Faith & Technology: Navigating the Digital Age with Wisdom (Derek Schuurman)

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian Podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ.

Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian.

Hey everyone, this is Dr. James Spencer and welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm excited to welcome Derek Schuurman. Derek is a professor of computer science at Calvin University and he's also the author of Shaping a Digital World, Faith, Culture and Computer Technology. And so today we're going to be having a conversation about technology, theology and really hopefully offering some practical frameworks for you as you interact in this.

increasingly digital technological world that we live. So welcome, Derek. How you doing? Good. And thanks for inviting me on your show.

Yeah, absolutely. I think we had an interview a long, long time back, maybe with one other person. I'm blanking on who that was, but I think we talked AI at that point. So, Yeah, it's good. It's good to have you back.

Good to good to see you again. And I suppose maybe the best place to start is just

What piqued your interest in this particular topic? think how people get into these ideas, get into these areas is always kind of interesting. So maybe give a little bit of your backstory before we start diving into the content of the book. Yeah, I've always been a technology enthusiast. It sort of goes back to my time in my early teens, tinkering with sort of the early personal computers of the day.

I was also a bit of an electronics hobbyist and loved to muck around with building things and got into some ham radio as well. these things were kind of my hobbies and my interests. And then I went on to study electrical engineering and then proceeded to work as an engineer in industry for about nine years before going back to school to get

my to finish my graduate work and then ending up in in a Christian college setting as a computer science professor where it became my job to sort of articulate the connections between my faith and my discipline of computing and technology. And so and to be frank, you know, it's something that always sort of sort of sat with me when I was working in industry. You know, I would be sitting in the cubicle farm and I'd be thinking about, now how does my faith

Um, you know, directly inform my work as an engineer. And that was a question that I wrangled with myself while I was working. So I, basically ended up in a job that allowed me to pursue that in much, much more depth. It's interesting. Cause I know in the book, you, sort of frame some of these things out from a theological perspective.

And so I, maybe we can pivot there, but I will say, you know,

Part of what you address, I think it was in the introduction to your book, is how do these ancient texts have any bearing on a world where all of this technology is developed? if you look back, you could identify, suppose, I think probably not the earliest reference, but one of the references I'm most aware of is Genesis 11, one through nine, where you see the technology of baking bricks to build the city and the tower at what was known as Babel.

You could identify some of the war implements and the different metals that were began to be mined and used and those kind of things. And those are technologies. But that's not what we usually think of as technology today, right? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, you see references already, I think as early as Genesis four with, know, Tubal Cain, you know, and others who were working with metals and with tools and Jubal who made musical instruments.

And so this was sort of part of, I think, the human impulse right from the beginning and indeed the human calling, right? Genesis 1 verse 28 already refers to what we often refer to as a cultural mandate. We're called to unfold the possibilities in creation and so on. But the question then becomes, how do we do that? How then shall we engineer?

And how does the Bible serve as a guide? And this was sort of one of the things I was wrangling with.

when I was in industry thinking about, how does the Bible, which was written in the bronze and iron age have anything to say to the age of AI? Technology as we think about it usually refers to more modern developments like digital tools and computing and more recently artificial intelligence. And how can this ancient book speak to that? that is something that Shaping a Digital World sort of set out to do and was also a

personal project to try and articulate for myself how my discipline, how my studies, how my hobbies initially sort of are informed by the Bible. Walk us through a little bit how you deal with the theology and the technology together. So first of all, the approach of trying to look for proof texts to sort of inform your work, I think is one that's

that's full of all kinds of pitfalls and is not going to bear a lot of fruit. Of course, if you try to look up the word computer in the Bible, you're not going to get anywhere. And so I think a much, much more fruitful approach is to look at the whole biblical story, as you mentioned. Elsewhere, I quote Alasdair MacIntyre. He's an ethicist.

And he once wrote that, you you can't really answer the question, what ought I to do until you answer the prior question of what story am I a part?

And I think in a sense, we're all part of a story, whether we're Christians or we hold to other beliefs. But the Christian is one who works within the framework of the biblical story, the sort of grand narrative from Genesis to Revelation. And so the work in technology is informed by that. And just very briefly, if you think about the basic themes in the biblical story, we have creation, fall, redemption, new creation.

And in fact, my book, Shaping a Digital World, has sort of laid out chapters that sort of correspond to each of those biblical themes. And so very, very briefly, creation, think already, we can say that technology is part of the latent potential in creation and that as such, we don't reject it out of hand, right? We see in creation, as I mentioned earlier, this call, this cultural mandate, which calls us to unfold the technical possibilities in creation.

We see in the creation story already an indication that we're distinct from non-human creation. We're made in the Imago Dei, the image of God. And this means that we're distinct from machines. I mean, it already tells us a bit of who we are. But unfortunately, somewhere near the beginning in the biblical story, humankind fell into sin.

