Mark Ward interviews author Samuel James regarding book ‘Digital Liturgies: Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age’

It sounds like the book has a lot of good points.

But it seems like writers critical of our very-online times constantly use bad analogies… which discourage me from reading more of what they have to say.

The internet, in particular social media, is not the digital equivalent of someone’s living room. Everybody seems to have forgotten the book, the newspaper, and the town square. The internet is the digital equivalent of these things in a kind of—and often unfortunate—accelerated mashup. But private living space belongs nowhere in the analogies. People do not randomly “start arguments” with people online. People online shout their views in a digital town square and then other people argue with them.

…or in some cases demand that others not argue with them (which irks me to no end. If you don’t want to be argued with, don’t announce your views in public—or some group that is a subset of the public).

Later in the article, also from James:

It’s nearly impossible to overstate how fundamentally the disembodied nature of the web has recalibrated our sense of what is good and normal.

It’s ironic that so many people doing negative analyses of the new have forgotten the old: that long before the Internet, books and newspapers were a “fundamentally disembodied” form of interaction between humans with conflicting views. The disembodiedness of online interaction is not particularly special and not new.

I’ve seen the book recommended by many outlets, and of course by Crossway. My far off take on the book is that it says “the internet makes us jerks and does bad things to us!” My response is to say, “yeah, no kidding” and save $19.99. I don’t plan to buy it, but I may not be the intended audience. I have no social media or web browser on my phone at all. I am much happier for it.

It is getting to be a genre now. But most of the books on this topic have some recommendations for how to respond to the ‘new’ problems, mitigate influences, etc. I also think there’s value in better understanding the dynamics involved—and I really think this begins with approaching these new technologies and habits (aka ‘liturgies’) as what they are: extensions of older technologies and habits and timeless human tendencies.

Cain may have killed Abel with a rock or a club or his bare hands. Maybe he had a killing tool on hand, like a knife, spear, or axe.

Later, humans invented the bow and arrow, the crossbow, and eventually canons and rifles and pistols. Then the fully automatics and semiautomatics we see today with 3 rounds per trigger pull, low recoil, laser targeting, etc.

If Cain had had suddenly had one of those… well, he could have been the last man standing in under 10 seconds.

Technological advances can have slow, dispersed consequences or they can have really dramatic fast ones. The latter are more noticeable while they’re happening, and harder for society/civilization to adjust to. Too much too fast.

In retrospect, we can see the huge impact the moveable type printing press had on the West and eventually the entire world.

But as “the technologies of invention” advance, new inventions come more rapidly. What if we’re now seeing inventions at the printing press level every decade or so now? This is an awful lot for societies and individuals to adjust to and build ethics for.

We should expect it to be messy. … and I don’t see us slowing down any time soon.

The internet, in particular social media, is not the digital equivalent of someone’s living room. Everybody seems to have forgotten the book, the newspaper, and the town square. The internet is the digital equivalent of these things in a kind of—and often unfortunate—accelerated mashup. But private living space belongs nowhere in the analogies. People do not randomly “start arguments” with people online. People online shout their views in a digital town square and then other people argue with them.

I think you might be underestimating here. The book and newspaper both had an element of evaluation (via editors) and delay (at least tomorrow’s edition) that social media does not have.

It was also generic rather than personal. Whatever is said had to be of interest to a larger number of people. People were not publishing three second old pictures of their pets, their meals, their kids, their spouses, etc. They were not spouting their unconsidered opinions on a hot newsflash.

Today, a lot of social media is the immediate declaration of things that were previously private or uncirculated because a book or a newspaper wouldn’t publish it. It was either “old news” or “small news.” It has no delay (you can literally post your thoughts or pictures in seconds) and no editor (no one to check it and in fact in some you can’t even edit it yourself, e.g., Twitter). It is you putting into “public” circulation the things that used to be only in your mind or to those in your immediate presence. Hence “the living room,” where the conversation was personal and of interest to those in your presence and limited in audience.

The public square was slightly different in that there was more a sense of immediacy but you still had to make an effort beyond touching a few places on the screen.

So I think the living room analogy is a little stronger than you give it credit for.

I also think a lot of online arguments are “random” in the sense that one scrolls through their news feed and responds to one and not the other. They didn’t go looking for it, and the algorithm that put it on the feed is “random” of a sort. But off we go into an argument. People who don’t even know each other end up going back and forth (often angrily) over something neither one of them has the power or influence to change.

I agree that “disembodied” has been around for a long time, but don’t you the disembodied nature of books or news stories is substantively different than the disembodied of individuals on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or even substack?

The internet is not the printing press, so yes, there are some differences in addition to the many similarities. It’s rapid and unfiltered and flat. Fundamentally, though it remains a medium of publishing.

The living room analogy has some similarities, too… if you imagine your living room with no walls, no doors, and plopped into, say, Times Square… or maybe an International Airport… oh, and everybody in the conversation has a megaphone.

Analogies are always a mixed bag, but the problem with a living room model is that it creates unrealistic expectations for how people will behave that are fundamentally at odds with public discourse.

So, we should try to use analogies that will help people understand what they’re dealing with and what they should reasonably expect.

It’s certainly true that many of the online arguments are random. Many are just rants and emoting. For the most part, people are not taught to think in a structured way, to follow reasoned arguments, understand valid reasoning, etc. This is not unique to the internet, but the fast, unfiltered nature + the algorithm-driven nature of social media + the clicks and views economy create a mix that takes many ages old human tendencies and makes them a lot worse.

There are stupid and sensational and angst-exploiting and tribalism-reinforcing books. These have been around just about as long as there have been books. But the internet amplifies, accelerates, and sometimes ‘feedback loops’ these problems. The more people understand it’s not their living room, the better.