The promise and the impotence of our much vaunted, scarcely imagined Age of Information Utopia and All Knowledge are tied together in an inexplicably bound state.
Or, shorn of pompous verbosity, the Internet ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.
I don’t know how well you remember your history, specifically that of Western philosophy, but the intellectual inheritance that marked the fundamental incubator of the American Experiment included a staggering faith in humanity’s inherent ability to outgrow the ugliness of human nature. The god of that faith was enshrined as Progress, and plenty of folks in this day and age feel like we are living in a time of truly unparalleled blessings from that particular deity. We never shook that idolatry ground so deeply into the American psyche; instead we’ve spread it around, like your favorite communicable disease, to anyone with an open hand. In my personal life, however, I’m starting to key in on its bankruptcy.
I guess you’d say I’ve grown up as a child of the Internet, the Information Age, whatever. Way back in the mid-90’s I was one of the very first kids I knew to have internet access along with a decent computer at the house. I was certainly ahead of almost all my peers in learning how to ahem, “procure” music digitally in those halcyon days of Napster, and without a doubt I was the first person you knew to order a pizza online.
Now I wasn’t unique, however; lots of folks (including you, I’m guessing) had computers at the house and some alphanumerically mangled AOL screenname. If in fact you share that same experience, have you ever stopped to ponder how that has marked you and made you any different than other folks who’ve gone before us? Aglow in the good graces of Progress’ viceroy, Information, you’d think you and I would find ourselves a little more free.
We’d be smarter. We’d have wider tastes in art, music, culture, ideas, etc. We’d understand each other well enough to quit killing over religion. We’d be less lonely. We’d be able to keep up with both socks. We’d hack with more efficiency at the Big Questions.
Well, I’m here to confess that I’ve found myself widely astride all the deficiencies above (and plenty more!) the past few years, despite, as an American, having more in my ‘favor’ than most humans who ever prior walked this planet.
I’ve observed that, despite unfettered much easier access to an almost infinite library of music, this music freak is still largely taken with the same stuff that grabbed him in college.
I’ve observed that, despite a truly immeasurable wealth of content available on the Internet, I still gravitate to the same four or five sites every day to troll for fresh thoughts.
I still like the same sports teams, Subway sandwiches and deodorant I’ve always considered the best.
And I’m still alone.
Probably the only place in my life where I am conscious to try and stretch myself is in the books I read, but I think that is probably more a function of just being tired of seminary-type books than true zeal for any particular far flung topic.
I have been reading more and more of late that Thinkers On Such Things (TOST) are starting to produce the first truly scholarly, wide-ranging studies about the Information Age. Most of them are concluding that about all this wide and sweeping revolution in how people interact with ideas and information seems to be accomplishing is to cause folks to become further entrenched in their beliefs-right or wrong, asinine or silly, intellectually rich or utterly bankrupt.
Or, in the interest of ecological awareness, let me reduce the above to just one sentence: Despite being in the first wave of a true paradigm shift in world history, people aren’t changing; they’re just bogging further down in the muck of their already-established ideas.
Basically, the Internet has just made it easier than ever before to find documentation for why “I” am right and “they” just suck.
I’d say then that what I’m starting to believe, as this particular phase of my academic career winds down, is that there really isn’t some grand or sweeping way of handling the world to be found outside the worldview we can glean from the Scriptures. It seems like every big idea or bright and wonderful thing I encounter somehow has resonance with the Word of God. Through the guidance of the Spirit, I am able to process the fact that there really is nothing new going on in the world, except a fresh need for God’s mercies every morning to save us all from our selfishness and shortsightedness.
I’d like to see you try and say that about anything else out there.
Alright, glad to have all that settled.
What’s next?
What everyone’s saying