The Path - spiritual Facebook-ing?

I was pointed to this article on the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11793847

The idea is that rather than have lots and lots of weak ties (read: friends in name only), the site helps you foster stronger friendship ties. These ties are designed into the system by limiting the number of friends you can have. I think it's similar to going back in time to film cameras, before digital: You really had to pick your moments, not waste the film. When digital came along, you could snap as many crap pictures as you liked, because they didn't cost anything to throw away. But is this a good model for friendships? Is this a fair comparison to Facebook?

There is some evidence - cited by the article - that humans can only manage 50 friends, so the notion that Facebook promotes, that we can have 1,000 if we wanted, cheapens the very word "friend".

I think if we value true "friendship", we ought to be thinking of ways to make that word meaningful again in the era of Facebook. People ask me all the time what I mean by "spiritual technology", and follow up with, "Can you give me an example of one?" I now have an example. This is getting closer to what I'm talking about: Asserting human values over and above technological capabilities.

Becoming a Force of Nature

A summary of:
Senge, P., Scharmer, C.O., Jaworski, J. & Flowers, B.S. (2004). Presence: Exploring Profound Change in People, Organizations and Society. Nicholas Brealey Publishing: London.
Part 3 – Becoming a Force of Nature

This section is all about marrying your intention to action, and believing that you can get there. For inspiration, the authors quoted Margaret Mead, who is known for saying, “Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has” (134). But this notion of being a lone warrior somewhat dilutes the truth that being effective has to do to some extent with tapping into – if not the zeitgeist – this ‘field’ they alluded to earlier, which we can do by ‘presencing’. “The transformation of will that arises from presencing was beautifully articulated by George Bernard Shaw: ‘This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose you consider a mighty one, the being a force of nature, rather than a feverish, selfish clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy’” (133). Or, simply put by Victor Hugo: “There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come,’ said Victor Hugo” (131).

I like the idea of making my methodology as spiritual as possible, to walk the walk as it were. For this reason, I like this passage that explains from a spiritual perspective the process of developing one’s intention:

“…John White, one of the original founding partners of the Institute of HeartMath, said, ‘Often people need greater clarity before they can act decisively and with full commitment. Once they see clearly their heart’s intent, their focus becomes like a laser – a powerful, coherent beam, as opposed to an incandescent, incoherent light. An earnest commitment from the heart emerges, vision becomes clearer, broader, and more inclusive of others. Strength of will is replaced by energetic integrity and a knowingness of ‘what else is there’ or ‘I can’t afford to not do this’” (135).

I suppose the idea is that it’s important to put love into your work. As Mother Teresa said when asked how one can do great things, “You cannot do great things. You can only do small things with great love” (139).

The chapter also seeks to dissuade us of the notion that you need to “to know how to do something before you can do it” (149). Instead, the authors argue that the key is getting the intention right, and then beginning what is effectively a prototyping process. As they say, “the creative process is actually a learning process, and the best we can possibly have at the outset is a hypothesis or tentative idea about what will be required to succeed. Robert Fritz characterizes the essence of the creative process as ‘create and adjust.’ We learn to do something truly new only through doing it, then adjusting” (149). Along the way, they explain, the creator will go through a series of “small ‘U’s’” (149). One author describes this process as “chaordic,” i.e., “how order emerges from chaos” (172).

Finally, this chapter asks the important question of how you create major change. They suggest that in some cases, we have to make the brave decision to kill a dying system so that a better one can be born in its place. As someone the authors interviewed said, “‘Maybe what’s needed right now is to stop trying to keep the system alive artificially and perform a controlled emergency shutdown’” (165). This reminds me of a question that I was asked by a college professor that has changed my life forever. He asked, ‘If you really want to change something, do you do it by helping as much as you can to fix it, or do you try to speed up its collapse?’ He was referring to the economy at the time, and asked whether you are better off donating money, or becoming an investment banker who tries to increase the gap between rich and poor. This idea, the notion that the only way to make Real Change is to destroy the current system and all that props it up is something that I constantly think of when I see something in the world I don’t like. In the case of the Internet, the question is whether you try to tweak it as it is now to begin to accommodate our spiritual needs (as an afterthought), or to somehow push us closer to the tipping point where we see the need to abandon our old ways. I suppose there is a third option, however, and that is to provide an alternative, and see if people want to switch to this new rail.

U Theory

A summary of:
Senge, P., Scharmer, C.O., Jaworski, J. & Flowers, B.S. (2004). Presence: Exploring Profound Change in People, Organizations and Society. Nicholas Brealey Publishing: London.
Part 2 – Into the Silence:
Chapter 6 – An Emerging Understanding: The U Theory
& Chapter 7 – The Eye of the Needle: Letting Go and Letting Come

In this section we are introduced to a concept the authors call U Theory – a framework for a new process of thinking. They have drawn a diagram, in the shape of a U, representing the path that the great thinkers take:
1) (At the top, left) “Sensing”: “‘observe, observe, observe’ – become one with the world”;
2) (Down to the bottom of the U) “Presencing”: “‘retreat, and reflect” – allow inner knowing to emerge”;
3) (Up again, top right) “Realizing”: “‘act swiftly, with a natural flow’” (88).

The key seems to be in the ‘presencing’ step, which they say, “constitutes a third type of seeing, beyond seeing external reality and beyond even seeing from within the living whole” (90). But the authors go even further, clearly seeing this stage as a spiritual state of being: “The bottom of the U is where, in Joseph’s words, you discover ‘who you really are as a servant or steward for what’s needed in the world” (91). In many ways, this is not unlike meditation: “We choose the term ‘presencing’ to describe this state because it is about becoming totally present – to the larger space or field around us, to an expanded sense of self, and, ultimately, to what is emerging through us” (91); “Getting to the ‘different place’ that allows presencing to occur begins as we develop a capacity to let go and surrender our perceived need to control”; and “The seeds for this transformation lie in seeing our reality more clearly, without preconceptions and judgments” (131).
(96).

The authors, indeed, link this practice with Buddhist tradition: “Developing a capacity to let go allows us to be open to what is emerging and to practice what Buddhism and other meditative traditions call ‘nonattachment.’ In Buddhist theory, two Sanskrit terms, (96) vitarka and vicara, are used to describe the subtle attachments of mind. Vitarka characterizes the state of ‘seeking,’ when our attention is attached to what we’re trying to make happen. Vicara characterizes the state of ‘watching,’ when, even though we’re not trying to force something to happen, we’re still attached to an outcome we are waiting for. With either, our mental attachment makes us blind or resistant to other aspects of what is happening right now. Overcoming the traps of vitarka and vicara requires continual letting go” (97).

The point of this U trajectory is not to be spiritual, per se, but to see results. The authors argue that engaging in what amounts to a spiritual process will lead to better outcomes. The difference, if we were to make an analogy to scientists: “‘most scientists take existing frameworks and overlay them onto some situation,’ while ‘first-rate ones sit back and study the situation from many, many angles and then ask, ‘What’s fundamentally going on here?’” (85). And while the latter are not any more intelligent than the former, they are able to make the real breakthroughs. Eleanor Rosch, professor of cognitive psychology at the University of California at Berkeley talks about the need for all science to be done with the “‘mind of wisdom’” (98). And she sees this as an almost artistic outlook: “Great artists naturally operate from this other level and always have.’ This ‘other level’ entails a different sort of knowing, what is called in Tibetan Buddhism ‘wisdom awareness.’” (98). Rosch suggests that the trick is in recognizing that “‘mind and world are not separate’” (98), as Buddhism teaches.

Now, psychologists are not the most receptive audience when it comes to pithy spiritual sayings; so in terms that are more palpable for the academics, Rosch has come up with two categories of knowing: ‘primary knowing’ and ‘analytic knowing.’ The former, “arises by means of ‘interconnected (98) wholes, rather than isolated contingent parts and by means of timeless, direct, presentation’ rather than through stored ‘re-presentation.’ ‘Such knowing is open rather than determinate, and a sense of unconditional value, rather than conditional usefulness, is an inherent part of the act of knowing itself,’ said Rosch. Acting from such awareness is ‘spontaneous, rather than the result of decision making,’ and it is ‘compassionate… since it is based on wholes larger than the self’” (99). And:

…all these attributes – timeless, direct, spontaneous, open, unconditional value, and compassionate – go together as one thing. That one thing is what some in Tibetan Buddhism call ‘the natural state’ and what Taoism calls ‘the Source’ (99).

Primary knowing has also been described as tapping into a field of knowledge. The authors again draw on Buddhist teaching: “Tibetan Buddhism talks about emptiness, luminosity, and the knowing capacity as inseparable. That knowing capacity actually is the field knowing itself, in a sense, or this larger context knowing itself’” (99).

