The subject of technology and how it relates to the Church certainly isn’t new, and there are a ton of different books and blogs and so on out there that have their own spin on it. The reason for that, I think, is because technology is a moving target. It’s constantly changing, and therefore how we think about it, how we approach it, and ultimately how we use it changes as well.

Technology, we said, is “the human activity of using tools to transform God’s creation for practical purposes.” It’s a means to an end, a bridge from one world to a better one, allowing us to overcome some sort of problem to accomplish a goal we couldn’t have on our own. Defining it further, we broke it down into four separate layers: technology as hardware, technology as manufacturing, technology as methodology, and technology as social usage. The first two layers, we concluded, are inherently neutral; a shovel is just a shovel. However, the knowledge used to create those tools and how the tools are used are most definitely not neutral; how we approach those various tools is determined by our own internal values but also has the ability to reshape those values over time.

We said that people inevitably think of technology in terms of either instrumentalism (the idea that tools are neutral and therefore interchangeable) or determinism (the idea that technology is an “unstoppable power” that “operates independently of human choices”). Depending on where people fall along that spectrum, a certain amount of conflict can arise. Typically the newer the technology, the more varied opinions there are of it and therefore more disagreement with how exactly it should be used. And sometimes even the mere presence of a new technology can act as a disruptive force that can create conflict.

And one of the most disruptive technologies in all of human history is that of the Internet.

Virtualization.

There are obvious pitfalls for Christians living in the Internet age. While we have greater access to information than ever before, that information is not always beneficial to us, and the way we process it profoundly impacts the way we function offline. We’re gradually losing our ability to distinguish between knowledge and information, and with the ever-increasing tidal wave of stimuli we encounter on a daily basis, our ability to make wise decisions is becoming impaired. Also, many of us have mastered the art of scanning text but find it harder and harder to read with great depth. And with constant access to all our various Internet-connected gadgets, disconnecting is sometimes next to impossible.

But even beyond the physiological aspects, the Internet has a number of social implications. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter affect how we see ourselves and how others view us. As Dyer states:

[A] Facebook profile transforms your identity into one that fits within its framework. When we use an online service like Facebook, we are, in effect, taking our identity and pushing it through that medium. Like meat put through a sausage grinder, what comes out on the other end is both like and unlike what we started with.

As we continue to fill out our profiles, add pictures, quotes, and favorite music, we are creating an identity that is closer to the “real” us and yet still not truly us. We then use that identity to interact with other people who have gone through a similar identity-shaping process.

The result is a distorted view of ourselves and the world around us, which can have serious social repercussions. It’s been said that we tend to compare our insides with other people’s outsides. If that’s true, then with social networking, we’re comparing our insides to a highly filtered, selective view of other people’s outsides. If we lost by comparison before, then there’s absolutely no hope for us now.

It’s also way to easy to get caught up in the metrics of the Internet: how many Facebook friends we have, how many Twitter followers, how many blog subscribers, and on and on. As I’ve mentioned before, sometimes the worst offenders of this are Christians themselves, who take every opportunity to promote themselves, repeatedly tweet their latest blog post, and build their “personal brand”, somehow forgetting that it’s not their own identity that’s important but that of their Savior.

But does that mean that the Internet and social media are completely without merit? Certainly not. While online connections through Facebook, Twitter, and email do not in and of themselves constitute “community”, they can certainly enhance it and make it stronger. But the line between the corrupting nature of technology and the redeeming nature of it isn’t always clear. To know which tools to use and how best to use them, we need some sort of framework.

Recommendations.

Dyer concludes his book with a set of recommendations for how we as Christians should approach technology:

• Valuation – Continually returning to the Scriptures to find our Christian values and identity. Is this tool or app or service in line with what we say we believe?
• Experimentation – Trying it out to see how it works. Only through using it will we begin to understand its “technology as usage”.
• Limitation – Placing appropriate boundaries on it. We saw in Chapter 10 how dangerous it is to overdepend on technology, believing it can solve all our problems. Every technology comes with an opportunity cost.
• Togetherness – Using the technology as part of a genuine community, not in place of it. Instead of making it all about extending our personal brand, it should be about bringing the body of Christ closer together as a family.
• Cultivation – Supporting those who are leading the way so that we can continue our mission of cultivating God’s creation.

We started out this process by asking how the Church should relate to technology. Should it blindly embrace it in order to appear more relatable and relevant? Or should we reject it because of its ability to amplify our innate selfish, sinful nature? Or is the answer somewhere in between, accepting it in some cases while rejecting it in others?

I said at one point that the “in between” answer was somewhat of a non-answer. But I don’t think it is. We’ve seen how God can work through technology for redeeming purposes even when we’re all too willing to do the opposite. So to reject it — if that were even possible — would be to deny God’s grace and providence. But to embrace it without discernment would be to reject His wisdom and command to cultivate the earth. The answer, then, is to approach technology intentionally, basing its methodology and usage on our biblical values and not the other way around.

Technology is constantly changing. The tools and techniques that I use day in and day out today will not be the same ones my children use. But that doesn’t mean we have to automatically throw them out. While these tools can be used for rebellion, building man-made cities in the wilderness as a way to separate ourselves from our Creator, they can also be used for redemption, extending God’s Kingdom and His plans for those He created.

We’ve been given the tools. What we do with them is up to us.