And this sin has had implications that go far beyond.

Just our relationship with God, it's affected our relationships with each other and with the natural world, with creation more broadly. And it also shows up in our work. Our technical work has the goodness of creation intertwined with the effects of sin and distortion. And then, moving on, the story of the Bible is the story of redemption that sort of comes in the fullness in time with Jesus Christ.

And we read in Colossians one that that redemption of Jesus Christ is not simply limited to personal salvation. It's certainly about that, about me and Jesus, but it's also, you know, Christ's death and resurrection are part of a cosmic sort of redemption. You Colossians one talks about how Christ is reconciling all things to himself. And elsewhere, you know, in second Corinthians five, for instance, we're called to be

to participate as agents of reconciliation, also in the world of technology. And then finally, just scooting ahead to Revelation, the end of the biblical story gives us a picture of a new heaven and a new earth, but one that seems to include technology, right? We start with a garden in creation and we sort of end with a city, a new Jerusalem, which of course is built and constructed by God. It isn't something that we build.

But I think we're called in the meantime to make some imperfect models of that perfect world to come. So the biblical story, I mean, that's just in shorthand, has all kinds of implications for our work in technology and how we see it, how we see ourselves. I think it's important maybe to clarify when we think about technology, to your point earlier, what we think about often now is that sort of digital devices. Right. My smartphone is a technology.

But that's not how it's always been construed. mean, I think technology can be far broader. remember reading Nick Bostrom's work. He's sort of a famous transhumanist. so when he construes technology, he construes it in as broad a terms as possible, including things like ideologies and memes and devices, obviously, but all of these other things there.

And so then when we're looking at technology in the Bible, there are various instances where we could find

forms of technology, even though we might not necessarily look at that and go, oh yeah, that's tech. And it's part of just the way we've construed it as opposed to the way maybe people even would have thought about it back then. Is that a fair assessment? Yeah. You know, the definition that I give given the book is technology is a distinct cultural activity in which human beings exercise freedom and responsibility in response to God.

to sort of unfold these sort of possibilities in creation. And so it's not just about gadgets and widgets and gizmos, it's about this human cultural activity that we participate in that we're indeed called to do. And so I think, you know, we see examples already in Genesis, right? The Tower of Babel story.

sort of shows technology misdirected, right, to humans who are trying to make a name for themselves and to build a bridge between heaven and earth by their own wits. But just a couple of chapters earlier, we read about sort of maritime technology, Noah's Ark being used as a means by which God saves humans and the animal sort of world from destruction by a flood. And so we see technology.

has not only a structure, but it has a direction. It can be directed in obedience to God, or it can be directed in disobedience to God. And so I think that that's a really helpful distinction to see it as more broadly as a human cultural activity unfolding these possibilities. then activity secondly, that can be directed in obedience or in disobedience. Yeah.

I think the way you describe technology and that inclusion of in response to God is actually really crucial because I think there's

at least in my reading of various Christian authors and theologians, it feels like sometimes this is just part of what we do as our human vocation of subduing the earth and ruling over it and exercising dominion. And that's hard to disagree with. I suppose it is to a certain degree, but that doesn't give us carte blanche to do whatever it is that we want or to

reap the benefits without trying to at least mitigate some of the downsides that technology brings. I don't think we have, I think sometimes that sort of conversation around, well, it's an exercise of human dominion suggests that we've got it all right. And it ignores the idea that we're getting these really negative consequences along with whatever positive benefits we may be reaping.

Yeah, I think the language of dominion, you know, can be pushed into areas where it was never intended, you know, in the original biblical context of sort of mastering of using of extracting of pilfering of, you know, it's more I think the image I think it's is a Genesis two uses the phrase of tending and caring for the garden, you know, it's sort of

unfolding all of the technical possibilities and tending to it, but also caring for it, preserving all of the creational possibilities, not only sort of the possibilities for technology, but also the sort of natural, creational beauty that's there. And so it's this, I think that the vision of a garden that's cultivated, where there is human agency.

but where all of those possibilities in creation are allowed to flourish in a sustainable and in a way where all things can flourish. we have to watch the language that we use, I see responsible technology as being this response to God in which we sort of unfold the possibilities of creation while still allowing all

creatures and the planet and ourselves and our neighbors to flourish, right? So that's where the responsibility sort of comes in and how we do that activity and how it's directed. It's interesting. mean, that passage you're quoting the tend and keep it. If I'm not mistaken, I don't have my Hebrew text right in front of me, but I recall that those two verbs being also used in relation to what the priest do with the tabernacle and the temple later on.