Of course, we do not tend to operate on this plane. And furthermore, our technology is beating the capacity to reach that plane right out of us. As the authors say matter-of-factly, “The problem is that most of us have spent our lives immersed in analytic knowing, with its dualistic separation of subject (‘I’) and object (‘it’). There’s nothing wrong with analytic knowing. It’s useful and appropriate for many activities – for example, for interacting with machines. But if it’s our only way of knowing, we’ll tend to apply it in all situations” (99). To me this signals a potential point of intervention, though I hardly know yet what this means in terms of new design concepts. Can we develop technologies that are not built on – and thereby reinforce – this dualistic thinking? My initial reaction is that blurring the boundary between ‘I’ and ‘it’ seems like the misguided goal of VR technology. But then again, immersion, which I have argued elsewhere is certainly not a spiritual evil, does just that – blurs the distinctions. How could you build a system that allows for the kind of immersive experience that something like meditation does? And if part of analytic knowing is it’s linear nature, is there a way of designing for more nebulous, non-linear interaction with a computer? Do we always, for example, need to be oriented around our selves, our avatars and profiles, when we engage with the Internet? Could we be and experience multiple perspectives simultaneously? Is there a way of attaining what Ohashi calls ‘alien self’?:

Ryosoke Ohashi, a scholar of Japan’s leading twentieth-century Zen philosopher, Kitaro Nishida, used the word ‘alien self’ to describe what arises when the localized sense of self fades: ‘Something which is quite alien to me enables my existence.’ Eastern traditions often label this ‘nothingness’: ‘This nothingness enables my existence and also my relation with all.’ But ‘in traditional Christian terminology, this absolute alienness could be said to be God. God is in me – although Nishida doesn’t directly say ‘God.’ But something that is quite alien to me is in my own self’ (101).

More obviously than immediately suggesting design interventions and concepts, this section very clearly advocates a particular methodology that I should probably try to use in my PhD. My supervisor had been describing a non-linear design process to me, that sounds much like this: about doing the linear bit that’s necessary for the literature review, but simultaneously allowing the intuition, completely uninhibited, to make leaps. The thing that I really like about this section is that I now have a spiritual justification for using this design methodology. This ‘presencing’ in my PhD is, effectively, spiritual practice applied to design thinking.

And lastly, I think one of the points I should argue in my PhD is that this spiritual process – which the design community would to some extent embrace (though perhaps not always in Buddhist terms) – would be tremendously helpful for coming up with radical innovations in computing, which is more biased toward and traditionally linear. Infusing computing thinking with spiritual ‘knowing’, and borrowing methodologically from design, I will argue, might just be the key to really changing the world.

Into the Silence

A summary of:
Senge, P., Scharmer, C.O., Jaworski, J. & Flowers, B.S. (2004). Presence: Exploring Profound Change in People, Organizations and Society. Nicholas Brealey Publishing: London.
Part 2 – Into the Silence
Chapter 5 – The Generative Moment

“...’Adam said that the volume needs to be turned up in order for him to hear. Maybe he’s not so different from the rest of us – we all must spend our lives learning to ‘hear the silence.’ The Indian teacher Krishnamurti said that this is why real communication is so rare: “Real communication can take place only where there is silence.” But there is also something more in this silence that goes beyond opening the heart and seeing “from inside”’” (79).

This above story exemplifies the difference between spiritual and non-spiritual communication. Spiritual communication is about listening. Non-spiritual communication is about talking; which reinforces the informationist notion that ‘more is better.’ We design all sorts of technological tools that help us do more talking… but do we have anything that is aimed at helping us be better listeners?

In the previous section, the authors mentioned an experience of radical change at a steelworks that began with learning the skills of dialogue. Researchers from the MIT Dialogue Project taught these skills to both management and union teams, who had previously been locked in fierce arguments that were seemingly irresolvable; “Then the teams began to meet together – and after only a few meetings, the combined group began to discover the ability to have ‘real talk’ about difficult issues. Eventually, tangible consequences became evident in the plant: dramatic declines in accidents and absenteeism, as well as improvements in productivity. The backlog of grievances fell from 485 to zero. Union and management were starting to work together to address systemic issues that had been neglected for decades” (34). I saw this at Corus too. The union leaders talked about the importance of respect, honesty, openness… and this all enabled them to listen to each other better and actually solve problems. I have a feeling that this insight will be the source of at least one mini-solution that I come up with in the course of the PhD.

This section has also given me an idea for a focus group. One of the authors tells the story of when he was involved in seeing the end of apartheid in South Africa. Leaders created two stories to share with the people as inspiration: one of the ‘low road’ and one of the ‘high road’. It allowed people to see the importance of taking the high road, making the more difficult decisions that would lead to a better future. This kind of storytelling might be useful in my writeup for justifying the need for radical change with regards to our technological engagements. Also, the author explained that further steps were taken to involve people in thinking about and creating an alternative future. They brought people together, and they came up with 4 possible scenarios: 1) The Ostrich, characterized by putting one’s head in the sand; 2) Lame Duck, where government was crippled and made no progress; 3) Icarus, where radical changes were made too quickly and came crashing down; and 4) Flamingo: “The scenario called “Flamingo” was one that no one particularly liked initially because flamingos take off very slowly. But they also take off together. As the group thought through these different stories, they came to the conviction that the only viable way forward was “Flamingo”’” (74-5). I wonder if it might be worthwhile holding a focus group and having participants imagine future scenarios and see what conclusions they reach about how we must proceed.

Learning to See

A summary of:
Senge, P., Scharmer, C.O., Jaworski, J. & Flowers, B.S. (2004). Presence: Exploring Profound Change in People, Organizations and Society. Nicholas Brealey Publishing: London.
Introduction & Part 1 – Learning to See

As I mentioned in my reflections on The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace, Wertheim showed how Giotto's art was the first instance of an entirely new way of seeing: with perspective, with depth. It was the beginning of representational art, and paved the way for ‘physical vision’ to supplant ‘spiritual vision.’ In other words, one kind of seeing came to dominate, while our ability to see differently eroded over time. The authors of this book seem to be making the case that we need to retrieve our old way of seeing, a spiritual way of seeing; and that this is the key to shaking off the shackles of modernity that prevent us from achieving our true potential.

The authors of this book take a systems (or even ecological) approach to understanding why change doesn’t happen… but how it could. They argue that resistance to change can be understood as an ‘immune system’ response, an inborn self-preservation mechanism that seeks out and destroys ‘otherness’ (35). This happens in organizations too: the members become ‘vehicles for presencing the prevailing systems of management because those systems are most familiar’ (9). The other way of explaining this same phenomemon is habit (or even Bourdieu’s habitus), which is easy, and comfortable, but dangerous: “As long as our thinking is governed by habit – notably by industrial, ‘machine age’ concepts such as control, predictability, standardization, and ‘faster is better’ – we will continue to re-create institutions as they have been, despite their disharmony with the larger world, and the need of all living systems to evolve” (9).

Another danger of this resistence to ‘otherness’ is that it prevents a healthy (and spiritual) process of ‘suspension’. “As the noted physicist David Bohm used to say, ‘Normally, our thoughts have us rather than we having them.’ Suspending does not require destroying our existing mental models of reality – which would be impossible even if we tried – or ignoring them. Rather, it entails what Bohm called ‘hanging our assumptions in front of us.’ By doing so, we begin to notice our thoughts and mental models as the workings of our own mind. And as we become aware of our thoughts, they begin to have less influence on what we see. Suspension allows us to ‘see our seeing’” (29).

Suspension helps us see clearly; in a way, defamiliarizing our reality so that we can see it differently. The authors argue that this new ‘seeing’ is necessary if we want to make major change: “Most change initiatives that end up going nowhere don’t fail because they lack grand visions and noble intentions. They fail because people can’t see the reality they face” (29). And in terms of businesses and organizations, the key epiphany they must experience is that they “become aware of themselves as living. Once they do, they can then become a place for the presencing of the whole as it might be, not just as it has been” (10). In other words, Step one: see reality as it is; Step two: envision an alternate reality; (Step three: start walking in that direction). (And notably, this is exactly the process that Corus underwent in the beginning of their cultural change program.)

Another important idea from this beginning section of the book is the notion of non-judgment. There is no point in self-reflection if you are going to be judgmental of what you see; otherwise you’ll just revert to your comfort zone and resist change. In fact, you’ll resist your own genius! The authors cite a study of genius which showed that “up to the age of 4, almost all the children were at the genius level”… but that by “over twenty, the genius level proportion of subjects sank to 2 percent” (30). The question is, What happened? Where did it go??? “It didn’t go anywhere; it’s covered over by the Voice of Judgment” (30). This is why people who write about “creativity” (Csikszentmihalyi, De Bono, etc.) try to get people to set aside their judgment: “What we’re trying to do is set up situations where people can attack the Voice of Judgment and access their deeper creativity.’ Ray believes that we can consistently bring our creativity into our lives by ‘paying attention to it’ and (30) by building the capacity to suspend the judgments that arise in our mind… that limit creativity” (31).