Previously:
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 1: Perspective
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 2: Imagination
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 3: Reflection
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 4: Definition
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 5: Rebellion
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 6: Approach
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 7: Redemption
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 7: Redemption (cont’d)
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 8: Mediums
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 9: Restoration
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 10: Technicism

We’ve talked at length about both the “redeeming” and “corrupting” potential of technology and concluded that it’s not neutral; as it changes, we’re changed as well. How we view technology, then, becomes a critical question. Do we view it through the filter of instrumentalism, the idea that the tools themselves are neutral and it’s only the usage that’s not? Or do we approach it from the side of determinism, the belief that the progress of technology is an “unstoppable power” that “operates independently of human choices”?

For the Church, that’s not an easy question. Yet, if technology is defined as “the human activity of using tools to transform God’s creation for practical purposes”, then it would seem as though the choice of which tools the Church uses is absolutely critical.

Mediums.

We started out this discussion with a central question: How does the Church respond to technological changes in society, particularly as it relates to the Internet and social media? Does it embrace this technology, seeing it as a way to relate to the world around us, or does it reject it because of its corruptive powers? Or perhaps it’s somewhere in between.

Clearly with any communication technology, the message is of upmost importance. And I think it’s fair to say that for the Church that message still is and should always be that of the Gospel. But it’s not just the words we say but how we say them that makes a difference. Therefore, we have to consider the medium.

The Internet and social media have created whole new mediums through which we can communicate, and although many churches have begun using social media to some degree or another, it hasn’t been without a struggle. Why is that?

Formality. Churches are traditionally traditional. They are often formal, rigid institutions that practice a formal, rigid ideology. And that formality doesn’t always work in a dynamic, always-connected, über-social culture like ours. As Dyer explains:

In general, more advanced communication technology requires fewer steps and, therefore, there are fewer social conventions required for its use. When there are more built-in social conventions around using a medium, we tend to treat it more formally and what we communicate tends to be more significant (as in writing a letter). Conversely, when a newer technology removes the need for these social conventions, it also removes the sense of formality (as in a text message).

Further complicating matters, different social platforms have different usage conventions. Twitter, for example, limits tweets to 140 characters, including hyperlinks. Then there are the “@” replies, retweets, and hashtags. And up until recently you had to host any photos on a separate service like Flickr or Instragram and use your own URL-shortener such as bit.ly. None of those conventions exist in Facebook, which explains why so many people who are extremely comfortable with Facebook still don’t “get” Twitter. In order to use it effectively, you have to speak its language.

And of course, that language is constantly changing. Twitter today looks nothing like it did three years ago, and three years from now it’ll be completely different than it is today. The same with Facebook, Google+, and every other platform out there. So it’s not just enough to learn the various social “languages” of the Internet, you have to be adapt as those languages evolve. My very first real Bible, for example, was a King James Version, a translation that’s been around for 400 years. It’s extremely formal, and frankly I’m not sure how anyone alive today can make heads or tails of it. Why? Because the English language has changed since then. A lot. Thankfully, today more modern translations like the NIV and NLT are available, but if those weren’t an option, I think a lot of Christians would have a really hard time understanding the Bible.

The Church, therefore, has to be able to adapt to the ever-changing, informal nature of the Internet, including the ever-changing social conventions of its different platforms, but it has to do so while still maintaining its core identity and ideology. It has to be current and relevant and modern without giving up 2,000 years of tradition. Simple, right?

Difficulty. The more labor-intensive and costly it is to communicate, the more weight those words will carry. I read somewhere that if you want to get a politician’s attention about an issue, there’s a certain hierarchy to contacting them. An in-person visit is the equivalent of so many written letters. A written letter is worth so many phone calls. A phone call is worth so many emails. And an email is worth so many Facebook posts/tweets/etc. The more time and effort something takes to communicate, the more costly it is and therefore the more valuable. If talk is cheap, then tweets are practically worthless.

The Church is used to dealing in slow, labor-intensive communication methods, and it often still has the mindset that that’s the only way to communicate. After all, this is God’s Word we’re talking about here. But we live in a society with a very short attention span and an expectation of immediacy and convenience. Those slower forms of communication are still more way more valuable, but the Church has to be able to communicate through the faster forms as well. All without sacrificing the value of the message.

Speed. But it’s not just enough to use faster and easier forms of communication such as email, text messaging, and Facebook, the words have to be timely. This is a particular problem with something like Twitter, which oftens moves at a far greater (often real-time) pace. This is what makes Twitter so effective at communicating breaking news such as an election, earthquake, or major sporting event. But that can be a major challenge for churches, who may not be used to moving at that kind of breakneck speed.

Dyer discusses the cultural divide being created by technology, the “conflict” or “dissonance” created when a new technology is introduced and early adopters begin shifting to it. Those who encounter a given technology later in life, he says, will tend to use it with a “thick accent”, just as a non-native speaker would speak a new language with a thick accent; they can speak it, but it’s obvious that it isn’t natural to them. Often in churches, it’s not the “technology natives” that are in charge of technology, it’s the older, wiser “non-natives”, the ones who either don’t speak the language at all or do so through an extremely heavy accent.

The result of all of this is that from the outside, the Church often appears like an older, “trying-too-hard-to-be-cool” dad who awkwardly throws around jargon he doesn’t understand to show you how hip he still is. And then we sit around and wonder why we’re losing an entire generation of young people. That’s not to say we should throw out 2,000 years of history and tradition just to be “relevant”, but if we’re supposed to adequately transform God’s creation for a greater practical purpose, at some point we have to acknowledge the value of the tools we’ve been given.

