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THE WONDER
AND FEAR
OF
TECHNOLOGY

Technology has dominated our cultural moment. It's abstract and specific, tangible, ephemeral, and pervasive. It's what we're both afraid of and in awe of. Despite our misgivings, we put a lot of faith in technology. It isn’t just the device in our pocket. It's the mechanism that shapes our knowing and learning. It’s the system we unwittingly trust and rely upon in the most basic daily decisions.

So it’s no surprise that we’re obsessed with the tools we invent. Yet often lost in our grand impressions is this: technology exists for humanity. And not the other way around. The central question we ask of technology ends up sounding a lot like a spiritual one: who is ruling whom?

This fall’s Faith & Work Conference will be a small attempt to reorder what we’ve disordered, to realign invention with hope. We’ll explore some difficult questions: How does technology square with tradition? What has been coded into humans that we now so often greet technology with fear? Is humankind’s future bending towards doom or promise?

Our hope is to develop new thought on the intersection of faith and technology, to wisely examine the future of work, and to replace current normative models that spawn fear with a fuller notion of the divine signature that has authored us all.

Tim Keller: Re-enchanting our World

The glory and creation of God bears such unknowable depth that to know Him is to be enchaned with awe and wonder. Yet within our consumer society, our obsession with material gain can trump our wonder for God. Drawing from Charles Taylor's work describing how we in the West became a "disenchanged" society, Keller explores in this CFW Conference resource how this disenchantment, while bringing a greater sense of human autonomy and freedom, has also brought a "malaise of modernity", stripping away a deeper sense of our humanity and the meaning and purpose that had been associated with an "enchanged" world. How did we get here? How do we move forward toward a re-enchanged view of God's creation and technological tools we employ? How does the knowledge of God who made us in His image re-affirm our identity and renew our call to cultivate this world in His likeness?

Derek Thompson: The Evolution of Work

We live in a time where many fear technology will permanently replace some workers. Thompson discusses how work shaped the American identity in the last 200 years and how automation will both change and reaffirm the meaning that people derive from work. He asks if people displaced from boring jobs will seek new, more rewarding activities or whether technology will usher in an age of idleness.

Alissa Wilkinson and David H. Kim: Enchantment in Pop Culture

Even within a seemingly “dis-enchanted” world, we clearly see a deep yearning for the transcendent. Cultural forms and movements all bear different expressions of that yearning, but one notably potent place it exists is in our popular narratives. In this video resource from the CFW Conference, author Alissa Wilkinson explains how “filmmakers and TV creators and painters and novelists are forever striving to re-enchant the world with their work.” She and David Kim explore how our culture has taken themes of the supernatural or mystical and uniquely appropriated them for today’s world.

Conversation with Tim Keller, Derek Thompson, and Alissa Wilkinson

How do we infuse a sense of the transcendent into our day to day life? In this video resource from the CFW Conference Tim Keller, Derek Thompson (The Atlantic) and Alissa Wilkinson (Vox) explore how social media and mainstream news have contributed to disenchantment in our culture. David Kim leads the conversation for where redemption can be found going forward.

Nigel Cameron: Technological Humanism

While we humans have devised and employed technology for thousands of years, the ever-faster digital revolution has transfixed our attention and raised fundamental questions about what lies ahead for our species. Can we hope to maintain a "human" frame of reference for the future?

Against the blandishments of "transhumanists" with their naive narrative of the superiority of machine culture, against the naturally "Luddite" tendency of others to repudiate technology, and against the massive disinterest of the church in the most consequent issues of our generation, we need to frame new and emerging technological developments as sub-sets of our humanity and its mission under God. For technology is at root an aspect of anthropology, and while it can of course be abused the longing for the way we were - however far back you choose to go - is a losing prospect. Those of us who believe we were created by God to take responsibility for this creation (whether we see that in terms of the earth or the Solar System or the cosmos) need to be rescued from such false assumptions and to take responsibility for the unfolding of the "dominion mandate" in our generation - and its potential future. It may be a billion years before God chooses to wind up this present order, and we may long before then be not only a multi-planetary species but find ourselves engaging with vastly intelligent creatures across the expanses of universe. As we read the Bible and say the Creed in 2016 our eyes need to be fully open.

Derek Schuurman: Technology and the Biblical Story

What does the Bible have to say about technology? Technology is not primarily about machines and devices, but rather it is a human cultural activity in which we exercise freedom and responsibility. A Christian perspective of technology will be presented informed by the Biblical narrative and framed by the themes of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. This talk includes some current examples from the world of computing and automation which illustrate a variety of social, ethical, cultural and faith implications. A discussion of norms for technology will be presented as guidelines for working towards more responsible technology. The talk will conclude by sketching common technological visions of the future and contrasting them with what is described in the biblical story.

Jane Adams: The Misinformation Age: How Data-Driven Strategies Break Down

In an effort to hire better and hire faster, increasingly many organizations are turning to data-driven recruiting and hiring strategies. These strategies usually involve gathering data on applicants and trying to tie those data points to successful hires. Data scientist Jane Adams examines the ways in which these strategies actually fail to achieve the intended result, and more importantly how they perpetuate discriminatory hiring practices. The severe limitations of these strategies are not unique to recruiting and hiring. We will discuss how to think critically about data-driven strategies in a broader context, a crucial capability as these strategies are inserted into more and more aspects of our lives.