And so you do get that sense of these are acts of service that are to be done in order to maintain the environment where God and man can have communion. They're not intended to run roughshod over the environment or simply to take out of the environment what may be good for us or to determine our own futures. This is supposed to be a maintenance of a sacred space where

God and man can be together and we can experience as God's blessing presence. And I think that's a really great point of that activity in the garden being a picture maybe of the sort of dominion we're to exercise. No, exactly. I think that's very, very helpful, that insight. But I think not only the beginning of the Bible shapes our view of how we do that activity, but also the end, our eschatology.

also informs, you know, like what it is that we're doing now. If we believe that the earth is just going to be annihilated and destroyed, then our care for the earth is going to be, I think, reduced by the sort of assumption that it's all just going out with the trash eventually one day. But I think, you know, a more biblical view of sort of what, you know, our future and what's going to happen is more of the earth being purified and cleansed and renewed and restored.

And if that's the case, then we should already be taking care of it now. know, like God cares about the world. If redemption is a cosmic redemption, as I mentioned earlier, then God cares about things. He cares about His creatures. He cares about the Earth.

And so if we see that in the fullness of time that God is going to restore and renew this Earth, you know, we...

We can't treat it as a, as a disposable item that we can do with as we choose. So our eschatology also counts in terms of how we see the, you know, our role. Yeah. have a buddy who's really into Tolkien. He's a theologian and he reads Tolkien.

He consistently talks about Tolkien's emphasis on the earth and creation and almost how in the Lord of the Rings series that, and I'm going to butcher this cause I don't know Tolkien as well, but basically.

creation is the hero in the story in many ways. It's often the protagonist within the story. And just thinking back on the movies and then also reading the books, you do get this sense of the creation working with the good guys in that story, because it should all be pushing in the same direction. And what it brings to mind is sort of Romans eight, right? We have the creation groaning for this time ahead.

It's doing something very similar to what we're doing.

it's groaning right along with us under the oppression of sin and the brokenness of the world. So I think it's a really good point to look through that eschatology and realize that the earth doesn't go away. It stays with us. It's just transformed in a way similar to the way we will be. Yeah.

No, exactly. And then Tolkien too, the contrast between the Shire and the orcs, you know, and just, uh,

Yeah, and I've heard someone also allude to this, that magic in both C.S. Lewis and Tolkien is sort of an analogy for technology of sorts, right? It's a way of controlling the natural world and bending it to our own will. And that magic and technology both, when they're wielded as powers that we don't really understand or they're not wielded with responsibility, always come with consequences.

I just heard that about, C.S. Lewis did a book on space. Oh yeah, the Space Trilogy. Yeah. Yeah, and that's where I heard it. It was this merger of science and magic within that trilogy.

Yeah. And so I've yet to read that. I'm not gonna, you know, but it's now on my list.

Yes, and along with the Abolition of Man, which I think actually goes alongside that trilogy, or at least That Hideous Strength and the Abolition of Man are kind of kind of, know, an Abolition of Man is just a short book, but I think he actually explicitly in that book sort of compares magic and technology. And so those are, I think those are helpful insights. Yeah. You don't usually think of them together. No, but as ways of manipulating the natural world, according to our will.

And one of the analogies that I find really helpful is to think about, you know, Fantasia, you know, the Sorcerer's Apprentice. You know, this Mickey Mouse cartoon, you know, sort of portrays the Sorcerer's Apprentice as someone who doesn't really understand the powers that he's dealing with, but in order to kind of get his chores done a little more quickly, he casts this spell to get the brooms to do the work for him. But of course, these brooms run out of control and he ends up being over his head.

And I think that is a kind of analogy of technology that sometimes we use these tools without thinking through their consequences entirely. And they basically can run amok. And we can end up in a lot of trouble with a of consequences. Are you familiar with Iain McGilchrist's work at all? Not too much, no.

The reason I bring it up, he references

not Fantasia, but the Sorcerer's Apprentice. And his line, this is in his book, The Matter with Things. And he says, there's a difference between understanding the world and being able to manipulate the world. And he says, you know what the Sorcerer's Apprentice essentially does, he manipulates the world. He doesn't understand what he's doing really, but he's able to pull the levers and push the buttons to get these brooms and mops and all these things to do what he's doing.

But essentially creates

a mess that he can't uncreate. And he argues that that is his, it's not really an argument. It's sort of an introduction to his broader piece, which is there is this difference between understanding and manipulating. Oftentimes when we manipulate, we end up making things worse. Simply because we haven't understood what we're doing.

And I think it goes back to that idea that you said at the beginning, you kind of have to understand what story you're

in order to understand how some of this stuff works. so, really, since we've kind of strayed from theology and are into theorists now, you do some great work in the book on McLuhan, on Ellul, and Postman. And we were talking before the episode, but I would say Postman is probably the most accessible of the three authors. Technopoly is actually a simple book to read.

