Striving for Cosmic Diversity

A summary of:
Schultze, Q. J. (2002). Habits of the High-Tech Heart: Living Virtuously in the Information Age. Baker Academic: Grand Rapids, MI, USA.
Chapter 6 - Striving for Cosmic Diversity

The Dossier Journal writes of Kandinsky's show at the Guggenheim: "The mature work stands on a deep faith in the inherent spiritual values of colors and shapes, telling us that, all along, the arrangement of these simple elements – not subjects – has produced the 'vibration in the soul' that is the great initial achievement of art. It is the artist’s task, Kandinsky believed, to 'set art free,' and the ultimate task the collective formation of a 'spiritual pyramid' that would 'some day reach to heaven.' Roll your eyes as you will at reaching heaven, the feeling of standing before these paintings is ineffable."

Schultze says, "Gelernter rightly argues that the computer scientists who design our everyday technologies should study the liberal arts, so that the work of their hearts, minds, and hands might produce artifacts of higher beauty that fill our lives with more joy and delight and that inspire us to reach higher" (161).

The main message of this chapter is that we should be listening to people other than technology developers when it comes to developing technology, because it affects us so profoundly (in the words of Archbishop Chaput, "these things... shape the soul" (160)) that it requires a more collective consensus about the appropriateness of these technologies in our lives. We should be asking spiritual questions. We should be listening to the wisdom of ancient traditions. The danger is that we are developing one-track minds with regards to the wisdom of various technologies: "As we become information rich, we also tend to fall into a moral myopia that excludes noninstrumental mental values from shaping cyber-endeavors" (142). As Paul Duguid said, "Information technology has been wonderfully successful in many ways. But those successes have extended its ambition without necessarily broadening its outlook. Information is still the tool for all tasks" (158). Can we not think a bit more creatively?

What this also means, then, is that we need a "more diverse notion of 'knowledge workers' that includes essayists, poets, playwrights, public intellectuals, clergy, and laypersons - all people who can imagine a society that values not only technique but also joy and good judgment" (142). "As the Archbishop of Denver, Rev. Charles J. Chaput, puts it, the 'information highway must not bypass humanity.' We need responsible leaders who will 'think deeply, not just about where we're going, but why we're going there'" (159). (As a sidenote: There is an undeniable prejudice in society to favor informational and technical ways of knowing over others (151). Intuition, for example, has no place in academic discourse; though if we paused to reflect, we would realize that it is only because of our intuition that we able to do any research.) Perhaps then we will begin to question whether the technological values of efficiency and control are really our values.

I think this quote is fairly revealing of a different problem (Schultze seems to be jumping around again), namely that technology is creating more and more soul-destroying jobs: "One Web worker says, 'The sad reality is that for all the well-deserved excitement the web generates, working on the web can be one of the least exciting things in the world, like being a cook at the Normandy invasion'" (154). Why can't we use technology to facilitate uplifting engagements? This is my quest for the next 3 years, anyway.