Beware the Technological Imperative: Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should

the person fumbling to pay by Apple or digging up a ticket on their phone would be totally organized without that phone. They wouldn’t. “Back in the good ole days” people forgot tickets, misplaced them, can’t find them, left the card at home, the card is out of date, didn’t have enough cash, etc.

Had a conversation with one of my daughters about how a lot of modern Christian music is quite depressing, and she said it’s increasingly because a lot of young people interact online and lack the encouragement/help of 1:1 interaction. Then I was listening to my kids play some on the piano—to my great irritation using that wonderful instrument at times mostly as a metronome—and it occurred to me that the genre was attempting to mostly “fill the void”, as if the players were afraid of letting there be silence because in their ordinary lives, they didn’t get much silence from their devices and such. The trouble is that silence is a legitimate tool of communication in general and music in particular. (another thing driving this; it’s cheaper to print out chord sheets than sheet music, and easier to find someone who can press G a hundred times than to find an actual musician)

Is the technology the problem? No. It’s the abuse of the technology. Many times, my wife and kids will want to text someone with a fairly urgent question, to which I say “no, give them a call. It’s harder to ignore a phone call.” “But texting is easier!” “Yes, it is. Give them a phone call. It’s harder to ignore.”

More generally, there are simply times where we can be using technological doohickeys and forget the reality that you’ve got to interact with people. There are limits to what we can achieve in terms of efficiency; when it’s human interaction, you need…..human interaction.