Obviously the one he's more famous for is Amusing Ourselves to Death, think. Technopoly wasn't quite as popular, but maybe we'll just walk through those three theorists and give us a sense of what they argue and why you feel like they're still relevant today. Would that be workable? Yes. I think those three names you mentioned, they were sort of referred to as the media ecologists, you know, and they were

active several decades ago, long before the age of AI and before computer technology had really taken off. some of them were working in the 70s and kind of looking at television culture and kind of looking at media and television and how it was changing us. I think each of them were very prophetic. And a lot of their insights actually have really tested

you know, have passed the test of time and have really been insightful for our new digital age in terms of understanding it. know, Neil Postman, think, was really insightful in terms of looking at how, you know, the one comparison that he makes is he talks about how technology is not just additive, it's ecological. You know, this idea that if you take a glass of water,

and you add a drop of red dye into the glass of water, you don't have a glass of water and a drop of red dye, you have a whole new substance. know, and technology is like that, you know, it's ecological, it's like unleashing a new species into the woods, right? It's sort of interactions are complex with the existing creatures that are there and technology is like that as well. And it's very hard to predict all of the sort of side effects and implications that it's gonna have.

And I think that was really, really insightful, this sort of idea of the social kind of impact, the non neutrality of technology that he pointed out, how the medium changes the message. I mean, that's more McLuhan, know, McLuhan's, he was a little bit more enigmatic. You he had this saying, the medium is the message. I, know, as when I was younger, I was like, that doesn't, I don't get it. But it wasn't until later on when I started thinking more about technology and I thought, yeah, that's kind of.

That's very insightful. It is a little bit cryptic, but what he's saying is that, know, take television, for instance, that the very object of television is way more significant than any particular show that you may be watching, right? The content, you know, is one thing, but the actual advent of television changed politics. It changed entertainment. It changed the way we see the world and the notion of celebrity.

So that the advent of television was just the way it changed the world is sort of what he was pointing to. He had this other saying that the content of a medium is like the silkscreen painting on the side of an atomic bomb. Like the atomic bomb is actually the medium and its content is like the silkscreen writing on the side of the casing. he used some very...

you know, sort of extreme examples, but, he was pointing to the fact, I guess, you know, that, technology is not neutral. You know, the world one might say, you know, uh, with the smartphone, uh, is not just the same world with the addition of a smartphone. It's a whole new world, the way that we relate and the way that we communicate and the way that we do business and the way that we go about our lives, uh, has fundamentally changed. And those are really key insights for our modern world. When it seems like.

you know, those two kind of go together. mean, I think Postman's again, he was the more accessible one and understanding it as ecological. think people there's an intuitive way that that makes perfect sense to people. Oh yeah, I can understand how, you know, you put a new species into the environment that's going to change all the different interactions going to reverberate. We have a container for that, but the medium is the message was always a little bit more automatic and I love the way to explain it, but I

But I also think he's really gesturing toward the same point. Yeah. That this is an ecological sort of problem. so when I've read McLuhan, one of the things I always sort of ask myself is, so much of this deals with the way content is represented to us. And so he does a, if I'm recalling him correctly, he makes a distinction between hot and cold media or hotter and colder media.

And that that idea of we engage differently with that particular type of media, cold media. And again, I may be reversing these, but I think cold media was more like a newspaper. And you have to, if you think about sitting down and reading something, it does take a different level of attention. You're analyzing differently, you're evaluating differently, you're considering what you're reading differently, if you're actually going to get through it versus like a television.

You could almost have that onto the background. We could almost have it on the background right now and completely ignore it. It's just like white noise behind us. We engage with it differently. just do.

And so I think he, he was really onto something as Postman was that, that all of this, especially as we think through, and maybe we can talk a little bit about this. As we think through how the digital age has created new mediums.

a whole new ecology for us, right? What is this? What should we, how should we be thinking about this in our modern day and age? Yeah. And I think this is not just a question for users.

This is a key question for developers. You know, I, as someone who's teaching computer scientists, one of the things we start with is these media ecologists, because I want my students to understand that technology is not neutral, right? That it's value laden.

that these new designs and these new software programs that they're developing are not just neutral tools, right? But that they are gonna change the environment. They're gonna change the way people relate to each other. And part of loving your neighbor and being a responsible engineer is to think about some of those implications and also in the way the design decisions that you make so that you can help people to flourish.

right with these sort of tools that you can kind of relieve burdens and provide useful tools and services while not introducing things into the environment that will be harmful for people's relationships or for their personal habits and rituals or for social discourse or whatever it is. So thinking about that more broadly. How do you handle?

One of the guys that I've read is Albert Borgmann. wrote Technology and the Contemporary Character. Yes, contemporary age, power failure. He wrote a book called Power Failure as well. Both were good.

But I mean, one of the things he talks a lot about in those books is the dis-burdenment that comes along with the creation of what he calls devices, contrasted to things. And I think the most vivid one that I remember is

the distinction between a wood burning stove, which he would count as a thing. It provides multiple interactions and more than just heat, because of way you say, versus an electric thermostat, right? Where you just kind of walk up and an individual can just turn it. Now we can do it on our apps. Yeah.

