Redeeming Technology, Part 3: Mentality
The important distinction between information and knowledge.
In our series on technology, we are exploring the three areas of human experience that I argue are most negatively impacted: community, mentality, and sexuality.
This week’s consideration is our mentality. I mean mentality in its more classic definition—not merely our attitude and mindset, but the totality of our mental life. Jaquez Ellul predicted a technological tipping point, where we no longer control the machines of our own making, but the machines begin to control us. And this, I believe, is what is taking place with our minds.
The screens we are addicted to are not harmlessly neutral. They are training us what to think and, perhaps more problematically, how to think. The cumulative result is our technology is increasingly becoming smarter while the human mentality is moving in the opposite direction.
I want to explore this detrimental development in four ways, conveniently organized with the acronym MIND. What our minds now consume is Meaningless, Inexhaustible, Nonchalant, and Depersonalized.
Meaningless
When I say meaningless, I do not imply that all information on the internet is itself meaningless. I am arguing the vast majority is meaningless to you. And that’s the key. The pedagogy of our technological world encourages a breadth of meaningless information without a depth of meaningfulness. The benefit of the information is our access to endless content, but how much of it is truly pertinent to our lives? Very little. The result is that we simultaneously know virtually everything and very little. At least as it pertains to true knowledge.
The Bible speaks of knowledge very differently than we do. It is far more than merely data cognitively processed. Instead, it is a deep apprehension, internalization, and application of truth. The clearest example is the Hebraic use of the word: Adam knew Eve. That’s more than a Google search. And it is this essence of intimate knowledge that is being lost.
It is very telling that we call it browsing the internet because that is exactly what we are doing. We are addicted to browsing a breadth of information while malnourished of knowledge depth. Thus, we are familiar with so much while truly knowing very little.
Inexhaustible
This meaningless information is also inexhaustible, and we are exhausted trying to consume the inexhaustible. This technological gluttony is not without consequences, as our minds become unhealthy with information overconsumption. Allow me to share a few consequences of our gluttony.
A central component of our mentality is attention span, and there are countless studies demonstrating how inept our attention is becoming. While human advancement increases, the human focus is plummeting. What is happening to us? Our minds are trained hypertextually, bouncing from link to link and short clip after short clip, rather than normal sequential thought patterns. The problem, however, is that the real world does not operate this way. Our minds, conditioned for a technological world, are not functioning properly in the real world.
Another negative consequence is our difficulty in making and keeping commitments. There is something more to this than merely a spoiled and entitled generational quirk. Barry Schwarts wrote a paradigm-shaping book called The Paradox of Choice. It is a business book with a simple premise. Giving the consumer too many choices proves counterproductive. Either it will paralyze decision-making, or it will lead to buyer’s remorse over what was not chosen. Similarly, the inexhaustible nature of technology has created a society suffering from the paradox of choice.
Our minds get trained to endless options, and when it comes to making real commitments, we can’t. We view commitment as limiting options, leading to the FOMO (fear of missing out) phenomenon. Or we do commit, but the moment a better option is presented, we quickly break our commitment for the next best thing.
One more consequence to consider is our social boredom. Have you noticed how joyless, restless, discontent, and even lifeless we are becoming? It is as if we, particularly our youth, simply cannot be impressed anymore. In our next posting on sexuality, we will explore the rise of sexual impotence because real flesh and blood cannot compete with inexhaustible pornographic options. In the same way, real-world experiences are now overlooked by endless thrilling content.
The content on the YouTube channels my children enjoy is, candidly, insane. The trick shots, antics, and crazy scenarios—routinely, my children consume five-minute video compilations of what would be once-in-a-lifetime experiences to witness in the real world. But the problem is a luxury, once tasted, becomes a necessity. What are they to make of real life filled not with exceptional thrills but a whole lot of mundane?
The point behind each of these examples is that we cannot expect to be gluttons of inexhaustible technological content and have no consequences.
Nonchalant
The power of technology is not just the availability of inexhaustible information but, more significantly, the ease with which it is organized and accessed. But this remarkable accessibility lends itself to a cavalier relationship with information. Learning has lost its sacredness and is now just a nonchalant endeavor.
Fascinatingly, nearly one-third of lottery winners end up declaring bankruptcy. As sociologists have studied this social phenomenon, they have concluded that those who do not labor for their wealth lack an appreciation for it and do not know how to steward it well. This has similar implications regarding the ease of the information age. With the entirety of human discovery instantly accessible, we are all lottery winners of knowledge.
I think we fail to appreciate how revolutionary this is for humanity. We have bypassed the historic rigors of learning and now have access to whatever we want to know whenever we want to know it. Simply put, striving for answers has become obsolete, but is anything lost when we eliminate the striving?
My son was recently struggling with his math homework and asked a reasonable question. If he will one day have a device far superior to my iPhone, which will give him any answer to any question, then why must he struggle through homework? That’s not a question we should easily dismiss. If our children will inherit a world of AI able to provide answers at a moment’s notice, why even learn? Because information is not knowledge. It is the striving, labor, and mastery of information that leads to true knowledge.
Answers should never be nonchalant. In fact, we were not created for answers alone. We were created to search for answers so that we appreciate the answers and know how to steward the answers well.
Depersonalized
The most obvious yet overlooked tragedy of our technological society is that we increasingly depend upon machines rather than people. This is fine for inconsequential needs, like driving directions, for example. But when it comes to life’s greater dilemmas, it should give us pause that we are turning to inanimate screens rather than human beings. Google and even AI will never have the indelible mark of an image bearer of God, and when we disconnect information from the uniqueness of God’s image, we set a dangerous precedent.
We are being taught, trained, mentored, and, in some cases, even parented by the non-sentient technology that cannot replicate attributes we take for granted, such as wisdom, emotions, sensitivity, morality, etc. It’s just raw data. But most often, we don’t need data. We need data filtered through the uniqueness of human personhood.
For example, you’ve been having persistent headaches. Rather than consulting an actual MD, you turn to WebMD, which provides data void of discernment. Then, minutes later, you are convinced you are dying from a brain tumor. But a human doctor would instantly be able to filter data through context, wisdom, experience, intuition, and training to give you a thoughtful answer, not a depersonalized answer.
It might seem trivial, but it is a severe modern development. A screen in our pocket has become our trusted counselor, advisor, mentor, and even friend. And even the people we do engage with online are shaped by the technique of technology and thus do not behave online as they would in real life.
Technology can do so much, but it cannot do image-bearing. AI will seek to imitate it, but it cannot live it with authentic emotions, critical thought, moral judgments, greater purpose, and a host of other things that must accompany information. You don’t need data. You need a human.
What we now consume via technology is meaningless, inexhaustible, nonchalant, and depersonalized. The result is a new frontier for human mentality, and speaking candidly, it is an alarming frontier. In subsequent postings, I will offer practical wisdom to combat this disturbing social development, but for now, it is enough to simply sound the alarm.