Previously:
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 1: Perspective
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 2: Imagination
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 3: Reflection
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 4: Definition
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 5: Rebellion
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 6: Approach
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 7: Redemption
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 7: Redemption (cont’d)

When I was growing up, what we knew about each other wasn’t called data. It was called interaction, stories, and information. It came in the form of experience and shared events, gossip and oral history, and reports and report cards. Not every story told about us was unbiased, accurate, or even true. …

I had high hopes for Klout when it started, though I thought they were taking something close to impossible in trying to quantify influence. I was interested to see how they would approach it, hoping they might identify something useful toward sorting the gamers and spambots from the people who were making the social web work. Did I think they would identify true influence? Not really. But I thought they might find a stone of solid respect around engagement activity that was worth looking at. It seemed a big quest, but possible. …

[But] I became more aware that my data, your data, our stories are their product and they seemed to become less aware of the responsibility that might come with a offering product like that. …

In the process of opting out, I was faced with a list of options that asked why. I was looking for one that said “Changes in the algorithm” or “Too many changes.” I found it telling that the only choice I found that might describe my reason was “I don’t like my Klout Score.” That, of course, implies something that could be all about my ego and not in the least about their product.

It seems like there’s a new social network sprouting up every day, and each comes with its own numbers and metrics and ability to share that data to other social networks. And somewhere along the way, we’ve bought into this notion that all those numbers and metrics somehow mean something, that they define who we are, not just to strangers who “follow” us on the Internet but to ourselves. When I look at myself, do I see a devoted husband, follower of Christ, and loving father? Or do I see someone that has X number of Facebook friends, Y number of Twitter followers, and a Klout score of Z?

An app called Path recently relaunched, designed to be a “personal social network” in which you’re supposed to share literally everything (including when you go to sleep and when you wake up) with your most intimate circle of social network contacts. Oh, and it gives you the option to broadcast those entries to Facebook and Twitter as well since everyone else needs to know those things, too, right? And of course, Facebook recently bought check-in-turned-travel network Gowalla in order to enhance its Timeline feature so that users can document their entire lives (going back to when they were born!) on that network. Because apparently everyone on Facebook really needs to know what I was doing when I was 2. Can I just ask a dumb question here?

What the hell is wrong with people?

I’m sorry, but as much as I like Twitter and have learned to tolerate Facebook, I can’t for the life of me figure out why I need to share every single thing that happens in my entire life with the Internet. Or why anyone would care in the first place. First of all, the lady that wrote the article is exactly right: our lives are not data. All those numbers you see everywhere? They mean absolutely nothing. So stop chasing after them.

Secondly, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to share certain experiences with other friends, and I think there’s a lot of value to be found with building connections with people on sites like Twitter. But it’s one thing to share a unique experience and quite another to tweet every frickin’ thing that happens in your life 24/7. I’ve used Foursquare in the past and actually recently considered starting to use it again, but honestly the whole idea creeps me out a little bit. When I was regularly using Gowalla and Foursquare, I did it for the game aspect, the virtual rewards in the form of pins and badges. But I hated the feeling that I was somehow obligated to check in everywhere I went just to keep adding to my numbers. Stop for gas? Check in. Go through the drive-thru? Check in. Go on a date with my wife? Check in. When do I stop posting about my life and actually start living it?

Klout is supposed to measure your online “influence”. In other words, how big your “personal brand” is and therefore how important you are, but frankly it’s just a bunch of crap. Yeah, I want people to like me, and yeah, I love feeling admired and respected for what I do. But those numbers and scores and metrics will never equal respect and admiration. Besides, whatever happened to John 3:30? ”He [Jesus] must become greater; I must become less.” I guess the Klout folks didn’t get that memo.

Again, there’s nothing wrong being on Twitter or Facebook or Foursquare or whatever. But there’s a difference between living life and tweeting about it. And the sooner we draw the distinction, the quicker we can go back to being friends, not just followers.

Previously:
Quitter
Proof that in social networks, smaller is actually better
Who are you following?
Beacon, privacy, and this blog

Up to this point, it seems like we’ve mostly focused on the corrupting potential of technology. Technology, after all, isn’t neutral. While the raw materials may be (Kline’s “technology as hardware” and “technology as manufacturing”), how they’re used certainly isn’t (“technology as methodology” and “technology as usage”). We saw in Chapter 5 how Adam and Eve used technology in the form of fig lives after sinning and how their son Cain used technology to build the first city. In each case, the point was to separate themselves from God, moving from interdependence to a state of independence.

If the story ended there, it would be easy to conclude, then, that technology is inherently a bad thing. But thankfully it doesn’t.

Redemption.

Before I go any further, I have to say I had a really hard time with this chapter. Not because I disagreed with it, but because of how it’s organized. In discussing the redemptive capacity of technology, Dyer draws on several examples from the Old Testament: Noah’s Ark, the Tower of Babel, the Ark of the Covenant, the Mosaic Law, and the Ten Commandments. All of them are great examples and really well illustrated. However, the section on the Tower of Babel feels very out of place from the rest of the chapter. It almost feels like it belongs more in the “Rebellion” chapter or possibly even as its own chapter. And there were some things I wanted to say about that section but couldn’t figure out how to fit it with everything else, so I may actually come back to it in a separate post.

Anyway…

In illustrating these various examples of redemptive technologies, we see how God chooses to use them to further His plans. God didn’t have to flood the earth, but He chose to, and more importantly chose to save Noah and his family by way of an ark. But He didn’t just tell Noah to build a big boat, He gave him very specific instructions for how to build it. And God was very specific again when it came to the Ark of the Covenant, the Temple, and the Mosaic Law. He didn’t just give His people “technology as hardware” or “technology as manufacturing”, He gave them “technology as methodology” and “technology as usage” as well, leaving nothing to chance.