Yeah. And so that's a form of dis-burdenment. It takes away the burden of having to go out and chop wood, carry the wood in, stoke the fire, build the fire, you know, all those things. Yeah. But you also lose everything that goes along with that.

Yes. So how do you, how do you think through that notion of almost every technology create seems like it's, uh, minimizing effort on our part. Yes. Yes. How do you, how do you talk through that?

I'm not looking for a solution. Yeah. But how do you know? I think it starts with just being aware. I mean, the thing about a stove or a fireplace, if you will, is that it's a place where the family can actually gather.

Once you have central heat, now have people going off to their own little areas of the house and you have less family interaction. These are all these side effects of these different technologies that come, the trade-offs. You always gain something, but we rarely ask the question, what are you going to lose with a particular new technology?

And I think, you know what, once you start making technological decisions that are made strictly in terms of efficiency, we're going to end up going closer into a world that we probably don't want to want to, you know, don't want to live in, you know, and this is where I think someone like Jacques Ellul comes in. Jacques Ellul talked about the technological society being driven, you know, exclusively by efficiency and things like relationships and things like living in a family or a community are not things.

that need to be driven mostly by questions of efficiency. They need to be driven by other concerns.

How do you, you know, as you're, as you're thinking through this and you're teaching students. So we have the efficiency and I think, um, I appreciate the fact that you're, you know, sort of raising issues for your students, that it's not all about efficiency. Right. Sometimes efficiency can actually be bad for us. Um, I use the analogy a lot where I used to be a personal trainer.

So people would come in and I'd work them out for an hour. And I say, I never had a session where I told my client, Hey, today's workout is just going to be watching me lift weights.

And it's really going be effective for you. Like there are some activities we just have to put the effort in. And that that effortful process is part of what helps us to grow. It's a necessary thing for us. And so when we think about efficiency and you mentioned, you know, sort of human flourishing earlier, how do you talk about human flourishing?

mean, this goes back, I think, to what story are you a part of to really understand how to use the technology within that? But how do you think about

what it means to be human, what it means to flourish as humanity in relation to some of this technological development. Yeah. Yeah. What we've been using at Calvin and is being used in some other Christian colleges too are a set of design norms, which we talk about. And these design norms are covered in Shaping a Digital World as well.

And basically they look at creation sort of holistically and the notion of shalom.

is looking at different normative aspects of creation in which human beings function and thinking about how do we actually address those different areas in a way that's obedient to God and sort of comports well with the norms for creation. These things include things like cultural appropriateness, things like justice that have to be taken into account.

There are norms of stewardship, you getting back to caring for the earth and its creatures. There are things like social norms, you know, building tools that sort of support conviviality. There's a transparency norm that has to do with being open and clear and avoiding, you know, bearing false witness. There's an aesthetic norm, which has to do with beauty and with, you know, and technology as well, the sort of integration of form and function.

There's a trust norm which has to do with reliability and also where we put our own trust. These are examples of these design norms that we talk about and we say that human beings function in all of these different areas. When we're creating a new technical artifact and we want to build an artifact for the flourishing of people and wider societies and creation, we need to be attentive to

to these norms. So we refer to them actually as design norms. And we put them in front of the students to say, hey, you've got these technical consideration, right? There's the issue in computer science of algorithms and efficiency and time and space, memory usage and all these sorts of things. But there's also all these other sort of social, cultural, political, economic, justice implications that we also need to take into account.

Because, as we mentioned earlier, these media ecologists reminded us that when we create a new cultural artifact, it operates in all these other sort of areas too. So thinking through these design norms has been one way at Calvin University, and they do this at other Christian universities as well, is one way that we help our students to think about building tools responsibly and for flourishing of not only people, but the planet.

So just to piggyback off that idea then, and I'll put my really cynical Jacques Ellul hat on, right? We were talking before the podcast, Jacques Ellul out of the theorists that he treats. Yes. Much more pessimistic about technology. And so let me put that, let me put that hat on and just, I'm wondering, you know, I think it was McLuhan talked about, you know, we create a technology, we shape a technology and then it shapes back on us.

right, that these things have sort of a reciprocal effect on us. And so I'm wondering, you know, as technology developers, as computer science folks, you know, as people who are creating new technologies within a capitalist economic structure that really does privilege what was usually just referred to as progress, right? Advancement, higher profitability, I think would be a part of that.

You know, these things tend to interact in an environment. I'm just wondering, seems to me at least, that, you know, capitalism is served by the creation of more efficient technology and more efficient technology is, um, also, you know, sort of captured by almost the economic systems in which we're a part. Right. And so when we think about all of these

aspects of it, how crucial is it in your mind that we really approach all of this? Like it can't just be a technological solution to a sin problem, right? To put it in its broadest sense. But having a true understanding, kind of what we were talking about earlier, sort of holistic understanding that we should have, the whole world is immersed in a theological grid, a theological story. And how do you

How do you help students sort of wrestle through that? Yeah, no, that's a really good question. And this is also, you know, relevant for students who are going to be going off to work in industry, right? So some of my students end up in Silicon Valley working for large companies you'd recognize. And the question is, you know, how do you how do you remain faithful in that context?

