Achieving techno-literacy or being a good beginner

Before you can master a device, program or invention, it will be superseded; you will always be a beginner. Get good at it. Kevin Kelly New York Times

This is probably the longest title for one of my blog entries. My boss told me today to clear the voice message box on my cell. Strangely I have no idea even how to access the box yet alone empty it. The trouble is most of the time we're surviving with tech toys because it is obsolete the moment we get it. But my argument here is he wants me to learn how to use something he wants to use but I don't want! Ignorance is bliss it is stress removing. Kevin Kelly author of an article in the New York Times has made me think more deeply about this.

We don’t need expertise with every invention; that is not only impossible, it’s not very useful. Rather, we need to be literate in the complexities of technology in general, as if it were a second nature.

It's not a matter of proficiency because we become slaves of the machine or we suffer loss because we operate how the technology wants us to use it. It is a matter of literacy so we can puzzle things out and how to do things the way we want to. The trouble is I'm late arrival on cell phones having been a user for less than 2 years. I'm happily ignorant. But ask me how to get something working or recover something that used to work and doesn't work now on one of my computers and generally I am pretty successful. Email is my preferred dimension of communication. Why because I am not oppressed by it. I can choose to deal with it or ignore it for a time. It does not control me. I like texting because it's the same but I'm slow because the multi buttons and intelligent or at least semi-intelligent input troubles me because it is counter intuitive.

Kevin Kelly writes further wisdom -

Every new technology will bite back. The more powerful its gifts, the more powerfully it can be abused. Look for its costs.

For me it is the cost is the tyranny of the urgent. The phone back home cost per call so no-one simply called for a time-wasting chat because every second cost money. But the phone and cell-phone put us in the urgent deal-with-me-now situation applying a lot of pressure.

Well how does this apply to the spiritual life? Internet addiction, crackberry habit, the desperate need to keep up with other so-called friends reveals something important. So how many Facebook friends do you have? Does that friend include God? How do I measure that friendship.

I believe, like media literacy, the development of techno literacy as critical thinking is important. We need to decide, make judgments as to what is really important. Sometimes I will use technology and devices in my devotional life, but more often than not I use paper books, pens and a nice paper journal to facilitate my time with God. Why? Because I remove the tyranny of the urgent by using slower tools and in that moment I gain freedom.

The older the technology, the more likely it will continue to be useful. Kevin Kelly

clearness, clarity, and correcting cluttered thinking

Space or spaciousness seems to be a key part of spirituality. The European gothic cathedrals changed the worldview of those worshipping inside. Earlier the architecture was constrained by the limitations of building techniques simply they could not build upwards and outwards without incredibly thick walls and lots of pillars. But the development of the buttress and flying buttress brought height, width, and light. Windows as vast surfaces of glass through which light filled this space opened things up. At the same time it is claimed that humans in their literature became more self -aware and self-reflective.

In the post-rock era of music, I am noticing a significant parallel. Recently I came across Natural Snow Buildings, a french duo who produce huge ambient landscapes using large audio palettes of sound. Their The Dance of the Moon and the Sun, an earlier work, reveals much of their origins but their recent release The Centauri Agent is more electronic and processed. The interesting thing is they are not commercial. Their recent issue is free for download through their label Vulpiano Records. Much of their previous work has been through incredibly small releases. It is clear they are not trying to make money. They are not flooding the world with cd's and bits of plastic.

In that collision of ideas I'm currently reading The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard, which is a detailed taking apart of our worldview of the need to acquire more and more stuff. She says "I'm not against stuff", "I'm not romanticizing poverty", "I'm not bashing the United States." But everything is connected in fact interconnected and the current global problems are linked to stuff. In this respect we need to understand our stuff i.e. how we got our stuff and where it came from, in terms of extraction, production, distribution consumption, and disposal. She paraphrases Einstein, saying "problems cannot be solved within the same paradigm in which they were created."

Last night in our Bible study we discussed what made you famous for more than 15 minutes. One person in my group said by changing the way people think. I think there's a little more than that, by changing the way people think by correcting cluttered thinking the world can be changed. We have at least to suspend thinking from within our current worldview.