What’s even more interesting is how God often uses “bleeding edge” technology in ways we wouldn’t expect. Going back to the Garden, God’s gift to Adam and Eve of animal skins to use as clothing was more advanced than anything that had been invented by mankind up to that point. The blueprints given to Noah for the Ark were more detailed than anything he could’ve come up with on his own. And Dyer points out that even the use of a written phonetic language on the tablets of the Ten Commandments was extremely advanced for that time, with the first phonetic alphabet appearing between the nineteenth and fifteenth centuries B.C. and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea around 1444 B.C.

Certainly, the examples of “redemptive” technology don’t end there. Just think about relatively modern inventions such as the flush toilet, vaccinations, pasteurization, antibiotics, and mosquito netting. We may not consider those things to be “technology”, but they are, and they save countless lives throughout the world every day. Before modern toilets and sewer systems, cholera and other diseases ran rampant in cities. Vaccinations have virtually eradicated diseases such as smallpox, polio, and measles. And something as simple as mosquito netting for people living in Africa can significantly reduce their chance of contracting malaria.

But it’s not just the “technology as hardware” that can save people’s lives, it’s what we do with it. Over the Thanksgiving break our church went into the Terry Park neighborhood of north Fort Worth and spent four days fixing up people’s homes: replacing roofs, installing new windows and air conditioning units, repairing holes, putting in new insulation and walls, fixing electrical issues, painting, and doing yard work. Again, we don’t necessarily think of those things as technology, but they perfectly fit our definition of it as “the human activity of using tools to transform God’s creation for practical purposes”. And it’s clear those practical purposes were redemptive ones, meeting the needs of our neighbors and showing God’s love in a tangible way to them.

But here’s my gripe. Yes, God uses these technologies to further His kingdom. Yes, technology can have a “redemptive capacity”. But the problem is, it’s far too easy as 21st-century Christians to believe that it’s technology in and of itself that is doing the redeeming. Instead of seeing those things as a means to an end, we see them as the end itself. We think that as a Church, we just need another website, another Twitter feed, another Facebook page, another video or app or book. If our church isn’t growing enough, maybe we need more multimedia in our worship services or our staff needs to go to another conference. Whatever the next thing is, that’s what we need. That’s what’ll save the world. I had a friend years ago who was a general contractor, and one day in Sunday school he kept repeating that he needed some kind of tool, some thing to help him be a better Christian. In a world where “there’s an app for that”, we’ve fallen for the lie that technology will fix everything.

But that’s not what the Bible says. In Dyer’s examples, God used technology as a means to His end, a bridge from one world to another. But it wasn’t the technology itself that saved His people, it was God working through that technology that saved them. When we chase after technology just for the sake of it — whether it’s “redemptive” or not — we miss the point. In Exodus 25:40, God tells Moses:

“Be sure that you make everything according to the pattern I have shown you here on the mountain.”

God wanted Moses to make, to create, to do technology, but it was only by following His blueprints that those things had any real power. In the same way, we as Christians should remember that although technology can be a good thing, although it can save lives and help us be salt and light to a world in desperate need of it, it’s only when we follow God’s plans that it can truly be called redemptive.

Previously:
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 1: Perspective
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 2: Imagination
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 3: Reflection
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 4: Definition
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 5: Rebellion
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 6: Approach

And I’d just like to point out that I called it back in September. Well, sorta.

When Gowalla relaunched as “Gowalla 4.0″ in September, it eliminated the gamification aspects of the service (the pins, stamps, and items) and even the whole check-in concept itself. Users would instead “create stories” and tag people in their stories and browse and share travel guides. The UI was gorgeous as always, but there was no longer any real incentive to use it.

As I wrote:

I’ve had some time to think about it since then, and it occurred to me that in the process of becoming unlike Foursquare, Gowalla has become a sort of stripped down version of Facebook. Of course, Facebook doesn’t have the travel guides that Gowalla does, but the user activity is much the same. I’m creating a story (status update) about some place I’ve gone, not for virtual rewards but for the sheer socialness of it. Stories are meant to be social objects complete with photos, comments, tagging of friends, and sharing beyond a user’s private profile. Sounds a lot like Facebook, no? …

Of course, you can port your Gowalla stories to Facebook or Twitter or even to Foursquare, but I guess it comes back to incentive. If the social value of my Gowalla stories is primarily only when they’re tweeted or posted to Facebook, then why create them in the first place when I can just go straight to Facebook and post them there?

So, while I didn’t directly predict that Facebook would buy Gowalla, I did explain that Gowalla had morphed into its own version of Facebook. Really, the acquisition is just a technicality.

What does that mean exactly for the two companies? Will we see Gowalla’s travel guides adopted by Facebook, maybe even some of its UI elements (stamps, etc.)? I honestly don’t know. I think it’s a good move for Facebook, though. Clearly their Timeline concept was very similar to Gowalla’s stories concept, and both are battling in the location-based-service arena against check-in juggernaut Foursquare, deal site Groupon, the still-unpredictable Google+, and even upstart Path. There’s no question Facebook wants to be the social network that everyone uses to check-in with and share their experiences, but so far that piece of the puzzle has been somewhat elusive for them. Their Timeline feature has stalled, only rolling out to developers who go out of their way to get it. And while you can check-in with Facebook’s mobile app, it’s not a core component like it is in Foursquare’s, and it doesn’t have the “discovery” aspect to it that Gowalla and Foursquare promote.

The biggest irony in this, though, is that the news of the acquisition comes exactly one day after I deleted my Gowalla account. I had stopped using it in September, and of the people I was friends with on the site, only a couple still used it, and even that was sparse. I saw several of them move to Foursquare, but ironically I actually started using Facebook more.