You know, I use.

the example of Daniel sometimes, you the biblical story of Daniel. And I say, some of you are going to be like a Daniel in Babylon, right? You're going to, you're going to be in these companies that are driven by, you know, other forces and worldviews. And so as Christians, how do you, how do you be salt and light in that kind of environment? And I tell them, you know, you can't stand up in a meeting and say, thus saith the Lord and sort of tell them how, it's going to be done.

You have to work within.

within those systems, nudging them in a way towards more obedience, essentially. I think about Jeremiah 29, the sort of exiles in Babylon and the instructions to them was to plant gardens and to have families and to build homes and to pray for the city. And I said, you should pray for your company. Be a trustworthy employee who's there and nudges things towards the good.

I talk about a concept called principled pluralism, which is this idea that when we work in the public square, whether that's in politics or in industry, we're going to be working with people who have different beliefs than we do. And so what we need to do in that context is to come alongside people who have common causes with us for things that will lead to the common good.

and to work together towards that and build partnerships with people in that way and be salt and light in that way. And then I think through those activities, we will have a chance to give an account for the hope that we have. Like, what is it that's motivating us towards these sorts of things? And so it's complicated. It requires prayer.

I encourage my students to seek out mentors and to be plugged into churches, of course.

But that I think we need Christians in those places. The world would be better off if they're able to nudge things in those ways. And I think these design norms that I mentioned earlier, things like justice and things like stewardship and things like good social norms and cultural appropriateness and transparency are actually things that you can talk to secular people about. They can recognize like, yeah, you know what, if we ignore justice,

there's going to be consequences. That's sort of the way God's creation is set up, that if we go against God's norms, the world pushes back. The creation pushes back like rubber bands if we push against the way God intended things to be. So those are some of the suggestions that I give my students, but we do spend some time wrestling with that because it's not easy. Most of us aren't going to be developers.

Most of us are users.

Do you think those norms would be a reasonable guide also for people who are just using technology, adopting various technologies? Yeah, I think they're a helpful framework too for users to think about, know, when I buy this product, am I contributing towards justice or, you know, what does the supply chain look like? Is this product culturally appropriate in the context that we're using it, you know, for buying?

technology that was designed for the business boardroom for the Christian worship space? Is this an appropriate use of the technology in this context? Is this technology going to help me care for others? You know, another way to kind of analyze it is to look at the rituals and the habits that a particular technology comes along with. know, what are the one one philosopher referred to the fact that each technology has a script associated with it that kind of it wants us

It nudges us in a particular way that this is one of the ways that technology is not neutral, is it comes with particular biases, right? This goes back to the media ecologists. And so thinking in your own life, what are the scripts that are associated with the tools that I'm using? Are they turning me into the kind of person that God wants me to be? Are they helping me show love for my neighbor and caring for the earth and its creatures?

Or are they going to nudge me in a different direction and to evaluate adoption of technology based in part on those sorts of considerations? It's interesting. One of the, one of the narratives I've kind of played with in this regard with, uh, the good Samaritan. And one of the things I did was imagine reading the parable of the good Samaritan, except that instead of the man who, um, you know, comes along and he sees this other.

Instead of Samaritan, um, what you have is an AI empowered robot. It comes along and finds the man who's been bruised and beaten and the AI empowered robot, know, um, cares for this man and takes him to a hospital where other AI empowered robots take care of him. And you get to the end of that narrative and you say, so who was the neighbor in the story? And it's very difficult to identify a neighbor in that sort of a story. Yes.

The neighbor is, uh, at best.

a step behind the AI-empowered robot. It's the people who created this robot in the first place. They would be the neighbors, but you're completely blind to them in the context of that story versus the way that Jesus tells it. The Good Samaritan comes along, he helps this man, pays for his room, he pays for his healing. You have a very clear picture of who's showing mercy in that moment.

And so it's just an interesting, you know,

I've tried to use it as a way to say there are certain things that we as Christians just can't give up. Yes, no, exactly. In philosophy circles, they refer to that as the responsibility gap. For good or for ill, how do we attribute these actions of an agent, like an AI driven robot? And I think there's some ways that when computer scientists build tools, in a paper I wrote,

about a year ago, I talked about the notion of virtue by proxy, know, allowing a machine separated from the developer and time and space to be able to show love to an end user somewhere. But on the flip side, you're absolutely right. There are some things that we simply ought not to outsource, you know, things like, you know, and people are developing childcare robots, know, eldercare robots, know, nurse bots, well, even sex bots.

