TECHNOLOGY - Everything is amazing and nobody is happy

How different are we from a child on the street who finds himself/herself in an unfortunate environment and develops an addiction for drugs and is in a heroin fix? Perhaps, very little or may be that no difference exists when we compare and analyze it with the deep craving of today’s men and women [not excluding the priests and religious] for the ‘latest’ technology. It’s worth to glean a few philosophical insights into technology and its use.

The tech-prophets like Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and their ‘cheering’ media group who constantly rattle upon that technology is the way to do better and be better. But how true are they? And what is actually the common experience?

To put it blunt, everything is amazing, and yet nobody is happy. Phones, computers, credit cards, banks, cars, airlines have made stunning leaps in speed, prestige and convenience in recent years. This is particularly true in information and cell phone technology which has stunningly skyrocketed since 1980’s.

Some claim that Smart Phones and Air Travel are today’s miracles, but still we feel like they are not good enough. On a deeper analysis of our relationship to technology, we realize that rather than make us happier, freer and more fulfilled, it constantly leaves us angrier, busier and more frustrated. A few conversations are crazy, “hey, this is latest… you got to do this, I am going to do it…” and we are ready for anything newer and quicker and we cannot take in life if does not through that frame.

Why do we have an overwhelming desire to try out the newest thing out? Why does it always manage to captivate, mesmerize, even enslave us? Is it really the desire to ‘stay connected’ or ‘learn more’ or ‘make the world better’, or is it a pointer to something else?

A few philosophers come to our aid to learn and glean a few insights into this ludicrous desire for technology.

·        Martin Heidegger cautions us that Technology makes us ‘feel’ better. In ‘The Question of Technology,’ Martin Heidegger writes, "Man exalts himself to the posture of lord of the earth. In this way the impression comes to prevail that everything man encounters exists only insofar as it is his construct."

In other words, smart phones, latest cars and other computer technology give us an inebriated sense of control over the world, a control that seems to make everything hinge on our own desires and thoughts. Thus, the great secret of technology's entangling lure is not connectivity, community, freedom, intelligence, or happiness - but ‘power’.

It holds true when we crosscheck with Nietzsche’s ‘ubermensch’ [or ‘overman’]. His idea that man’s hidden desire in everything he does is domination over other things and people. Heidegger sees in Nietzsche’s philosophy, the consummation of the essence of technology and the ideal man who prizes power over morality and has ‘dominion and disposal over all things,’ and is ‘technology man par excellence.’

·        Arthur C. Clarke says that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and the famous C.S. Lewis agrees to this assumption that the aura of technology is more akin to magic than to science. This is because for magic and technology alike the cardinal problem is how to conform reality to the wishes of the soul, and the solution is a technique. With such magical power at our finger tips, who could resist staying on their Smart Phones, iphones, and latest cars all day?

Perhaps, GK Chesterton offers us an insight with his statement, ‘to have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it’. Just because we can do it, doesn’t mean it’s always a good idea.

·        Suppose, if Nietzsche is right about when he speaks of ‘will to power’, then the computer technology and the related stuff should not only lure us but also should fulfill us, right? Instead, we find ourselves more disconnected, and that it is more damaging to our relationships, wasting our time and filling us with frustration. That frustration with our technology is not just a desire to have something better - it is the creeping suspicion that we crave a technology fix like a child on the street or an adult addict craves a heroin fix. We know, deep down, that more often than not, this "high" is harmful.

·        It is also not untrue that at times technology degrades us and as Heidegger puts it, “forgetfulness of being’. It cuts us off from the moment, from physical presence, from reality itself. We distance ourselves by filtering the experience through a little device. Through the tidbits of Twitter, iPhones, SMS texting, there is a great loss of all the value and wisdom that comes through long conversations, contemplation and silence.

·        Perhaps, if Jesus Himself came, we would probably ignore him or trivialize the experience through tweets and technology. There is wisdom in the words of the 19^th century Philosopher Kierkegaard, “even if God’s Word were blazoned forth with all the panoply of noise so that it could be heard in the midst of all the noise, then it would no longer be the Word of God.”

In conclusion there lies insight in the words of David Kaplan, “the very instrumentality that threatens us also has the power to save us… once we realize that we have been living with this technological understanding of things, we are then free to appreciate that there is more to life than efficiency”. We are as Heidegger called it, ‘released’.

Does our attitude toward and use of technology stem from a desire to wield an unhealthy control over the world and other people [an act which, paradoxically debases, isolates and frustrates us? Does the technology save or enslave us? Does it liberate us and does it lead us more closer to one another and to God?

Let everything that we do, that we think, that we make and that we speak point towards the Creator, and not to ourselves, and much less to the ‘lifeless’ instrument.

Thank you,

Papireddy

[May 4^th 2013]