I guess I saw it coming.

Previously:
Gowalla and the death of the check-in
Gowalla: Going out with a thud
I can’t even pretend to care about Facebook anymore

In Chapter 5, Dyer focused on the “corrupting” part, examining how both Adam and Eve and their son Cain used technology as a way to separate themselves from God. But as Dyer illustrated, technology (“the human activity of using tools to transform God’s creation for practical purposes”) isn’t necessarily bad. It existed before the Fall, and even after the Fall, God continued to equip his people with more of it. Technology, then, must be neutral. Right?

Well, no.

We concluded in Chapter 1 that technology is, in fact, not neutral; as it changes, we change along with it. How and exactly why we change is the focus of this chapter.

Approach.

Dyer begins the chapter with an example: Christians calling into a radio program to give their opinions on the moral value of technology. Some say it’s good, others say it’s bad, and the radio host concludes it’s neutral. Dyer states that as Christians, we tend to lump technology into the same ambiguous gray area where R-rated movies, tattoos, and politics often reside. We don’t have a clear, easy answer for it, so we leave it in a sort-of moral no-man’s land to be dealt with later. And that lack of definition creates a virtual minefield within the Church.

Dyer explains that people inevitably fall into one of two different philosophies with regards to technology: either instrumentalism (the idea that technology is inherently neutral and thus the tools are interchangeable) or technological determinism (the idea that technology is an “unstoppable power” that “operates independently of human choices”).

If we look at Stephen J. Kline’s four layers of technology (as described in Chapter 4), the first two layers (technology as hardware and technology as manufacturing) seem to back up the notion of inherent neutrality. But the last two layers (technology as methodology and technology as social usage) heavily favor determinism. The result is a middle ground in which we say that the tools themselves are morally neutral but how we use them is not. This idea is true to an extent, however as Dyer states:

The longer a tool has been around and the more often we use it, the more ingrained and culturally acceptable its tendencies become. Individuals are still free to discard it or use it in some way other than its original design, but the tool has a specific tendency that will usually prevail among the masses. …

Neil Postman used to say, “Technology is ecological, not additive,” by which he meant that introducing a new technology into society also changed the makeup of the technological ecosystem.

If technology is a tool to help us overcome a problem, bridging a gap between this world and a better one, the presence of a given piece of technology determines how we approach the problem to begin with. Different tools may help us to solve the same problem, but we pick and choose which tools to use based on their implied value. For example, the other night my 8-year-old daughter had to use a dictionary for a homework assignment. I could’ve easily sat her down at my computer and gone to dictionary.com, but instead I dusted off the Merriam-Webster’s dictionary on the bookshelf and told her to use that to find her words. Watching her fumble around trying to find the word “flash” was interesting to say the least. It’s obvious to me that “flash” comes between “field” and “float”, but she had no concept of that. She would flip around randomly until she landed on F and then go page-by-page until she found her word. The two tools — the traditional book-style dictionary that I grew up with and the web-based version that she’s growing up with — both do the same job; in essence, they’re interchangeable (and therefore neutral). But clearly the traditional version is less valuable to her, and that implied value affects how she approaches the problem.

It’s the classic Observer Effect. The mere presence of technology is enough to affect our behavior, our choices, and even our expectations. I see this every day in my IT job. Desktops and laptops are both personal computers, but laptops allow for more flexibility and are thus more highly valued. But recently the trend has been to move away from laptops and toward iPads. The introduction of iPads didn’t make the employees use them — they still have a choice — but their mere existence drew them in their direction and thus changed the technological ecosystem. Even if an employee doesn’t have an iPad, if they place a high enough value on it as a tool, they’ll devalue their other alternatives and in time will come to conclude that it’s the only option that will work. Merely by introducing the iPad into the ecosystem (even if it’s not necessarily a realistic choice), the employees’ behavior has changed. The means have affected the ends.

For the Church, this has enormous consequences. Dyer uses the example of how increased mobility due to the automobile not only changed where people go to church but the size of the churches as well. When you introduce the Internet and social networking, things change even more drastically. Facebook, Twitter, email, texting, etc. can be great tools to help churches build community and reach out to the rest of the world, but that same technology risks isolating the congregation by allowing people to sit at home and “do church” online.

Ultimately, in between instrumentalism and determinism is the question of how technology will be used (Kline’s “technology as social usage”), and I think this is why the Church has such a hard time classifying it. On one end of the spectrum is the idea that tools have no bearing whatsoever on our behavior or choices. On the other is the idea that it completely determines our behavior without allowing us any discretion. Obviously, neither idea is 100% correct. Where we place a particular piece of technology on the spectrum, then, is the real question, and it varies from person to person. One person may be very comfortable with Facebook and place it more toward the instrumentalism end (seeing it as just another tool to communicate), while someone who is uncomfortable with it may place it toward the determinism end (seeing it as negatively influencing our society). And that difference creates conflict.

As the technology becomes more widely accepted and normalized (“mythic”), those differences shrink and the conflict tends to subside. But even when there is no conflict, where we place an item on the spectrum influences and defines our values. And we apply those values to how we approach the Church, how we approach each other, and how we approach God.

Therefore, as a Church we can’t leave technology sitting in a gray area. We can’t simply ignore it, which as we’ve seen is impossible anyway. But we shouldn’t overvalue it either, leaning too much on it at the expense of human relationships.

Previously:
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 1: Perspective
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 2: Imagination
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 3: Reflection
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 4: Definition
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 5: Rebellion

Imagination.