You know, and to think about, if we start with that creational sort of premise that we're made in the Imago Dei and that we're distinct from machines, then relationships with machines seem inappropriate. And there seems to be a call to love our neighbor that requires us to kind of show up in person and not relegate these sort of things to machines, especially in places where we need care and where we need empathy and so on.

And so, as we think about these sorts of things, those are going to be increasingly important considerations because I think machines are going to get more more capable. And so the question won't be whether or not machines can do these sorts of roles. But the question will be, should we? At what point? Especially with AI in particular, we have people making friends with chatbots.

you know, and AI girlfriends and all these sorts of things. And I think not only, you know, is it not a genuine relationship, Sherry Turkle, who's written widely on a lot of this, has mentioned, you know, a relationship with a chatbot is a relationship of one person. It's actually all about you. It can actually damage you for real, genuine human interaction, which isn't all about you and is kind of messy.

But it's part of what we were created for. So yes, as machines get more capable, the question is not going to be, can they do these things? But the question about, what are the things that we can outsource? And what are things that we ought to not outsource? Because we're called to love and show care to neighbors.

And we need to be able to show empathy and care as part of what we're called to do as Christians. So yeah. Well, we're getting close to end of time.

I of wanted to go through one of the things that your work reminded me of. You talk about McLuhan's Four Laws of Media. Yes. And I just found the questions, having read them again in the context of your work, I was like, these are really clear. They're really helpful.

And I think if Christians could start sort of using these to frame out why am I using technology?

How would I evaluate technology? I just found them really helpful. I wonder if we can walk through each of those four questions real quick. Yeah, no, no, that'd be great. They're called Marshall McLuhan's Four Laws of Media.

And they basically are four questions that we can pose about any particular media. And when he talks about media, I often just substitute the word technology as well. We can think of technology. And so we can use these questions for technology. And the questions are basically first asking, what does the

particular artifact extend or enhance? And then the second question is, what does this particular technology or medium make obsolete? Third question is, what does the artifact retrieve from the past? And every object sort of echoes to the past in some way. There's nothing new under the sun.

And then the fourth question is, when pushed to its limit, how does an artifact actually reverse?

And what does it reverse into? There's a reversal that occurs, which is a really neat insight. And so we can apply these four questions to any particular technology. And what it actually gets at is the fact that it's not neutral. There's sort of these other effects that we need to consider.

And these questions help lead us into those sorts of conversations. So when he's thinking about that first question, extend and amplify, right? I think there's multiple ways to answer that question, right? Yeah.

You think about artificial intelligence, what does it extend or amplify or let's think social media. Social media might be a little easier because artificial intelligence gets a little convoluted, but social media, where it extends and amplifies our ability to maintain connections with other people, something like that. It extends our sort of social range and the amount of connections that we can have and over geography. So it's an extension.

of our social circle, you will, albeit some of it virtual, but it extends our social reach. Yes. And so when we think about the human capacity that's amplified, which is sort of the second way he talks about that idea, do we need to ask the question, do we have the capacity to amplify it in the first place? Yeah. No, I'm not a social scientist, but social scientists have determined that there's sort of a maximum number of people that we can

we can actually that we have capacity to be in relationship with, right? We're, we're, we're, not omnipotent. We're, we're, we're, we're, we're, have limits. And so part of that is social limits. And so, yeah, if, if you go to garner, you know, 10,000 friends on Facebook, the, the notion of what a friend is in that context becomes quite thin.

Yes. A lot different than your best friend from high school. Yes. know, college or whatever. Exactly.

Yeah. And then

What does it make obsolete? So, you when we think about in terms of social media, you could say maybe, um, on a more minimal level, what does it make obsolete? Well, maybe it makes obsolete, um, mailing photos of a great family vacation to friends and neighbors who you'd like to have see them or, know, the old school slideshows where you'd invite people over and go, Niagara Falls, right? Like it makes that obsolete. And that, that seems relatively.

trivial and okay, you know, but then there's got to be these other things that it makes obsolete as well. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So things, old fashioned ways of, of maintaining connections with people like letter writing, um, well, even, even something like in person, uh, socializing, right.

It, allows us to actually maintain these social connections in ways that, that are distinct, right. By posting little notes and little messages. Um,

And I know very few people would pick up a pen and write a letter like they used to do 30 or more years ago. those sort of things have been obsolesced in part because these media are much more easier to use and more ubiquitous in our current context. So some things have become far less common because of these new technologies. And when he talks about the third question, what is the artifact

retrieve from the past. Yeah. You can really kind of see that in social media, right? When you want to talk about nothing new under the sun, social media platform, it's sort of an amalgamation. And you can correct me if I'm wrong, yeah, it's a communication technology, sort of like what we've been talking about it.