But of course we also see this idea of non-judgment in the practice of meditation. For example, Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn describes meditation as a process of “‘purposefully refining our capacity for paying attention, ultimately to anything and everything that might be relevant to navigating in the world with open eyes and hearts’” (50). We might understand ‘open eyes’ to mean ‘suspension’ in Bohm’s terms (or ‘concentration’ in Kabat-Zinn’s: “‘When you begin to focus,’ he said, ‘two elements come quickly to the fore. One is that the mind has a life of its own and tends to go all over the place. By cultivating paying attention, you can become less reactive and agitated. That’s called the concentration aspect of meditation’” (50)). And then we might understand the ‘open hearts’ aspect to be this non-judgmental aspect, which the authors would call ‘redirection’ (51), and which Kabat-Zinn calls mindfulness: ‘Then, if you bring a certain kind of open, moment-to-moment, nonjudgmental awareness to what you’re attending to, you’ll begin to develop a more penetrative awareness that sees beyond the surface of what’s going on in your field of awareness. This is mindfulness.” (50). And this combination breeds creativity, and perhaps even genius: “’[he continues…] Mindfulness makes it possible to see connections that may not have been visible before’” (50)…. [and the authors add] mindfulness explores the possibility of dropping ‘underneath our conventional and highly conditioned way of seeing that separates and reifies a subject and object’” (51).

The authors of this book introduce a concept called ‘presence’, which is not so different from this meditation. This is how they define it: “We’ve come to believe that the core capacity needed to access the field of the future is presence. We first thought of presence as being fully conscious and aware in the present moment. Then we began to appreciate presence as deep listening, of being open beyond one’s preconceptions and historical ways of making sense. We came to see the importance of letting go of old identities and the need to control and, as Salk said, making choices to serve the evolution of life. Ultimately, we came to see all these aspects of presence as leading to a state of (13) ‘letting come,’ of consciously participating in a larger field for change. When this happens, the field shifts, and the forces shaping a situation can move from re-creating the past to manifesting or realizing an emerging future” (14). This presencing is the key to radical change, and innovation as well. This puts the following quote in some perspective: “As W. Brian Arthur, noted economist of the Santa Fe Institute, put it, ‘Every profound innovation is based on an inward-bound journey, on going to a deeper place where knowing comes to the surface’” (13). The lesson for me personally is that if I am going to come up with radical solutions, my process needs to be spiritual. Hence the decision now to use ‘creative engagements’, non-judgmental creations, as a means of accessing a more intuitive solution to the problem of merging the technological and the spiritual.

And furthermore, it suggests that the aim of my PhD, while admittedly incredibly ambitious, is potentially THE avenue to creating mass change. The technological solution I propose needs to engage people in a spiritual, meditative process, so that a shift occurs inside of them… thus facilitating spiritual growth. One author relays a conversation with a peer in which they discuss avenues for radical change: “‘[He asked]…How can we shift the whole?...; [the other answered] ‘After reflecting a moment, he said he’s become convinced that political, legal, and economic approaches don’t go deep enough. By themselves, they won’t bring about the penetrating changes in human culture that we need for people to live in true harmony and balance with one another and the earth. He told me that he is convinced that the next great opening of an ecological worldview will have to be an internal one…’” (56). And elsewhere, this same message is echoed: “‘You know,’ said Joseph quietly, ‘When all is said and done, the only change that will make a difference is the transformation of the human heart’” (26). To reiterate, the lesson here is that radical, profound change, must involve transforming people in a spiritual way. This is why I have refined the aim of my PhD as creating a cyber-environment in which spirituality can thrive (or at least does not erode); but especially to begin a dialogue about why this spiritual technology is necessary, as a means of waking people up, i.e. beginning a transformation of the human heart.

I think it may prove crucial to my thesis to relate this (as these authors have done) back to notions of this ‘shift’ that come from spiritual traditions. I found this paragraph really helpful: “Through our interviews, we’ve discovered similarities to shifts in awareness that have been recognized in spiritual traditions around the world for thousands of years. For example, in esoteric Christian traditions such shifts are associated with ‘grace’ or ‘revelation’ or ‘the Holy Spirit.’ Taoist theory speaks of the transformation of vital energy (qing, pronounced ‘ching’) into subtle life forces (qi, pronounced ‘chi’), and into spiritual energy (shin). This process involves an essential quieting of the mind that Buddhists call ‘cessation,’ wherein the normal flow of thoughts ceases and the normal boundaries between self and world dissolve. In Hindu traditions, this shift is called wholeness or oneness. In the mystic traditions of Islam, such as Sufism, it is known simply as ‘opening the heart.’ Each tradition describes this shift a little differently, but all recognize it as being central to personal cultivation or maturation” (14). What’s great about this – i.e. situating these concepts within spiritual traditions and invoking their vernacular – is that it will help justify to my readers why I use the term “spiritual technology” rather than, say, “humanist”; because I am trying to convey this profound transformation that we can really only begin to capture with words like ‘spiritual.’

This has made me think that it might be a really good idea to structure my thesis into different spiritual steps, e.g. suspension, non-judgment, revelation, etc.; to relate the process of constructing the PhD to a spiritual process, and in doing so maintain a continuity between ‘subject and frame’, between what is described and how it is described, or as Frank Lloyd Wright might say, to achieve a certain metaphorical ‘truth to materials.’ One such section, for example, might be on ‘isness’, a term that I get from Meister Eckhart to describe the way in which all things are God; there is no differentiation (no otherness). A spiritual goal, then, might be seeing this profound ‘isness’; which you might also describe as cultivating holistic thinking (“Bortoff said, ‘You have to cultivate a quality of perception that is striving outwards, from the whole to the part’” (46); and “Dissolving the boundaries between seer and seen leads not only to a deep sense of connection but also to a heightened sense of change” (43)). This thinking is what allows you to see differently, for the “figure and ground to reverse” (49), which is a key to imagining completely new solutions to problems.

The Big Switch: Rewiring the World from "Edison" to "Google"

Re-posted from two years ago
Reflections on:
Carr, N. (2008). The Big Switch: Rewiring the World from "Edison" to "Google". W. W. Norton & Co.: New York.

Having finished this book, I'm hesitant to blog at all (really quite disturbing how much the information we put on/in the Internet is being monitored and used for creating more control and more advanced marketing/advertising tools). Ah, well. I'm blogging this so that I remember it (as, it was argued in the book, is the result of the World Wide Computer: a dumbing down of humanity, using computers to do our thinking and remembering for us).

Most of the book was devoted to describing and highlighting the often invisible changes that technology is having on our world. Very eye-opening.

• the emergence of Internet businesses has accelerated the economic division between the richest and the poorest, since fewer people are needed to run a successful Internet business (like PlenyOfFish.com, run by one man!) and because human labor is being cheapened by the ability of technology to perform tasks for us

There are assembly lines today, but they are without workers... they are managed by computers in a glass cage above, with highly skilled engineers in charge.

Computerization hence puts many American wage-earners in a double bind: it reduces the demand for their jobs even as it expands the supply of workers ready and able to perform them.

• advances in technology have led to "The Great Unbundling" - we are able to pick and choose with advanced selection tools what we read/consume, etc., leading to a greater symbiosis between media and advertising (news stories are selected on the basis of their ability to get individuals to click on advertisements, rather than their substantive quality) and also to greater polarization of beliefs

Not only will the Internet tend to divide people with different views..., it will also tend to magnify the differences.

• humans are becoming controlled by the same forces they had hailed as liberators (i.e. once the Internet was seen as a Utopian equalizer and unifier, not to mention a tool to free individuals)

In using a computer, a person becomes part of the control mechanism. He turns into a component of what the Internet pioneer J.C.R. Linklider, in his seminal 1960 paper "Man-Computer Symbiosis," described as a system integrating man and machine into a single, programmable unit.

...the founding principle of the Net is control, not freedom - control has existed from the beginning.... What's different, in comparison to the physical world, is that acts of control become harder to detect and those wielding control more difficult to discern.

