It is us

Google has offered an inexpensive laptop for people to buy. It's called the Chromebook, and it's available for just $250 or so, lower than just about any computer you can imagine. It looked interesting, but then I realized that it was designed for use online. They offer "offline apps for the rare times when you’re disconnected from the web", but, let's face it, how often does that happen, right? No, this isn't designed to be a standalone laptop. It only has 16GB of Solid State hard drive. You're supposed to store stuff on the "Google Drive Cloud Storage". This computer is inexpensive and cool, perhaps, but it is designed to be an online computer.

We are an online society these days. We play online. We work online. We connect online. We talk online. We share online. We fight online. We make up online. There is hardly any escape from it. Our phones are online, for pity sake. My youngest son decided that paying for the Internet was just too much money, so ... he doesn't. And the rest of us are trying to figure out how to keep in touch with him without Facebook or email or ...? I mean, how do you live offline???!!!

Some have argued that the Internet is making us stupid. This isn't obvious at first look. After all, we now have easy access to just about every piece of information that human beings can have. That's an exaggeration, of course, but not by much. So it would seem like we'd be smarter. (Someone said, "My phone is so smart that I can access all the information that is available to human beings and I use it to access funny pictures of cats and pictures with captions.") But think about it from this perspective. Did you study harder for a closed-book test or an open-book test? You see, as it turns out, we don't work as hard at remembering stuff if we know we don't have to remember it. A report from Scientific American suggests that the very act of reading from the pages of a book will cause you to remember what you read better than reading from screen. Farris Jabr reports that reading is "topographical". You can remember, for instance, where places are based on landmarks that you saw around them. Well, Jabr says that you remember what you read based on where on the page it occurred. (It's funny, too, because I can well remember my mother telling me about a particular passage she read in Scripture and looking through her Bible to find it. "It was over here on this side of the page." And she'd be right.) Apparently reading from physical books works better for human memory than reading from computer screens. So by these and other standards we may be losing out.

Of course, the big concern for so many, especially Christians, is the rife immorality. Pornography never had such sway as when it gained the Internet. It's no longer "in the closet", but something in which some delight openly. Everyone knows about the danger of chatrooms where child molesters are trolling for underage kids to entice and abuse. We're all aware that the person representing themselves on the Internet may not be the person they really are. And there is the very real factor that interactions on the Internet are tainted with some level of anonymity. Face it, people can get really mean in online interactions who would never be so mean in person. But because there is a buffer, a distance, no real connection, they feel as if they can get away with it. Part of it is the distance. Part of it is the lack of feedback. He said it with a smile on his face as humor and she read it without the smile as serious, and it becomes a problem. I'm aware of that problem in writing this blog because most of the time I'm somewhat amused in general when I write, but I'm certain it doesn't come across to readers without the smile, the twinkle in the eye, the wink, the clues that tell you that information.

Paul Miller did an experiment in which he stayed offline for a year. He wanted to see how life was different without all that ... mess. How much time do we waste and how much trouble do we get into and how much genuine relationship do we miss out on because of the electronic world in which we live? Well, he was going to find out. After a year, he has written his report. He points out an interesting fact that I wish to pass on to you.

It's not the Internet. It's not technology. It's not the phones or the lack thereof. It's not the television or the media. These are not the problem. As it turns out, "We have met the enemy and he is us." As it turns out, it's not a technology problem, but a sin problem. This may come as a shock to you, but sin was just as rampant before Al Gore invented the Internet.

Are there problems with technology that we're missing because we're so enamored with it? I'm certain there are. I've written in the past about how the medium of television, without regard to the messages in it, can be harmful. I know that the hours I've spent on the computer (it is my profession) have contributed to decline in my eyesight. And there is little doubt that the Internet provides access to sins that would have been more difficult to reach in the past. I'm not saying that we don't need to be aware or cautious. But neither is it right or safe to think that it's all television or Internet or those evil smartphones to blame. No, that would be us.