I'm continuing on with thoughts from John Dyer, in his book, From the Garden to the City. Chapter 2––Imagination––tells three stories and in doing so, asks three questions. These stories/questions all help us see that technology helps us to imagine: to imagine a better world, better lives for us and/or others. Here are the three questions:
1. How do we use tools and technology?
Each time you see some tool––let say, an egg white separator, for example––someone used their imagination and said, "There has to be a better way to separate the white from the yolk in this egg." And once they asked that question, they began to imagine, to envision some device, some tool, some piece of technology that would help them do just that. So, this use of imagination & technology seeks to bring us to a better, real world (as opposed to an alternative, yet fictional world seen in a story). This is the allure of technology––that it will bring us to a better world.
2. How do these tools/technologies shape us?
We develop a tool to help us shape a better world. Dyer uses a shovel as his example. In using the shovel, however, you might begin to grasp a greater vision of what can be done with a shovel, of working the land, of being productive. And, in using the shovel, you're also shaped by that tool––blisters, calluses, stronger arm muscles and so forth. So, we may shape the tool (in the manufacture of such a tool), but the tool also shapes us.
This would be the case, almost no matter the motive of the one using the tool. Dyer again uses the shovel: one person uses the shovel in breaking ground to build an orphanage; another uses the shovel to bury stolen goods. One is clearly morally superior to the other, but the tool has helped shape the person through it's usage.
3. Why are we using all these tools? Why are we doing all this technology?
Here's where matters get trickier, for here we find there are two stories: one involves God, the other doesn't; it simply involves man without God. In the story with God, technology is important and even used by God, but it is always subservient to God. In the other story, man is the goal, the end. In the first story, God is the savior; in the second, technology is what redeems us from all our problems and woes.
So now the question gets asked: How are Christians to view technology? Tools and the creativity to make tools obviously come from God. Notwithstanding, tech is not to be worshiped, bowed down to or viewed as our savior.
Dyer will now begin to use his four point major outline (Reflection, Rebellion, Redemption and Restoration) to help us think through how we are to view and use technology. More on that next week.