• companies like Google, which aim to create artificial intelligence (according to their creators!), are very close to producing systems that will succeed in making humans (and the human mind especially) subservient to the machine

But the most important point for me, and the reason I read the book, had to do with the ways in which technology was changing the very ways we think and act. Carr argues:

• humans are becoming inextricably incorporated into the Internet's computing web, dangerously so, perhaps to the point of becoming unable to function without computers

What will most surprise us is how dependent we will be on what the Machine knows - about us and about what we want to know. We already find it easier to Google something a second or third time rather than remember it ourselves. The more we teach this megacomputer, the more it will assume responsibility for our knowing. It will become our memory. Then it will become our identity. In 2015 many people, when divorced from the Machine, won't feel like themselves - as if they'd had a lobotomy. (Kevin Kelly)

As machines become more and more intelligent... people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off
would amount to suicide. (Theodore Kaczynski)

I see within us all... the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self - evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the 'instantly available'.... As we are emptied of our inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance..., we seem to be turning into pancake people - spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button. (Richard Foreman)

The most revolutionary consequence of the expansion of the Internet's power, scope, and usefulness may not be that computers will start to think like us but that we will come to think like computers. Our consciousness will thin out, flatten, as our minds are trained, link by link, to 'DO THIS with what you find HERE and go THERE with the result.' The artificial intelligence we're creating may turn out to be our own.

• and our technology ends up changing and influencing our worldview

The printed page, the dominant information medium of the past 500 years, molded our thinking through, to quote Neil Postman, 'it's emphasis on logic, sequence, history, exposition, objectivity, detachment, and discipline.' The emphasis of the Internet, our new universal medium, is altogether different. It stresses immediacy, simultaneity, contingency, subjectivity, disposability, and above all, speed. The Net provides no incentive to stop and think deeply about anything, to construct in our memory that 'dense repository' of knowledge that Foreman cherishes.... On the Internet, we seemed impelled to glide across the slick surface of data as we make our rushed passage from link to link.

I think the last quote is, in itself, an argument for the need of ethnography in a world that increasingly demands quick (mostly quantitative) data. And this book has strengthened my resolve to work with designers to re-empower humanity, to sharpen rather than dull our minds. It is clear that going against the forces that are carrying us toward these undesirable fates is not easy, but I think there is potential to use creative design to create systems that improve our abilities to be human, not make us better machines.

Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life

A summary of:
Borgmann, A. (1984). Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago, IL.

“…it is widely admitted that there is a problem of orientation in the technologically advanced countries…. Science may be a necessary condition of disorientation. But to repeat an earlier point, it is not the task of science, in its central sense as a body of laws and theories, to ascertain the conditions that are prominent and abiding and allow us to be at home in the world. Disorientation is the result, at least approximately, of a certain way in which we take up with reality, and the loss of the traditional points of reference may not be experienced as debilitating at all” (79).

Borgmann suggests that the ills of society may in fact be more intimately linked with technology – or more aptly, the mindset that comes along with technology – than we have thought. One of the sources of this illness might be that technology forces us to abstract; these abstractions lead to alienation (in the Marxist sense). He argues that theoria – the (Aristotelian) calm and resourceful vision of the world – is eclipsed by the rise of the modern period (6). He clearly argues that while technology and science are often considered two aspects of the same enterprise, this is fatally misleading (15). What is the nature of the technology mindset? – that “the deplorable chaos of the contemporary world results from our failure to carry the scientific enterprise to its conclusion by explaining and shaping human behavior according to the best available scientific knowledge” (28). Scientific progress is always couched as liberation from, not liberation for (29) (think of Fromm). Hans Jonas argues that “modern science has not only withdrawn its support of established world views but promoted their dissolution and the establishment of an alternative vision. The world’s cosmic architecture is denied and replaced by the infinite manifold of one homogenous substrate. Manipulation and novelty are integral parts of this promotion, and it has technology as an inevitable if not immediate consequence. Technology ceaselessly transforms the world along abstract and artificial lines” (29). And some argue that technology’s power is threatening to our well-being: “For Schumacher it is a matter of simple inspection that technology is not only morally objectionable but leads to psychological stresses which threaten to tear the fabric of society” (145).

The author defines technology “as the characteristic way in which we today take up with the world” (35). He argues that this mindset originated in the Enlightenment. The promise of technology is firstly to relieve us from burdens, and to make us comfortable (41): “‘Relief became possible from the drudgery of threshing wheat, digging dirt, carrying water, breaking rocks, sawing wood, washing clothes, and, indoors, spinning and weaving and sewing; many of the laborious tasks of living were being made easier by the middle of the 19th century. Relief from toil does not necessarily mean a better higher life; nevertheless, any attempt to get at the meaning of American technology must give a prominent place to machines that have lifted burdens from the shoulders of millions of individual beings’” (Ferguson: 37). This is what Szerszynski would call the promise of infinitude. And of course it is a fallacy: : “One may be concerned whether technology can hope to be successful on its own terms, whether liberation in one place will not impose new burdens in another. This is Wiesner’s concern when he says: ‘In this enormously complex world, each large-scale technological advance has costs, side effects often unanticipated’” (38-9). Here we see Szerszynski’s dynameis. And furthermore, technology does not actually seem to make us happier: “It turns out that avowed happiness appears to decline as technological affluence rises” (124).

The promise of technology “guilds and veils the shaping of the modern world” (39) in this way: “The promise presents the character of the technological enterprise in broad and ambiguous outline, i.e., as the general procurement of liberty and prosperity in the principled and effective manner that is derived from modern science. Thus it keeps our aspirations present and out of focus at the same time” (39). In fact, our new aspirations become the values of technology: that the world be rendered unto us in a way that is “instantaneous, ubiquitous, safe, and easy” (41).

Borgmann makes a point about the necessity of technology to conceal its means, to present itself (falsely) as an unmediated experience (Ryan) to the user: Technology’s effect is insidious: “The concealment of the machinery and the disburdening character of the device go hand in hand. If the machinery were forcefully present, it would eo ipso make claims on our faculties. If claims are felt to be onerous and are therefore removed, then so is the machinery. A commodity is truly available when it can be enjoyed as a mere end, unencumbered by means” (44). This is why Stuart Walker’s work is so radical. When he makes a metronome, for example, by literally binding a battery to a rock so that it is exposed, he is asking us to question how we feel about the pollution of nature by technology; and if we don’t like what we see, not simply cover it up by concealing it in a battery case, but do something about it.

Much of what Borgmann writes about has to do with Marxist concepts like alienation and fetishization. He writes that, “Devices…dissolve the coherent and engaging character of the pretechnological world of things. In a device, the relatedness of the world is replaced by a machinery, but the machinery is concealed, and the commodities, which are made available by a device, are enjoyed without the encumbrance of or the engagement with a context” (47). And also, people are unwilling or unable to repair their technological devices, which leads to waste. And wastefulness is the necessary byproduct of making things carefree (47).

An important term for Borgmann is the ‘device paradigm’ (49). This can be seen when “Commodities and their consumption constitute the professed goal of the technological enterprise” (48). This breeds commodity fetishism, where people “‘search for satisfaction of their needs in the jungle of commodities’ (William Leiss)” (54).

The other really important idea in Borgmann’s work is that of reverse adaptation, defined by Winner as “the adjustment of human ends to match the character of the available means” (60); and as Borgmann writes, “Winner’s notion of reverse adaptation implies that in technology means sometimes determine ends and thus people become enslaved by their servant” (61). In this mode, Winner writes, “Abstract general ends – health, safety, comfort, nutrition, shelter, mobility, happiness, and so forth – become highly instrument-specific. The desire to move about becomes the desire to possess an automobile; the need to communicate becomes the necessity of having telephone service; the need to eat becomes a need for a refrigerator, stove, and convenient supermarket” (62).

And again, this comes back to Ellul’s ideas about the idolization of la technique: Borgmann writes, “Commodities allow no engagement and atrophy the fullness of our capacities…. In paraphrasing Ellul, Winner remarks: ‘The original ends have atrophied; society has accepted the power of technique in all areas of life; social decisions are now based upon the validity of instrumental modes of evaluation; the ends are restricted to suit the requirements of techniques of performance and of measurement’” (62).

In part three, Borgmann attempts to address how we can make changes. One necessary step is to insert humility into our technological development: to listen to nature and learn from it that we must “accept and to limit technology in a principled and sensible way” (195-6?). And another must is that we make a social commitment to changing the character of technology: “the more strongly we sense and the more clearly we understand the coherence and the character of technology, the more evident it becomes to us that technology must be countered by an equally patterned and social commitment, i.e., by a practice” (208). He explains further: “Countering technology through a practice is to take account of our susceptibility to technological distraction, and it is also to engage the peculiarly human strength of comprehension, i.e., the power to take in the world in its extent and significance and to respond through an enduring commitment. Practically a focal practice comes into being through resoluteness, either an explicit resolution where one vows regularly to engage in a focal activity from this day on or in a more implicit resolve that is nurtured by a focal thing in favorable circumstances and matures into a settled custom” (210).