In Chapter 2, he builds upon this point by looking at exactly what technology is, defining it in terms of a narrative:

Though we might not realize it, we compose these mininarratives whenever we encounter even the simplest gadget. If we happen to see a shovel, our minds can easily imagine the act of digging a hole, visualizing how the ground will look after we’re finished. This small effort of the imagination has a clear movement from beginning (the world before the shovel) to middle (the act of digging) to end (the world with a new hole)—the basic arc of any story. …

Technology, then, is the bridge from this world to the imagined one.

I couldn’t help but to think about author Donald Miller here. In A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Miller defines a story as “a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it.” In Dyer’s narrative, then, we use technology as a tool to overcome a conflict (i.e. lack of a solution) in order to get what we want or need.

If I need to get to work, at the beginning of that narrative, I don’t have any way of doing so. I can imagine a number of ways to overcome that conflict–walking, riding a bike, horse and buggy–but none of those methods will get me to work safely and on time. Finally, I consider a car and question whether that’ll do the trick, which I realize it will. The car acts as a tool or bridge to help me overcome my conflict and get from the beginning of the story (a world in which I don’t have any way to get from home to work) to the end (the world in which that’s now possible).

With that in mind, it seems logical, then, that the Church would want to fully embrace technology. If it’s a bridge that can help it overcome conflict to meet its needs (reaching the world for Christ), then that’s a good thing, right? It is, and we’ve seen numerous ways in which the Church is using technology to do just that. But the problem comes when technology is no longer the means to an end but the end itself.

How many Apple fanboys rushed out to buy the iPad when it came out, not because they needed it, not because it was a tool that helped them overcome some unconquered conflict in order to get what they really wanted, but simply because it was cool? It was from Apple, after all, so it was instantly considered magical. Never mind that there were other existing devices that did the same thing. There were other e-readers out there (not to mention paper-bound books), iPhones that ran the same apps, laptops and desktops that could browse the Internet. The iPad provided no real new functionality whatsoever, but as soon as Steve Jobs revealed it, they decided they couldn’t live without it. He could’ve charged them a thousand bucks for an “iEtch-A-Sketch”, and they would’ve been just as happy.

As Dyer mentions, when we use technology, we not only transform the world around us but are transformed ourselves. And technology, especially the Internet, has a capacity to dramatically transform us. When we do a search on Google or browse our Twitter feeds or check up on our Facebook friends, our brains release dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with the reward center of the brain. And we can easily become addicted to it, just as people can get addicted to sex, gambling, or shopping.

But it’s not just the dopamine rush we have to worry about. As Nicholas Carr explains in The Shallows, the very way we think is being changed by the Internet. From The Guardian:

“It’s a basic principle that the brain is very sensitive to any kind of stimulation, and from moment to moment, there is a very complex cascade of neurochemical electrical consequences to every form of stimulation. If you have repeated stimuli, your neural circuits will be excited. But if you neglect other stimuli, other neural circuits will be weakened.” This is the nub of Carr’s argument: that the online world so taxes the parts of the brain that deal with fleeting and temporary stuff that deep thinking becomes increasingly impossible. As he sees it: “Our ability to learn suffers, and our understanding remains shallow.

[Psychiatrist Dr. Gary] Small is only too aware of what too much time spent online can do to other mental processes. Among the young people he calls digital natives (a term first coined by the US writer and educationalist Marc Prensky), he has repeatedly seen a lack of human contact skills – “maintaining eye contact, or noticing non-verbal cues in a conversation”. …

He also fears that texting and instant messaging may already be dampening human creativity, because “we’re not thinking outside the box, by ourselves – we’re constantly vetting all our new ideas with our friends.” He warns that multitasking – surely the internet’s essential modus operandi – is “not an efficient way to do things: we make far more errors, and there’s a tendency to do things faster, but sloppier.”

Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with using the Internet or tweeting or buying an iPad for that matter. They can be very effective tools to help us overcome conflict and fulfill a pressing need. But as a Church, we have to be careful that the medium itself doesn’t become the message. Equipping your church staff with iPads is fine if it meets a specific need, but we shouldn’t buy everyone iPads just because we want to be “relevant”. As Dyer says,

If God is our savior and he wins in the end, does technology even matter? Obviously, we should use technology for good and not for evil, but does anything more need to be said? If it is true that technology has the capacity to shape the world that God made, as well as shape our bodies, minds, and souls, then it seems we should care deeply about our tools. Moreover, if technology plays some role in the story of God redeeming his people, we should care all the more.

Previously:
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 1: Perspective
Church dot com
Proof that in social networks, smaller is actually better
‘How Apple Plays Upon Our Insecurities’

Last week, I wrote about my knee-jerk reaction to Gowalla’s massive overhaul, deemed Gowalla 4.0. Gone are the game-like incentives such as pins and items, replaced by lists and guides. Instead of checking in to a place, you create a story about it.

I’ve had some time to think about it since then, and it occurred to me that in the process of becoming unlike Foursquare, Gowalla has become a sort of stripped down version of Facebook. Of course, Facebook doesn’t have the travel guides that Gowalla does, but the user activity is much the same. I’m creating a story (status update) about some place I’ve gone, not for virtual rewards but for the sheer socialness of it. Stories are meant to be social objects complete with photos, comments, tagging of friends, and sharing beyond a user’s private profile. Sounds a lot like Facebook, no?