It mimics in some ways snail mail, right? Or, you know, an in-person conversation, like something basic like that. But then it also, it also hearkens back to

television advertising, billboards, those kind of things, right? Am I understanding that correctly when you retrieval? Often with the retrieval question, he's looking in the distant past, like, like, you know, in early sort of times. And if you think about sort of social media, you know, the sort of platform, it sort of hearkens back to the original sitting around the campfire as a village and exchanging stories.

and ideas. And so it certainly goes back to that original kind of social, large social gathering and connection that we would have probably originally around a campfire in a village of some sort or smaller context. OK. And the last one, that reverse, the artifact reverse into, is this his way of talking about, I'm more familiar with the phrase, revenge effects?

Yes. Is that kind of what this is? It's this acknowledgement that whenever you push something to an extreme, kind of it has a reversal. And yeah, I think that this is one of his better insights, because it kind of is a warning to us that we embrace a technology sort of without any discerning. And it becomes a big part of our lives.

There's going to be unexpected results. I mean, one.

One quick example is the automobile, which promises mobility. Well, if we all jump into our car and go out into the street, we're not going to have mobility. We're going to have congestion and traffic jams. So something that promised to give us mobility. And those of us who live in big cities, of course, experience this firsthand every day, right?

We're sitting there stuck in traffic. So there is this reversal effect. Absolutely. Yeah. Interesting.

Yeah. And with social media.

Yeah, social media quickly. I can give you the example that reversal social media is that you know this technology that promises to extend and enhance our social connection. Well, if we push it to an extreme and it's the only way that we're connecting with people, we really are. All alone with a glowing rectangle in the basement, right? I mean, it's it's sort of know Sherry Turkle's book title, right?

We're alone together, so something that promised connection in the end leaves us isolated with a.

sort of poor substitution for genuine human interaction and companionship. you suppose some of that is, you know, there's been all this research and even the surgeon general came out with his advisory on social media. These ideas like, you know, increased depression in certain populations, increased anxiety, you know, all those kinds of pieces, would those be symptoms of that sort of reversal as well in your mind?

You know, Jonathan Haidt's new book has been causing a lot of buzz. I haven't finished it yet. I'm partway through it, but The Anxious Generation is basically and you know, whenever we go against creational kind of norms, if you want to use that language again, there's always consequences. And I think, you know, it just takes a matter of time, but social scientists will begin to say to us, you know, they'll they'll make these discoveries like something's happening to us. Right.

And it shouldn't come as a surprise when we sort of go against

God's created order for us and the way that we ought to interact. And I think, you know, when it comes to Christians, we see Christ's incarnation as an extraordinary endorsement of embodied human existence. you know, as much as digital communication helps bridge distances when people are separated and to, you know, have these kinds of conversations, these sort of possibilities.

If that's the only way that we're interacting, we've sort of missed a part of our creational makeup and the way that we were intended to interact and there's gonna be consequences. yeah, some of those things that are coming out are reminders about creational norms and that we need to be attentive to them. And so maybe the, just as a.

broad sort of general answer for folks who are thinking about technology, Christians who are thinking about technology and are really struggling with maybe technology use is not used sparingly. Sparingly, think suggests that we're minimalists and it doesn't really matter how good the technology is or how much it helps us flourish. We're just going to use it sparingly. But choose the technologies that are going to enhance the common good. Something around that.

Yeah. Sort of a. And also limit, you know, it's it's it's influence in your life. think things like practicing Sabbath, you know, regularly and part of that setting some of these things aside, you know, practicing daily devotional times and solitude and practicing having dinner with friends and family and and and these sort of daily rhythms and practices that we have to be attentive to as well. Because if our devices then begin to

become the primary scripts in our life, they're gonna nudge us in a way that's gonna misshape us over time. And so not only making the decision, yes, no, but once you have a device, if you've determined that there are things that we need to be, that is gonna be helpful to kind of put it in its place, to put technology in its place. I think Andy Crouch.

has used that phrase quite a bit and I find it helpful, putting technology in its place, you in our own lives and being discerning. Yeah, that's good. I had a college instructor, I was an exercise physiology major and so he was teaching aerobic conditioning and he gave her nutrition lecture and he said, you can get fat off eating a thousand calories of apples just as easy as you can off a thousand calories of taco salad. And so I think the sort of analogy there is, look, even if something is good for you,

you want to limit the amount you're actually using it and think through not overdoing it. So yeah, that's a good word, man. I really appreciate that. Yeah. Well, Derek, this has been great.

We're kind of coming up on time. Really appreciate you being here. Such an important topic. And I really appreciate the book. I'd encourage people to go out and get the book.

It's fantastic. We'll have a link to it in the show notes. So you'll be able to find it. It's from IVP.

And IVP has given us a 20 % discount code. So if you buy it out of the link and use the code, you'll get 20 % off the book, Shaping a Digital World. And just really also appreciate the work you're doing with students there at Calvin University. So really important stuff. And thanks for being here.

Thanks, James. I appreciate the conversation. All right, everyone. Well, we'll catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast.

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