For Borgmann, the antidote to our current technological fetishism is to turn away from producing commodities and begin creating “focal things”: “They are concrete, tangible, and deep, admitting of no functional equivalents; they have a tradition, structure, and rhythm of their own. They are unprocurable and finally beyond our control. They engage us in the fullness of our capacities. And they thrive in a technological setting. A focal practice, generally, is the resolute and regular dedication to a focal thing. It sponsors discipline and skill which are exercised in a unity of achievement and enjoyment, of mind, body, and the world, of myself and others, and in a social union” (219). And “one may hope that focal practices will lead to a deepening of charity and compassion. Focal practices provide a profounder commerce with reality and bring us closer to that intensity of experience where the world engages one painfully in hunger, disease, and confinement. A focal practice also discloses fellow human beings more fully and may make us more sensitive to the plight of those persons whose integrity is violated or suppressed. In short, a life of engagement may dispel the astounding callousness that insulates the citizens of the technological societies from the well-known misery in much of the world” (225).

Borgmann’s notions are bolstered by examples of people having spiritual engagements with technologies, such as Robert Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

“…Pirsig suggests that peace of mind can be found in the midst of technology by carefully attending to a technological object such as a motorcycle. The suggestion is made explicit in the great promise of the book: ‘The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower.’ What makes the pronouncement so attractive is its promise of reconciling nostalgia and technology. It tells us that we can find a world of peace and serenity and be at home not just in God’s pristine and vanishing creation but in the midst of our own creations which surround us daily” (160-1).

The lesson from this book, for Borgmann, is: “To attain harmony with technology…, we must take up the practice of maintaining and caring for the technological objects about is. This instruction responds in a positive way to the disengagement and disfranchisement that beset typical technological culture” (161). This is a matter of really engaging with technologies on a deeper level (“If we are to challenge the rule of technology, we can do so only through the practice of engagement’ (207)); caring for them (“A call for caring makes sense only within a reform proposal that recognizes and fruitfully counters the technological tendency to disburden and disengage us from the care of things” (161)).

Anyone who bemoans the current state of technological development risks being labeled a Luddite. Borgmann nips these criticisms in the bud with the following (long) explanation:

“The reform of technology that has been suggested so far would prune back the excesses of technology and restrict it to a supporting role. That suggestion does not stem from ill will toward technology but from the experience that there are forces that rightfully claim our engagement and truly grace our lives and from the concomitant experience that to procure these things technologically is to eviscerate them; finally, it springs from the experience that that joys that technology is able to furnish seem to have a parasitic and voracious character: they require as a contrast pretechnological limits and contours, and they seem to draw vitality from the firmness of pretechnological life by devouring and displacing it. But the focal things and practices that we have considered in Chapters 23 and 24 are not pretechnological, i.e., mere remnants of an earlier culture. Nor are they antitechnological, i.e., practices that defy or reject technology. Rather they unfold their significance in an affirmative and intelligent acceptance of technology. We may call them matatechnological things and practices. As such they provide an enduring counterposition to technology. They provide a contrast against which the experience of specifically technological liberty and prosperity remains alive and appreciated. Not only do focal concerns attain their proper splendor in the context of technology; the context of technology too is restored to the dignity of its original promise through the focal concerns at its center” (247-8).

So here, finally, we arrive at our target: “I want to insist that the destiny of the focal things, the one thing that matters should one emerge at length, is the fulcrum of change. We should measure the significance of the developments about us by the degree to which focal concerns are beginning to flourish openly or continue to live in hiding. All other changes will be variants of technological concerns” (248-9).

Concerning the Spiritual in Art

A summary of:
Kandinsky, W. (1912). Concerning the Spiritual in Art: and painting in particular. George Wittenborn, Inc.: New York.

“Only just now awakening after years of materialism, our soul is infected with the despair born of unbelief, of lack of purpose and aim. The nightmare of materialism, which turned life into an evil, senseless game, is not yet passed; it still darkens the awakening soul…. Our soul rings cracked when we sound it, like a precious vase, dug out of the earth, which has a flaw” (24).

It’s clear that any discussion of spirituality – and the lack thereof embodied in technology – must include to some degree a discussion of materialism. While a bit hyperbolic, I do like the above quote.

The challenge – one recognized early on in this process – is that making technology more spiritual is not an exercise in turning back the clock. Consider these wise words: “Every work of art is the child of its time; often it is the mother of our emotions. It follows that each period of culture produces an art of its own, which cannot be repeated. Efforts to revive the art principles of the past at best produce works of art that resemble a stillborn child” (23). As it relates to this task, we cannot aim to insert the same kind of spirituality that we identify as now missing from technology. We have to come up with a unique solution that fulfills a contemporary spiritual void.

Kandinsky raises the question of responsibility with regards to one’s creations. He quotes two very different perspectives: 1) “’To send light into the darkness of men’s hearts – such is the obligation of the artist,’ said Schumann” (25); 2) “’A painter is a man who can draw and paint everything,’ said Tolstoi” (25). Kandinsky suggests that the latter definition prevails in the world (or it did in the early 20th Century); and we can find evidence of this in VR’s quest for simulacrum, not meaning. For Kandinsky, this is the sin of self-indulgent art (26): “This annihilation of internal vibrations that constitute the life of the colors, this dwindling away of artistic force, is called ‘art for art’s sake’” (26). VR programmer get drawn into the fun and excitement of creating ever more perfect simulations, just as artists get drawn into the technique, thusly: “Out of composition in flat triangles has developed a composition with plastic three-dimensional triangles, that is to say, with pyramids; and this is cubism. But here a tendency has arisen toward inertia, towards a concentration on form for its own sake, and consequently once more a reduction of potential values. But that is the unavoidable result of the external application of an inner principle” (67). The problem is that when we focus on the technique, we lose sight of the purpose (compare this to Ellul’s ‘la technique’): “…at those times when the soul tends to be choked by materialist lack of belief, art becomes purposeless, and it is said that art exists for its own sake alone. The relation between art and the soul is, as it were, doped into unconsciousness” (74-5). In a nutshell, I fear this is what’s happened with technological development, and it is a symptom of working from the premise of Developing Because We Can, instead of Developing Because We Should. Or as Kandinsky says so eloquently of art (and I’m making the case that it applies equally to technology): “In such periods art ministers to lower needs and is used for material ends. It seeks its content in crude substance, because it knows nothing fine. Objects remaining the same, their reproduction is thought to be the aim of art. The question ‘what?’ disappears; only the question ‘how?’ remains. By what method are these material objects reproduced? The method becomes a rationale. Art loses its soul” (28). Insert technology: technology loses its soul.

Kandinsky argues that “Today we are seeking the road which is to lead us away from the external to the internal basis” (54) (compare to the ‘subjective turn’ in Heelas et al., 2007) and “The starting-point is the study of color and its effects on men” (54). He talks about color as conveying information in the form of feelings to people – a sort of subconscious communication. E.g.: “Blue is the typical heavenly color; the ultimate feeling it creates is one of rest. When it sinks almost to black, it echoes a grief that is hardly human. It becomes an infinite engrossment in solemn moods. As it grows lighter it becomes more indifferent and affects us in a remote and neutral fashion, like a high, cerulean sky. The lighter it grows, the more it loses resonance, until it reaches complete quiescence, in other words, white. In music a light blue is like a flute, a darker blue a ‘cell; a still darker the marvelous double bass; and the darkest blue of all – an organ” (58-9). This example is as close as I have yet come to what I mean when I talk about “spiritual engagement” with technology. What emotions/experiences does this engagement evoke? – and could we identify these as being uplifting, or fulfilling a human need?

Similarly, Kandinsky touches on this spiritual engagement when describing the experience of listening to Mozart: “Perhaps with envy and with a mournful sympathy we listen to the music of Mozart. It acts as a welcome pause in the turmoil of our inner life, as a consolation and as a hope, but we hear it as the echo of something from another age long past and fundamentally strange. (65-66) / The strife of colors, the sense of the balance we have lost, tottering principles, unexpected assaults, great questions, apparently useless striving, storm and tempest, broken chains, antitheses and contradictions – these make up our harmony. The composition arises from this harmony is a mingling of color and drawing, each with its separate existence but each blended into a common life, which is called a picture by the force of internal necessity” (66).

Kandinsky makes this assertion: “Matisse – color. Picasso – form. Two great signposts pointing toward a great end” (39). Consider how this applies (according to him) in a work of art: “A warm red tone (acting as an irritant in isolation) will materially alter in internal value when it is no longer isolated as an abstract tone, but is applied as an element of some other object and combined with natural form. Combining red with various natural forms will also cause different spiritual effects, all of which will harmonize with that of the original isolated red. Suppose we combine red with the sky, flowers, a garment, a face, a horse, a tree. / A red sky suggests to us sunset, or fire, and has a consequent effect upon us – either of splendor or menace….” (69). This suggests three questions worth considering: 1) Are there technological analogs to “color” and “form”?; i.e. what are the building blocks which, if combined one way as opposed to another, produce either a spiritual or non-spiritual result? 2) Is some of the supposed “spiritual” experience of one combination more to do with subjective interpretation combined with a flair for linguistic description to make this case?; i.e. how can you substantiate your claims about one technology being more spiritual than another without relying on fertile language to do so? 3) Fundamentally, do we experience technology as we experience art? – particularly since one is theoretically primarily functional while the other is primarily aesthetic; i.e. is this technology/art comparison fair? – is there the same potential within technology to evoke emotions, or are there different expectations for our technology that we can’t get around? – is there the same potential for both to evoke psychological effects (44)?

