Nathanael Blake: Technology overload

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, May 22nd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next … what an iPad can’t do. WORLD Opinions commentator Nathanael Blake says your iPad can do a lot, but it can’t replace real life

NATHANAEL BLAKE: Apple just released an ad showing the accoutrements of civilization being crushed—paint splatters, a piano cracks apart, a sculpture is smashed. In their place, the latest, sleekest iPad appears. Many did not like Apple’s dystopian vision of replacing the tactile material world with a digital one. The backlash was so fierce that Apple even (kind of) apologized, but without showing any understanding of why the ad was repulsive.

The ad revealed that Apple is still committed to a vision of technology as a way of life. Apple promises instantaneous access to almost universal content, connection, and creativity. But this convenience comes with costs, including giving control to Big Tech—if you need an iPad, Wi-Fi, and a streaming subscription to read your books, listen to your music, and watch your movies, are they really yours? And a centralized digital world will only expedite the rewriting of history and literature already occurring.

This problem runs much deeper than the potential malfeasance of Big Tech. Disassociating ourselves from the physical is spiritually hazardous. Christianity insists that we are not souls that we happen to drive around bodies like meat-suits. Rather, we are our bodies as well as our souls. Furthermore, Christians believe that the God who created the material world and declared it good also became incarnate in it.

Of course, our material desires must be disciplined. Still, there is nothing ascetic about what Apple is selling—an iPad is physically minimalist, but Apple wants us to be expansive digital consumers. This may mimic a detachment from possessions, but it encourages more consumption, often of the mediocre or even harmful. The ideal is a sort of Spartan indulgence—you live in a pod and eat the bugs, but get endless content on the screen.

We rarely live in the houses of our ancestors, or till the fields of our forefathers, or work with tools passed down to us, and the digital world further dispenses with natural reminders of our mortality. But we need them; we benefit from living among reminders of the dead. The endurance of things provides an important reminder of our mortality, the gratitude we owe to the past, and the duties we owe to posterity.

Signs of the broken continuity between generations are all around us, from collapsing birthrates to the push for euthanasia. And these ailments arise from a spiritual and relational deficit that Apple’s vision will only exacerbate. Digital life must be balanced by robust physical reality. FaceTime is not a substitute for actually visiting grandkids. Digitally creating music in an app is not the same as the physicality of precisely playing the wood and wire of a guitar. Watching a sermon online is not the same as joining the body of Christ in a specific congregation.

The unity of body and soul means that we need the physical. We wither without human touch. We need the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper and the real-life gathering of believers. We need the physical world, and the physical presence of others, to be fully human. Compacting civilization down to an iPad will not do this.

I’m Nathanael Blake.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.