To Gowalla’s credit, maybe that’s exactly the point. After all, this is the year the check-in dies, according to ReadWriteWeb:

In 2011 check-ins are going to go the way of the eight-track tape and disappear. You probably already see this happening. How many of your friends are consistently checking in and broadcasting? How many “I just ousted Fred as the mayor of Starbucks” messages do you see in your stream? Across my network – a large and tech-savvy network – I see less than 1% of people checking in on any service, and the trend is down. Some people are undoubtedly checking in privately, but that has major (negative) implications for how a service can spread. …

All of this doesn’t mean, however, that Gowalla, Foursquare, MyTown, Loopt and all the services with check-ins at their core are necessarily going out of business. It does mean they need to find a way to deliver deep value to people beyond the check-in.

Blogger Adrian Chan points out why this is so:

There is a problem with the implementation of checkins at the level of basic social first principles. Checkins are a non-social and solitary activity, viewed strictly as user actions. Checkins are a “I am here” expression or update but lacking in any clear social context. All social interaction online requires some amount of social context in order for it to generate follow on activity.

The foursquare checkin, having been put in service of badges and achievements (the game-like gamification of social without a game itself to supply good motives and rewards), was a shallow and poor implementation of location-based social interaction. It suffers now from the “Who cares?” and “So what’s next?” problem of situated social context. The checkin is neither a) addressed to anybody in particular (in fact, it’s addressed to nobody in general) and b) solicits no clear follow on activity by having c) no social context.

In other words, the game aspect of Gowalla is fun and provides an incentive to use it, but it’s limited because it’s like playing a game of solitaire. People ultimately get bored and look elsewhere for something deeper. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter offer that. A basic check-in service doesn’t.

If you look at how Foursquare is addressing this problem, their strategy seems to be to integrate more with brands and businesses and offer more deals, either instant deals for checking in or Groupon deals that can be redeemed on a future visit. The focus isn’t on exploration and socialization but on earning a user’s repeat business. The game elements such as badges, points, and mayorships are secondary.

Gowalla, with a much smaller user base than Foursquare’s, never expected to win the check-in war. Instead, they recognized that while people were willing to check in, they were drawn far more to the social aspect of it rather than the deals aspect. The problem with Gowalla 4.0, though, is that there is very little about it that can’t be replicated elsewhere. I can post Facebook updates or tweet wherever I am if I feel like it and can post photos to a variety of different sites, often with a broader social reach. For example, if I want to rave about a new restaurant or share a travel experience, does it make more sense to post it to Facebook where I have 100 friends or Gowalla where I have 20? Of course, you can port your Gowalla stories to Facebook or Twitter or even to Foursquare, but I guess it comes back to incentive. If the social value of my Gowalla stories is primarily only when they’re tweeted or posted to Facebook, then why create them in the first place when I can just go straight to Facebook and post them there?

It’s a Catch-22. Gowalla in its old form, while fun, was never going to be sustainable. Gowalla in its new form, however, becomes just another social network, and a niche one with a limited number of users at that. Don’t get me wrong. I really like the stories concept of the new app, and I think the guides are extremely well done. But without more incentives to use it, I can’t see it being a central part of my day-to-day life as it was in the past.

Previously:
Gowalla: Going out with a thud
Quitter
Google+, 3 weeks later

The biggest advantage Gowalla had over its check-in competitor was that it was actually fun. I loved getting new stamps and working toward new pins while collecting virtual items such as a longhorn or an espresso machine along the way. I posted a bunch of photos and enjoyed seeing where friends had been and what they had collected. I would go out of my way to go to new restaurants just to earn a new stamp or go back to a place because I knew they had a particular item I wanted. When I had a recent business trip to Cleveland, I purposefully chose to have a layover in Charlotte in part to earn a North Carolina pin and get closer to the “Frequent Flyer” and “Fly Like an Eagle” pins. With Gowalla, there was an incentive to discover new places, go where I’ve never been, and share my experiences in the process. Which was the core concept of the service; it was meant to be more of a digital passport and virtual scavenger hunt than a simple check-in service that catered to the bar crowd like Foursquare.

But that seems to have changed with Gowalla’s recent relaunch. They had already announced that the Items feature was going away, something I was disappointed about but not enough to make me quit using it. But they actually went much further, eliminating all the stamps and pins (except for the state pins), too. My 300+ stamps  and 20+ pins collected from five different states? Vanished. My photos are still there, but there’s not an easy way to browse them. And there are several other features gone as well.

In their place, Gowalla now focuses on featured guides and stories rather than places and check-ins. Popular venues such as Cowboys Stadium or the Fort Worth Stockyards are highlighted while nearby spots are nearly impossible to find unless you go through the trouble of searching by name. Such guides are really cool, but what if I just want to check-in at the local burger joint down the street? I know that’s not the central purpose of the app, but it’s how I want to use it, and besides I used to have an incentive to do so (be it a stamp, pin, or item). Now? Not so much.

Gowalla’s also traded their Facebook-style friending model for the Twitter-like following model while loosening user privacy settings, something I’m not that comfortable with it considering by checking in or “creating stories” I’m telling people exactly where I am. For example, even if my account is marked private, a friend (Follower? Followee? It’s not exactly clear.) can tag me in one of their stories, and that tag will be publicly viewable to everyone whether I like it or not. If I don’t want them tagging me, I have to block them entirely. Also, if you have a public profile, your Bookmarks are now viewable to everyone as a public List, something that could be potentially embarrassing (although I’m not sure why anyone would have a public profile in the first place).

Worse yet, when I viewed my wife’s Passport profile online yesterday, her password was displayed in the URL instead of her username. I contacted Gowalla about it, and they said they’d never seen that before. Obviously that’s not a designed feature, but if something like that had happened with Facebook or Twitter, it would’ve resulted in a mass public outrage. For my wife, at least, it was the last straw, and she deleted her account immediately.