This writing also inspires questions about how to go about designing radical technological innovation may take. Kandinsky writes: “It is clear, therefore, that the choice of an object (i.e., one of the elements of form) must be decided by a purposive vibration in the human soul; therefore, the choice of the object also originates from the principle of internal necessity. / The freer the abstract form, the purer and more primitive the vibration. Therefore, in any composition where corporeal form seems superfluous it may be replaced by abstract or semi-abstract form” (50). This implies that the first step in the process is to determine (somehow!) what it is that vibrates in the human soul – which is a poetic way of saying that step one is to discern our human values. Step two would then be finding a way of abstracting those values and representing them in the technology. (I would also add that there needs to be a step three of making those values explicit as well as subconsciously represented.) Now we have guidelines for ‘good’ or ‘bad’: “If its form is ‘poor,’ it is too weak to call forth spiritual vibration. Likewise a picture is not necessarily ‘well painted’ if it possesses the ‘values’ of which the French so constantly speak. It is only well painted if its spiritual value is completed and satisfying” (74). We should be putting in the kind of thinking work that Kandinsky has put into the composition of a painting – it is as important, more so even, to put this effort into thinking about what we’re doing with technology and what spiritual effects it will have on us.

Kandinsky makes another important point about the need to forget conventions (this might equally be described as Beginner’s Mind in Zen terms): “The artist must ignore distinctions between ‘recognized’ or ‘unrecognized’ conventions of form, the transitory knowledge and demands of his particular age” (53). So what does one follow? Much in line with the ‘subjective turn’ (which technically happens much later than Kandinsky wrote this), his inspiration must come from within: “He must watch his own inner life and hearken to the demands of internal necessity. Then he may safely employ means sanctioned or forbidden by his contemporaries. This is the only way to express the mystical necessity. All means are sacred which are called for by internal necessity. All means are sinful which are not drawn from inner necessity. (53) / It is impossible to theorize about this ideal. In real art, theory does not precede practice but follows it. Everything is a matter of feeling. Even though the general structure may be formulated theoretically, there is still an additional something which constitutes the soul of creation” (53-4).

Another point that the artist makes is that the materialist age has produced a kind of receptive passivity, something which we could argue is also true with regards to our uptake of technology: “Spectators are too accustomed to looking for a ‘meaning’ in a picture, i.e., some external relation among its various elements. Our materialist age has produced a kind of spectator, a ‘connoisseur,’ who is not content to place himself in front of a picture and let it speak for itself. He does not search for the internal feeling of the picture directly for himself, he worries himself into looking for ‘closeness to nature,’ or ‘temperament,’ or ‘handling,’ or ‘tonality,’ or ‘perspective,’ and so on. His eye does not probe the external expression to arrive at the internal significance. In a conversation with an interesting person, we endeavor to get at his fundamental ideas and feelings. We do not bother about the words he uses, nor his spelling, nor the breath necessary for speaking, nor the movements of his tongue and lips, nor the psychological effect on our brain, nor the physical sound in our ear, nor the physiological effect on our nerves. We realize that these things, though interesting and important, are not the problem. The meaning and ideas are what concerns us. We should have the same attitude when confronted with a work of art if we are to absorb its abstract effect. If this attitude ever becomes general, the artist will be able to dispense with natural forms and colors and to use purely artistic means” (70). Again, this suggests our obsession with la technique (Ellul); and it blinds us from seeing, in the case of technology, the inherent meaninglessness. In other words, we are dazzled by the features of the technology (e.g. screen resolution, hard drive size, etc.), pointing at these features with reverence, thinking that they are meaningful in and of themselves (as evidence of human ‘progress’), meanwhile never asking the deeper questions about, ‘Well, what does it really mean?’ In our idolization of technology, in our reverence of la technique, we have forgotten this: “The artist must have something to communicate, since mastery over form is not the end but, instead, the adapting of form to internal significance” (75).

Kandinsky’s hope that “an age of conscious creation” (Constructionists), as opposed to divine inspiration (like the Impressionists), is leading us towards “an epoch of great spirituality” (77) might provide yet another lesson for us in terms of technological development. Rather than just jumping right into development, we need to be considered in our approach, really think about what we want to put in our technology and what effect it will have of the receiver/user.

Spiritual revolution and the ‘subjective turn’

A summary of;
Heelas, P., Woodhead, L., Seel, B., Szerszynski, B., & Tusting, K. (2005). The Spiritual Revolution: Why religion is giving way to spirituality. Blackwell Publishing: Oxford.

The authors of this book argue that while religion seems to be in decline, spirituality seems to be on the rise; and that this can be attributed to what they call the ‘subjective turn’: “It is a turn away from life lived in terms of external or ‘objective’ roles, duties and obligations, and a turn towards a life lived by reference to one’s own subjective experiences (relational as much as individualistic)”(2). The authors use somewhat confusing terminology: it is a “turn away from ‘life-as’ (life lived as a dutiful wife, father, husband, strong leader, self-made man etc.) to ‘subjective-life’ (life lived in deep connection with the unique experiences of my self-in-relation)” (3). The latter includes all those things that happen inside us (“states of consciousness, states of mind, memories, emotions, passions, sensations, bodily experiences, dreams, feelings, inner consciences, and sentiments” (3)). So the difference in modern culture is that increasingly, this inner experience, our subjectivities, “become a, if not the, unique source of significance, meaning and authority” (3-4).

In the words of one interviewee, “Religion asks you to learn from the experience of others. Spirituality urges you to seek your own” (13?). This is very much in line with what Szerszynski wrote about with regards to the modern imperative to choose, for self-realization. People search for answers within, rather than turning to outside sources; they are taking more responsibility for various aspects of their lives (125): “‘Needing to become what one is is the feature of modern living’ (p. 32). And in the words of Gordon Allport (1962), what matters is ‘the right of every individual to work out his own philosophy of life to find his personal niche in creation, as best he can. His freedom to do so will be greater if he sees clearly the forces of culture and conformity that invite him to be content with a merely second-hand and therefore for him, with an immature religion’ (pp. vii-viii; our emphases)” (125). (I notice a link between this and Corus's The Journey - about being a process of becoming... more on Corus at some other point.)

The authors explain further: “Most generally, the subjective turn involves the turn to what Dick Houtman and Peter Mascini (2002) call ‘moral individualism’ – namely ‘the granting of a moral primacy to individual liberty’ (p. 459). The person serves as the locus of moral authority, with value being attached to staying true to oneself rather than succumbing to outside agency” (95). The value of this is that spirituality enables “many participants to explore more deeply what they already know to be the case – that they have more to offer, both with regard to themselves and to others – than is allowed expression in everyday, relational and other, spheres of life (105).

The authors identify the development of ‘the ethic of subjectivity’: “which is evident in the value attached to self-expression and fulfillment; to doing ‘what feels right’, ‘following your heart’, ‘being true to yourself’, cultivating ‘emotional intelligence’ and respecting other people’s feelings” (80). In line with this, another interviewee said that “what was helpful in the spiritual life was to follow ‘whatever seems heart-centred to you” (13?). In terms of my PhD, if I want the foundation of my research to be a spiritual process, it is important that I follow my heart to a degree; and to this end, it will be important to engage in research through design, i.e. creating as I am inspired.

To make their case, the authors did a great deal of interviews and surveying of people in the Lake District. Their findings “unequivocally demonstrates growth” of a belief in the spiritual from 1970 to now (45). Here are some telling statistics:

In answer to the question ‘Do you believe in any of the following?’ the greatest number of respondents (82.4 per cent) agree that ‘some sort of spirit or life force pervades all that lives’, with 73 per cent expressing belief in ‘subtle energy (or energy channels) in the body’. Presented with a range of options and asked to select the statement which best describes their ‘core beliefs about spirituality’ 40 per cent of respondents equate spirituality with ‘love’ or being ‘a caring and decent person’, 34 per cent with ‘being in touch with subtle energies’, ‘healing oneself and others’ or ‘living life to the full’. Spirituality, it appears, belongs to life-itself (‘subtle energy in the body’ which serves to keep us alive) and subjective-life (‘love’, ‘caring’). It seems that spirit/energy/spirituality is understood to dwell within the lives of participants, an interpretation that is supported by the finding that very few associate spirituality with a transcendental, over-and-above-the-self, external source of significance (25).

