iPad Commandments in the High Church of Technology

When I first watched the Matrix films, I thought it was strange how much religious imagery and practice was brought to bear on and synthesized with the machines and high technology of the Matrix world. But increasingly I have realized that it was not strange at all in the sense that technological gadgetry and innovation constitutes the image of the good life that many people in our current society have (think Ray Kurzweil as an extreme example). As James K.A. Smith observes in his recent book, Desiring the Kingdom, whatever makes up our picture of the good life, the flourishing life, is what we cannot help but worship to some degree. This does not entail that such things are always worthy of worship, but nonetheless, they are the profound ends to which our most basic desires yearn for and seek to bring about through daily endeavors.

This was underscored with the recent release of the iPad, to which the above "iPad commandments" allude. In reading the media stories leading up to the iPad release, one might have thought that some kind of savior was arriving to rescue us from our fallen state of digital existence brought on by wrongly choosing and using technologies we should not have. Perhaps I exaggerate, but if so, not by much. In a world of so much tragedy (wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, AIDS crisis in Africa, insufficient food and clean water for children throughout the world, earthquakes that kill hundreds of thousands of people, and the list goes on) we are desperate for something to mark signs of progress out of the tragic and towards our vision of the good life, the flourishing life.

I am skeptical of faith in and worship of the promise of technology, though. Whatever solutions technology might offer, the constant peril is that they often fail to require any transformation of the behavior on our part that led to the problem in the first place. Perhaps this is why the church of high technology is so popular, it gives us everything we want without demanding confession, repentance, or atonement.