Privacy issues aside, the whole service just seems buggy, complicated, and just plain cumbersome. None of my friends’ activity shows up on the home page (which is labeled “Friends”, ironically), and just getting to their profiles requires me to first go to mine, then click on Following, and then find them there. Which doesn’t really do me any good since all their stuff is gone, too.

If I do want to check in somewhere, it’s a slow multi-step process. When you open the app, the first thing you see are nearby featured Guides. To find the place you want to check into, you have to tap on “Spots and Lists”, at which point you’ll see a filtered list of featured spots that may or may not be anywhere near you. You then have to search for the spot by typing in the name and hope you find what you’re looking for. In a test this morning, I wanted to check in at a Whataburger that I’ve checked into a few times before. After going through the trouble of searching, it didn’t find the location I was at. The first result was 12 km away. The second result was 11 km away. There was no listing for my location, even though I had checked into it before. No location, no check-in. A lot of people have raved over Gowalla’s new look, and in some cases it does look really cool. But it doesn’t matter how good it looks if it’s not usable.

In the process of returning to its original vision, Gowalla has not only created a difficult-to-use product with potentially serious privacy issues, they’ve largely removed any incentive to actually use it. Those stamps, pins, and items which seem so unimportant to them now were what made the social network fun to use, not only for the challenge of collecting them but because they became virtual souvenirs, reminders of both the mundane and exciting places where we’d been. Gowalla wants us instead to forget those things and create new stories. I’ll be happy to create new ones, of course, but unfortunately Gowalla may not be a part of them.

Update:
If you tap the icon in the lower left-hand corner of the iPhone or Android app, it brings up a list of stories (currently only showing your own). You can then tap the “New” icon in the upper right-corner to create a new one, which brings up an unfiltered list of nearby spots. This prevents having to type in the name to search. At the moment, I don’t know of a way to filter those by category or create a new spot. Presumably, that functionality will be added back at some point. While this method of “creating a story” is a little easier than what I described above, it’s still a whole lot slower and more complicated than checking in on Foursquare, which seems to be a major drawback. Gowalla has always been slower than Foursquare, but now there are more steps, too. And if I’m out somewhere, I just want to check in and go. Or in this case, create a story and then get back to actually living it.

As to whether I’ll continue using Gowalla or not, I don’t know at this point. I’m willing to give it a chance. But I probably won’t use it nearly as often as I used to.

Previously:
Quitter
Google+, 3 weeks later
Google+ or minus
Welcome to the future

Actually, I should rephrase that. I’ve been on Google+ now for three weeks, and I really want to like it.

I want to use it. I want other people to use it. I want it to be awesome. So far, though, it’s been mostly disappointing.

Like me, it seems like a lot of people just haven’t found a good use for it. Maybe because it doesn’t really fit in with the existing Facebook/Twitter ecosystem. Nothing about it feels natural or cohesive or intertwined with any of our other social networks. Of course, this is largely due to Google not publishing their API for third-parties to use, but I think it’s also because anything posted there seems so incredibly redundant.

Tech blogs are already starting to wonder if Google+ is on life support. I wouldn’t go that far yet, but clearly the clock is ticking. People are quickly losing interest, and the quieter the stream gets, the less incentive there is to come back. Just ask MySpace.

So what needs to happen for Google+ to succeed? Several things, I think.

First, Google needs to remove the invite-only restriction. Let anybody in. There are still people who want to use it but can’t get an invite. Don’t turn them away.

Second, give people a reason to actually use it once they’re on. Show us how it complements — not replaces — what we’re already doing. If you’re gonna name your product “+”, then show us how it’s actually adding something to our lives. So far, Google hasn’t done that. I’m following 43 people, and only two or three of those are still actively posting anything to it. Most have never posting anything at all except for their profile pic. That’s not a good sign. As someone tweeted recently, “Google+ feels like a house party that just ran out of alcohol. Everyone’s just standing around, waiting.”

Third, publish your API so that third-parties can integrate into it. When someone checks in through Gowalla or Foursquare, they should have the option of posting that check-in to Google+. When I post a public Google+ update, I should have the option of having it automatically tweeted (without having to use a third-party workaround). There needs to be a Facebook Connect-style Google login option on websites. Yes, a lot of this stuff tends to pollute the Facebook news feed, but it also adds value and content, which is sorely lacking at the moment.

Fourth, fix the circles. One of Google+’s big selling points was how easy it was to create various circles in order to post to different groups of people. We could post to just family members or to just people we’re following or to the whole world, whatever we felt like doing. But in practice, the circles feature is incredibly awkward. Imagine following 200 people and trying to segregate them out into 5 or 6 circles. The UI makes it extraordinarily cumbersome. I gave up trying to organize people into multiple circles, so everybody just goes into the same one. Besides, anything I post is public anyway, so it doesn’t even matter. Mark Zuckerberg has said before that people don’t like making lists. If the central core of your product involves people making lists (or circles or squares or trapezoids or any other polygon), then it better be really frickin’ easy to do, otherwise people won’t use it.

There are other things as well, such as making the stream chronological, adding people’s +1s to their stream, and being able to search content and follow trends. Things we’re already used to seeing in Facebook and Twitter.

Most of these things are likely in the pipeline, but I have to wonder if it’ll be too little, too late. I hope not. Overall, I think it’s a great product. It just needs more.

Previously:
If Google+ isn’t social, then what is it?
It’s not Facebook that should be scared of Google+, it’s Twitter
Google+ or minus