This is also interesting:
1 “Holistic milieu, subjective-life spirituality – which pays most attention to the cultivation of unique subjectivities – tends to be faring best.
2 Religions of experiential humanity and experiential difference – which address unique subjectivities whilst placing them within a life-as frame of reference – tends to be faring relatively well.
3 Religions of difference – which pay some attention to unique subjectivities whilst emphasizing life-as ‘oughts’ – tend to be faring relatively badly.
4 Religions of humanity – which pay least attention to unique subjectivities – tend to be faring worst” (75).

Here’s the conclusion:

Some hundred years ago, Durkheim drew a distinction between ‘a religion handed down by tradition’ and ‘a free, private, optional religion, fashioned according to one’s own needs and understanding’ (cited in Pickering, 1975, p. 96). Writing at much the same time, William James, Simmel, Troeltsch and others drew similar distinctions. They too thought that spiritualities of life were a growing force, so they would not be surprised by the (148) extent to which the spiritual revolution has developed since their time, or about our predictions. Arguing that the sacred gravitates towards ultimate value to affirm, enhance, validate and express that value, they all reflected on the significance that was coming to be placed on subjective-life. As Simmel (1997) put it so vividly, ‘This emotional reality – which we can only call life – makes itself increasingly felt in its formless strength… claiming inalienable rights as the true meaning or value of our existence’ (p. 24). And as it progresses, the turn to subjective life draws the sacred within (149).

Techno-demonology

A summary of:
Szerszynski, B. (2006). Techno-demonology: Naming, Understanding and Redeeming the A/Human Agencies with Which We Share Our World. Ecotheology, 11.1, pp. 57-75.

This paper is incredibly interesting. It attempts to understand the ways in which “technologies increasingly confront us as indifferent or malign agencies” (57). This is what fascinates me: I see technology as being amoral, thus indifferent to our needs and values, and that the more we engage with them (as amoral entities), the more harm it does to us, the more it weakens our sense of morality and confuse our value set.

The author makes an important distinction between two kinds of technologies: “elementals (stoicheia)”, i.e. “technical systems which have become treated as ends in themselves, and have thus started to control human action”, and “powers (dynameis)”, i.e. “technologies whose unanticipated side-effects overwhelm their intended purposes” (57). The difference is that the former can be said to be “in control” and the latter is not (59); or another way of putting it: the former “occurs when technology seems to succeed in securing the future, in imposing certainty on our dealings with nature”; and the latter “manifests itself when it fails to do so” (61). Elementals “take form when basic principles of existence become treated as ends rather than means and used to orient life: when technique becomes such a dominant form of acting and thinking that it becomes an autonomous, self-determining system” (61). Ellul would describe this kind of technology as being ‘self-directing’ (61); and here no one human has much control over steering this process (62). For Ellul, this is when ‘technique’ comes to dominate our lives, seemingly “indifferen[t] to empirical, real human projects and happiness” (62). And in contrast to this, there are times when “technology is experienced not as a deterministic system, but as a capricious agency” (64) – what the author calls dynamis. In this form, it can have consequences no one could have predicted.

The point and the reason for invoking this ‘neologism’ of demonic technology (notably, not dissimilar from Robert W. Daly’s term ‘spectres of technology’ (62)) is that our technologies could be understood as having agency, “as forces which operate in the natural and human world that are neither natural nor under human control” (58). This is not to say, he hastens to add, that this force is inherently evil (58); nor is it not an undefeatable foe (59).

It is important for the author that we contextualize these techno-demons: how do they arise? This has to do with the promise of technology as articulated in his book: “promising to liberate humanity from the contingency and finitude of creaturely existence” (60). It began when we attempted to subjugate techne to logos, and from this technology was understood in “sublime terms” and “became a form of idolatry” (65). The irony is that the “Enlightenment project of delivering humanity from bondage to supernatural agencies… gave form and power to new forms of a/human agency which have come to threaten human freedom” (65). In earlier times, technology was inferior, thus it could not pose much of a danger (65); nor had they any “inherent purpose”, “so could not impose this purpose on their users” (65). Contrast this to now, when the “sublime unconditionedness of modern technological systems thereby allowed them to offer a form of this-worldly salvation by removing uncertainty from human affairs – but a salvation that in practice has arguably subtracted from human freedom as much as it has added” (66). The key here is that in worshiping technology (specifically elementals), we becomes slaves to it.

It’s slightly different with dynamis. These have risen to demons because, as Hannah Arendt argues, “with new technologies the primary mode of activity is not making but acting…, with the effect of increasing rather than decreasing the animacy of matter” (66-7). With new technologies, we are “starting to ‘act’ into nature” (67), and in a sense we are the Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

And lastly, while it’s all well and good to understand how these techno-demons came to be, it is far more exciting (and what I want to do once the sociology section of my PhD is nicely polished) to “restore technology to its rightful place in creation” (57). Happily, the author seems to think we have the power to do so! And even more joyfully, he has a cute term for this: “techno-exorcism” (60).

I’ve been meaning to read some of Ellul, having been warned of its opaqueness; for now I’ll settle for this mini summary from Szerszynski in his 2005 bok: “In The Technological Society Jacques Ellul seeks to capture features of this new technological condition – both the way that technology in modern society seems to promise a this-worldly salvation by removing uncertainty from human affairs, and its distinctive, self-reproducing dynamic…. The technical phenomenon (la technique) is a uniquely modern form of making and using artefacts – ‘the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency… in every field of human activity’ (1964: xxv, emphasis in original)” (59).

Here’s what important for right now: “Technology for Ellul is nothing more than a gamble made by modern humanity – the gamble that it would be better or even possible to replace the ‘natural attitude’ towards objects with a technological attitude” (70). But Ellul also does not think that our loss of control of technology was inevitable (70). It was a result of our “voluntary act of idolatry – the elevation of a system or institution to an end in itself” (70). Therefore, “the positive message here is that the development of the practical arts need not lead to a situation where human autonomy is over-mastered by technological elementals” (70). The trick to being “redeemed” is to discover “what Heidegger (1977) called a ‘free’ relation with technology, re-embedding technical systems within non-technical values and purposes” (70).

Wonderful! – this is what I’ve been arguing we need to do!

But there’s more, namely exorcising the dynameis, and it involves, what I am beginning to realize is a culture change, even a behavioral change. The author mentions Ruskin’s Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century, in which the storm clouds seemed to be revealing “something of what modern humans were becoming” (17): “Before we can purify the sky, Ruskin was insisting, we must purify ourselves” (71).

There is a chance, the author argues, that the more we come to realize that our “ability to produce effects continues to outstrip our ability to control them” we might become more cautious and take into account unintended consequences in developing technology. I think part of my PhD aims to point out how necessary this pause and reflection is, because I think we have a growing pile of evidence to show that without this stutter-step, we can produce a real mess for ourselves.

Finally, the author argues that we “need to develop new ways of thinking about techne which does not fall into this trap [thinking we are capable of reversing the fall] – to redeem the practical arts by re-embedding them within a larger framework of natural and supernatural flourishing, but also by listening to what they say to us” (72). In this sense, the “techno-demons of risk can also serve as angelic messengers… [by reminding] us of the limits of technical reason” (72). We need to have an epiphany of humility, it would seem. Perhaps then we can get some way toward, not returning to, but recapturing some of what was lost of the non-rationality of matter and “non-technical understandings of human flourishing, incorporating ideas of beauty, justice and contemplation” (66).

And, fascinatingly, the author argues we need to recognize that “technologies ultimately belong to God” as a way of allowing them to play the “redemptive role that they can play in history” (72). To Szerszynski, “the project of democratizing and humanizing modern technological development needs to be understood and approached as a fundamentally theological project” (73). This complicates things slightly for me, because while I suppose I do consider it a spiritual task, framing my PhD as a ‘theological project’ might provoke hostility in the computer science (and design) world.

Nature, Technology and the Sacred: a Postscript

A summary of:
Szerszynski, B. (2005). Nature, Technology and the Sacred: Religion and Spirituality in the Modern World. Blackwell Publishing: Oxford.
Chapter 11 – Nature, Technology and the Sacred: a Postscript

I find myself pasting huge chunks of Szerszynski, but it is mostly because the author articulates his nuanced argument incredibly well, so it would be a shame to dilute it. I like this summary he provides of his mission: “As Weber himself put it in a different context, under conditions of modernity ‘[t]he many gods of old, without their magic and therefore in the form of impersonal forces, rise up from their graves, strive for power over our lives and begin once more their eternal struggle amongst themselves’ (Weber, 1989: 22-3). I have been similarly suggesting in this book that in contemporary society we can see not a decline but a profusion of the sacred; dispersed across the social, natural and technological landscape, the sacred becomes feral. / But the contemporary sacred is not thereby without order and pattern” (171).

