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It is difficult to ask cautious questions about modern technology without appearing like a luddite or an technophobe, but as technology increasingly mediates our relationships it’s important to observe how we interact with our devices and what our relationships to them have become.

I am quite the opposite of a luddite – from my first halting keystrokes on a computer I was hooked. My technophilia eventually catapulted me into a career immersed in technology. Now a director at a company which produces virtual classes for corporate clients to train people over the internet, I work at the intersection of technology and education, developing cutting edge services to train thousands of people to be better technologists.

Work vs. life

While the luddites resisted the mechanization of craft, I am not suggesting a cautious view of the knowledge-worker who works all day on the computer, who codes games, or calls colleagues on her cell phone to discuss the next version of the program. Rather it is the virtualization of the rest of our lives which should be examined. Of concern is not that our work will increasingly be devoid of soul, but that our lives will.

It is a necessary evolution that our work becomes increasingly mechanized, cold and digitally driven as we are able to do more and explore more widely with the tools at our disposal. But as our work becomes more invested with technology we are seeing a corresponding shift in how we play, communicate, create, and entertain ourselves.

The line between work and play, between function and distraction is blurred as our relationship with technology becomes more sophisticated. My cell phone allows me to reach my family at any time, but more people from work use it to call me. My car is not just a transportation tool but an emotional extension and identification for me. I have a computer to do work, but end up playing games on it. Email “replaces” spending time with someone regularly. When the scenery is spectacular I am more interested in getting a good photo on my digital camera than I am in simply enjoying it.

In many ways it is the development of miraculous technology which brings work and play closer together. Devices are multi-functional allowing them to easily “transform” from a tool to a gadget and back again. We are able to spend extended periods of time interacting not with people directly but with devices which connect to other devices which connect to people.  The more time we spend on devices the more we “learn” how to interact with them, and the less we learn about how to interact with people with whom we spend a converse duration of time.

What are we learning?

The success of science and technology is achieved through "divide and conquer".

Split the atom, isolate the gene, sample the wave, compress the file.

Efficiency, speed and power are purchased with every division. What we learn is an intellectual kind of development, more abstract thinking, binary logic, a mathematical zero-sum explanation of life. We strive to make machines which can outperform even our own intellectual capacity. As we build them and as we work with them we learn to be more like them, we learn to act and interact with a kind of machine pattern. We learn to process information in certain ways, to write certain ways, to play and create in specific ways which are driven not by the spirit, but by the protocols of our technology.

Humanity brings many great things into being in the world, among them is our keen intellect, but the most precious is our spirit. As computers get faster and more complex the distinction of human intellect will be obliterated, for eventually they will out perform our ability to calculate, synthesize and rationalize. What will remain the stewardship of humanity will be the sacred, the spirit.

Spirit and moral use of technology

Spiritual development is a necessary balance to intellectual development. As our intellectual development increases with our relationship to technology and scientific pursuits we must strive to also develop our spirit so that we may be able to apply our intellect in the right way for the service of humanity.

With the understanding of how to split the atom we realized an awesome intellectual milestone, but as evidenced by our nuclear weapons programs compared to our nuclear power programs the necessary spiritual development was inadequate enough to direct our discovery in a moral way.


Observation

Working on our day-to-day relationship with technology is an important step toward developing an independent and free spirit which will allow us to use our technology from a place of moral intention.

We can begin by simply observing our own day-to-day relationship to technology.

Questions: How much time do I spend interfacing with a screen or a speaker, rather than a person? How do I feel after I get off the phone, or log-off from working on the computer? Do I find myself frustrated with the technology or the person on the other side of it? Is my technology getting my attention, or is the person I am communicating with receiving it? How is my desire for technology (a new phone, car, TV, computer, iPod, microwave, etc...) different from my desire for a person? How much does my desire drive my decisions about how I spend my money and time?  Am I making conscious choices about how to use my computer, phone, iPod, TV, car?


Experiment

It's often hard to bring awareness to our relationship with technology because it's so ubiquitous. Here are some experiments which may help to reveal it.

Experiment A: Stopping multitasking. If I am on the phone, I can just pay attention to the act of talking without doodling, walking, or filing papers as I talk. In a meeting with someone I can pay attention to the content of the meeting without watching the TV, listening to music or checking my email. While driving I can focus on the act of driving, without listening to the radio or calling someone on my cell phone. If I want to listen to music I can sit in a comfortable chair, put down my book or magazine, turn off my phone and simply focus my attention on the music. I can discover much about how technology makes me feel and about my relationship to it by simply being focused on single experiences.

As I begin to explore my relationship with technology I will get a subtle feeling in my stomach, or a tiny voice in my head which urges me to question at a deeper level how I relate to a certain device. I can follow this feeling and perform an experiment to explore where this feeling is coming from.

Experiment B: This experiment is to pause or limit my interaction with a device or service. Let us say I have this feeling about my email. I have noticed I check it all the time, and even feel some anxiety around not being able to check it. For the next week whenever I have the urge to check my email, I resist checking it immediately. I can pause for five or ten minutes and just feel what comes up in me. I feel anxiety -- where is that coming from? Why? What makes this feel so urgent? Could it wait? Why not? If I checked it would I be distracted from something else uncomfortable; perhaps silence? Once I sit with these questions for a few minutes, I am free to check my email or meet whatever my particular technological fix was. Over time this experiment can help reveal much about my relationships with technology.

Sacrifice

So what if I realize I have an unhealthy relationship to a device?

If I have become deeply involved with a device it can be very difficult to find a way to relate to it in a balanced way again. It takes a great courage and strength to change our habits especially about technology which we have come to rely on. If it becomes clear to me that the challenge is too great, an effective yet painful way to move through it is to give up the particular piece of technology.

If I had an unhealthy relationship with my cell phone, perhaps I would cancel my plan, and only use a home and office phone. If I can’t stop watching TV every night, I would sell my TV and not go out to the movies. If I obsess about my car, I would sell it and ride the bus.

I realized through working with these experiments that I had a deeply dependent relationship with my computer. I use one for eight hours a day in my work, and when I got home I would get back on the computer till I went to sleep. Once I realized this I knew I had to make a sacrifice to bring back a healthy balance in my life. I packed up my computer at home, put it in the closet, stopped paying for an internet connection, and began the process of reintegrating reading books, cooking, and meditation into my life. It was hard at first, but now it's hard to believe it took me so long to discover "the real world".

What is important in a sacrifice is that it is made. We go through a process of growth with our sacrifice which is important and difficult. Once balance has been restored we can consciously begin a new relationship with the thing we sacrificed if we still find a need to interact with it. After six months of sacrifice if things have come back into balance with my relationship to it, I can then re-evaluate; do I want to reengage with it? Can I maintain balance? Do I need or want to enter back into a relationship with it?

We can con ourselves into thinking we can’t live without technology. We can. And we must, we must be able to come to technology not out of need, or habit, but out of choice, out of a clear knowing that this is a tool that we must use for our work in the world.

Free will and choice

Our goal through these exercises is to become aware of our relationship with technology, and to establish a healthy balance between our need to develop intellectually and our need to develop spiritually. If our lives are dominated and devoted to our devices we cannot spend the time, effort and energy we need to on our spiritual development.

Once we re-find our balance with intellect and spirit we can approach the machine with our free will, we can make a choice to work on it or not. Our capacity for free will gives us the ability to remain outside the machine, to use it rather than be used by it.

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