where I would begin thinking about where and how we “draw the line” on technological issues.
–John
John, I find fascinating your linkage between computers and language. It’s particularly intriguing to think, then, about the symbolic uses of language – not just the “what” that is being communicated, but the “how” of it being communicated. Humans make evaluations of other humans all the time based on how they use the language they use – what socioeconomic status they are, how educated they are, what part of the world or country they are from, etc – and then, frequently, we make decisions about what is the appropriate way to behave towards a person based on those assumptions. [In many ways, Pierre Bourdieu's "cultural capital" is relevant here, but also Wittgenstein (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/) for his work on language and rules and the importance of taking into account the context of language use.]
Your post inspires, therefore, lots of questions. 1) How does computing technology communicate through its very substance – its appearance, its status in a broader culture (like Apple vs. PC, to use a simple example, or smartphones vs. ones that simply are phones)? Does a Christian ethics require addressing this issue differently than other ethical frameworks might require? 2) You say “how we use computers is bounded by the culture within which we use computers”, but in fact, most of us are using computers in many cultural contexts – as students, as workers, as family members, as friends, as people of faith, as sports fans, as political actors, as buyers and sellers – and we’re using them both for what they can do technologically and for what they do for us in terms of our own identity. How do you address this kind of “multi-culturalism” in your project, since each context might have somewhat different rules? 3) Your comparison to language has me thinking about it almost the way linguists talk about “code-switching” – what possibilities do computing technologies create and what constraints do they place on the human ability to cross cultural boundaries and take on new identities? How are these possibilities and constraints addressed through Christian ethics?
Thanks very much for your interesting reply to Christian’s comment! I look forward to reading more.
Lou,
I love the fact that you bring up Wittgenstein — I’m familiar with some of his basic insights but haven’t had a chance to read him yet. Please correct me if I’m wrong here, but as I understand it, one of the things he argues is that the meaning of a word is bound up it its use, and vice versa. This is why a word such as marriage has a much stronger cultural force than does “lifelong domestic partnership.”
To respond to your questions:
1) I think one of the main reasons that most Duke students own Apple products is because Apple products represent very distinct cultural aspirations that line up nicely with the generalizations one could make about Duke students. When I think about addressing the intersection of our personal computing culture and social class structure, my first instinct is to start with the class difference reflected and created by Apple’s marketing strategy. Opening up a Mac instead of a PC in a classroom or interview immediately communicates several pieces of information, most notably the social class to which you likely belong. I can’t speak to how other ethical traditions respond to issues such as this, but I believe the Christian ethical tradition requires us to make a response here, even if that response is simply to acknowledge that distinct social classes and divisions occur and that how we use personal electronics contributes to those divisions. For instance, my Christian Ethics professor from this past year, Stanley Hauerwas, argues that humor is a possible response to dealing with these class differences which are so embedded in our culture.
That computing technology communicates through its very substance is evident in the difference between a conversation on twitter vs this conversation on a blog. Or the difference between a phone conversation via texts or via voice call or video call. I’m not going to point out the differences here because I think for the most part they’re fairly self evident. The physical and virtual mediums cannot help but affect how we communicate as well as what we communicate.
2) When I said “how we use computers is bounded by the culture within which we use computers” I was thinking about the broad culture of the modern project, which is a culture of individualism that presupposes its own universality. But you’re absolutely right to say that I need to consider the various cultural contexts within which computers are used. I think this is where my interviews will come in handy — because I am a product of a very distinct set of cultural circumstances, it will be necessary for me to talk to people who operate within different cultural paradigms to begin to engage this “multi-culturalism.”
3) I need to think more about this. But one of the things that immediately comes to mind is FOSS — Free and Open Source Software. When I interned with Red Hat working on their community linux distribution called Fedora, I collaborated with people across the world in multiple countries. Most of these people didn’t work for Red Hat but were volunteers — the code base for Fedora is maintained largely by an international community of volunteer developers and users. This international collaboration does not happen, cannot happen, with a closed-source business model. So open source provides a new avenue for cultural intersection across national boundaries. At the same time, I suspect that the developers working on Fedora share many cultural similarities — linux isn’t exactly a mainstream technology, and so its ability to facilitate crossing cultural and social boundaries is limited by and limits its users. Apple’s iMessage platform is another example of how a particular technology opens up new opportunities for communication across boundaries (free and easy communication with basically anyone who owns an Apple product), but also places constraints on such communication (iMessage only works on Apple devices).
As for how Christian ethics addresses these possibilities and constraints, I think there’s a lot of room for conversation here. I would tend to argue that the more open the technology the better, but this is a place for further research.
–John
Thanks, John, for your thoughtful response. Rather than prolong our discussion on this thread, I’ll look forward to future posts. I’ve already enjoyed and am musing about your post from Sunday, in which you defined the basic foundations of Christian ethics.