The important nuance with Szerszynski is to understand that technology does not disgod nature, or indeed strip an meaning from it; but rather it “serves ceremonial functions in maintaining a particular sacral ordering of nature” (172). So, if we are going to try to answer the question of “which enchantment of nature might offer a genuine alternative to the domination of nature and humanity by modern technology” (124), we have to start by understanding these “sacral meanings” (172). And here is yet another excellent question to consider: “But what should be our guide in such a process [of achieving the right relation to nature and to technology]? (172). Here is the problem: “I have suggested that the characteristic form of the sacred in contemporary culture is a postmodern sacred where the ultimate ground of value and meaning has been drawn into human subjectivity itself. This ordering of the sacred is not without its distinctive modes of truth. Yet it seems unable to provide either a place outside the social and technological world, or an inherent rationality within it, on which could be grounded a critique of modern society. It thus seems only able to generate either celebrations of the contemporary extension of consumer choice that simply sacralize the modern technological condition, or at best offer purely symbolic escapes from that condition that ultimately leave it unchallenged (Roberts, 2004)” (172).

I think the lesson to take away from this book is that a critique of technology cannot be done well without taking into account the “historical conditionedness” (174) of the unique, Gestalt ordering of the world; i.e. the worldview or mindset of the users and producers of that technology. Technology offers the misleading promise of “overcom[ing] finitude”; and therefore, the author suggests that, “the very embracing of our historical conditionedness, and ultimately of our embeddedness in the ongoing transformation of the sacred, can itself be seen as an anti-technological move, a negation of the negation of finitude” (174). In other words, the truly radical thing to do is to, as a first step in technological innovation, is to recognize the historical conditioning of that innovation. So it is silly, really, to “refuse what is handed us by the past; such is the impossible dream of Enlightenment. Instead, the task must be to receive that past more consciously and responsibly” (174). We must be humble, but we must also humble science: “Thus the embracing of finitude is likely to involve a humbling of science as only one way of knowing nature, and of technology as only one way of dealing with it” (177-8).

The author concludes with this: “…technologies need to be engaged with more fully, to be ‘read’ in a far richer way: in terms of what relationships they bear to our past trajectory, how they might be harnessed to non-technological goals in the present, and upon what future trajectory they might set us. Understanding the embeddedness of our ideas of nature and technology in the ongoing transformation of the Western sacred is an essential component of that task” (178).

Now my PhD is seeming incredibly daunting! – if I have to, as part of the process, contextualize the modern epistemology and the modern relationship between technology and nature… and humanity. But what’s somewhat heartening is the suggestion (between the lines) that if we change what technology means to us, it may change our relationship to nature, possibly ushering in an epoch of greater environmental stewardship.

Nature, Virtue and Everyday Life

A summary of:
Szerszynski, B. (2005). Nature, Technology and the Sacred: Religion and Spirituality in the Modern World. Blackwell Publishing: Oxford.
Chapter 8 – Nature, Virtue and Everyday Life

(I have skipped over chapters 5-7 because, while interesting, they do not help me much with my thinking about my PhD.)

This chapter is about how people are seeking to “reorder their relationship with non-human nature” (138). One example he uses is Vegetarians, who have strong feelings about how they should live their lives in relation to nature; they serve as an example of “living according to one’s principles… and ordering one’s own life in a morally excellent way in relation to them” (133). To explain this behavior, Szerszynksi uses virtue theory, which “focuses neither on acts nor consequences but on character as the primary locus for moral judgement (see Kruschwitz and Roberts, 1987; French et al., 1988)” (131). Virtue theory helps us understand the ways in which nature has become politicized (135).

And it might, therefore, be a useful thing to explore in terms of understanding why we behave the way we do, and why sustainability has become such an important issue of late. Equally, Bordieu’s concept of habitus might come in handy here, because it explained “how ways of thinking are absorbed as habits into the body, but are also socially located (Bourdieu, 1977, 1984)”; and how different manifestations of this habitus represent “different social groups” that then “try to reorder the moral hierarchies of society in order to ensure they are higher than other groups” (135). Szerszynski writes: “What has all this got to do with green consumerism? Firstly, like the popular religion of the early modern period, both in the sense of investing everyday actions – shopping, cooking, discarding – with sacral significance, and in terms of involving a certain habituation of bodily action, the going through of formulaic movements in given contexts…. Secondly, like popular religion, this kind of ecological piety helps to stabilize self and society in a world understood as permeated with risk and hazard…. Thirdly, like those of early modern popular religion, the rituals and taboos of green consumerism can be seen as expressive as much as instrumental, as serving to affirm the identity of the individual and their social bonds with others, as much as to navigate around a risky world” (138).

The point is that we have a choice – indeed, we are “obliged” to choose – in modernity “by what codes and through what patterns we live our life” (127). (Traditionalists, too, are of course making this choice.) What is ‘right’ is no longer ordained in the way it once was (when life was “dominated by a justice-based emancipatory politics concerned with the liberation of groups and individuals from tradition, inequality and oppression” (127?)); and now we have to ask ourselves questions about “how one should live” (127?). People are responsible now for their own self-realization (this seems to agree with Maslow’s hierarchy literature); and they must make a sense of the world for themselves by making choices that embody their moralities.

Modern Technology and the Sacred

A summary of:
Szerszynski, B. (2005). Nature, Technology and the Sacred: Religion and Spirituality in the Modern World. Blackwell Publishing: Oxford.
Chapter 4: Modern Technology and the Sacred

It is facile to say, “technology is our new religion.” This is not precisely accurate. But modern society has attached very important meanings to the development of technology, which are important to understand. We get some clues to the evolution of this meaning in the etymology of the word itself.

Technologousi, used up to the 12th Century, connoted “reasoning subordinated to craft and artfulness” (55). This changed with the Reformation (and Puritanism in particular), which brought with it a “new emphasis on reducing the arts to universal, univocal methodological principles – on finding the logos of techne itself, the science that defines all the arts, and thus overcoming the recalcitrance of matter and making it subservient to logos”… and then… “Technologia, and its synonym technometria, emerged as Latin terms in the work of the sixteenth-century French Protestant rhetorician Peter Ramus, who used them in the more modern sense of ‘the logos of the relations among all technai. But it was the eighteenth century, for example in the work of Johann Beckamann, that the concept of technology as ‘a functional description of the process of production’ emerges in its recognizably modern sense (Mitcham, 1994; 128-31)” (55-6).

The important point for understanding the meaning of technology in the modern world is this:
“It was only with the collapse of the sacred into the empirical world, the shift from an ordering of society according to the transcendent axis to a biopolitical, immanent ordering of the social, and began to constitute things in the world as Heidegger’s ‘standing-reserve’. The ultimate purpose of society was no longer to praise of the creator but the reproduction of itself; numerous sciences and technologies emerged to provide the knowledges necessary to ensure the continuation and optimization of the life process. The last vestiges of classical and Christian meanings in the technological sublime were all but swept away. Technology became measured against neither quotidian nor supernal human needs and interests, but against its own, technical criteria. Technology became the measure of man – became autonomous, became sublime” (64).

For the rest of this post, I’m going to inartfully paste some good passages that relate to other works in my literature review.

1. I always try to relate my research back to Foucault – not just because it’s a fun game, but because I understand Foucault’s interpretation of how power operates: “In the modern period, by contrast, the biological becomes seen as a self-sufficient mode of existence; what modern power administers is no longer ‘legal subjects’ but ‘living beings’ (Foucault, 1979: 142-3). And in such societies technology alters radically from the forms it took in pre-modern times. Technology becomes systematized, with an explosion in the scope and purchase of technique, and its harnessing to the goal of shaping and optimizing life itself” (59).

2. This passage relates well to what Vowell was talking about in The Wordy Shipmates: “The sublime thus became a key figure for the self-understanding of American, able not only to underscore the ‘lofty materialism’ of the Jeffersonian vision of government…, but also to combine a sense of the unique grandeur of the vast natural landscape of the new country with a celebration of the human capacity to transform the same landscape. A very specific ‘technological sublime’, exalting the power to dominate nature, provided a new, non-denominational civil religion to unite a pluralistic nation through awestruck moments of Durkheimian collective effervescence in front of public technological projects such as bridges and skyscrapers, and later atom bombs and rocket launches” (61).

3. And this theme keeps coming back, the idea that we have stopped asking “why” questions: “Technologies grated this form of sublimity advance without any awareness of questions of purpose which lie outside their own way of framing the world; questions like ‘why?’ hand in the air, with no expectation of an answer (Szerszynski, 2003a)” (63).