This presentation weaves together several of my ongoing and recent projects, including a computer ethics class that I teach regularly at the undergraduate and graduate level and a forthcoming article in the Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization (Blackwell), as well as elements from my dissertation work in theological ethics which focused on eschatological hope as a virtue.
As a roadmap of where we are heading, here are a few guideposts. First, we will set the stage surveying the current landscape in technological innovation generally speaking. We, then, will turn our attention to discern the nature of technology and to mine the resources of two fields of study likely unfamiliar to many of us (i.e., philosophy of technology and computer ethics) in a section entitled “In Search of a Philosophy of Technology.” While you might be surprised to hear that such a field as computer ethics exists, the issues presented by the convergence of bioethics with communication and information technologies make an understanding of this field critically important. Finally, we will offer some preliminary questions and assessments of the emerging biotech discussion with particular interest in those issues that focus on the remaking of humanity under the rubric of technological responsibilism. My working proposal is that many of the difficulties presenting us with these emerging technologies focus on our underlying inability to assess technology and its relationship to humanity, and that much of this can be alleviated by some attention to a philosophy and more importantly a theology of technology.
For better or for worse, life in the 21st Century is a reality marked by technological immersion. Technology, according to theologian Brent Waters, “is the way we live and move and have our being in today’s age.” Not surprisingly Christians adopt technology on pace with the average US cultural demographics. Meanwhile, the engagement of these same Christians with the ever emerging technologies has ranged from thoughtful and critical reflections on a number of pressing bioethical issues to an unhindered mass consumption of many information, communication, and cyber-technologies. It is precisely the unhindered consumption of technology that marks one form of ethical impotence present in contemporary American culture at large and unfortunately far too frequently characteristic of many Christian faith communities as well.
The marvels of technological innovations move at breakneck speeds from speculative science fiction to consumer product reality. They range from the biological sciences (e.g., genetic testing and therapies; therapeutic and reproductive cloning; embryonic and non-embryonic stem cell research; life extension and immortality research; and chimera—animal-human hybrid— or cybrid research) to the agricultural (e.g., animal husbandry for xenotransplantation, genetically-altered crops and cloned livestock) to the realm of information technology (e.g., data mining, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and robotics) and, finally, to converging futuristic technologies already visible and emerging on the horizon (e.g., nanotechnology medical monitoring and treatment devices; decreasing technological distance in the user interface via brain implants and neural imaging; on to the shift from therapeutic use of prosthetics to cyborg enhancement, human replacement and posthuman agendas such as the transhumanists). By the end of this year one company intends to bring to market a neural headset that will serve as a remote input device for computers and gaming systems.
As has been mentioned in a variety of contexts and made popular through individuals such as Nigel Cameron, while many of the ethical questions of the late 20th Century dealt with bioethical concerns over the beginning and end of life issues (the making and taking of human life), the questions raised by these new, these emerging technologies threaten to change the nature of the human species and the very essence of what it means to be human. We are on the cusp of entering a new phase in ethical issues surrounding these technologies shifting the bioethical questions to those surrounding the remaking of humanity and the human being as such.
The problems facing us in this new age of remaking are many. First, the general public and even the educational elite see many of these technologies as merely science fiction, when in reality many of them have been demonstrated in proof of concept types of research. Secondly, the general public frequently checks out of the conversation as soon as any technical discussion begins. Finally, the speed at which we move from concept to application is increasingly shortened, leaving little time for preparation and ethical reflection.
One pressing area of reflection is the need for a robust Christian philosophy of technology. Christianity has had a varied relationship with science and as might be expected the technological revolution is no exception. Responses to technology within and without Christianity have ranged from total rejectionism (luddites) to critical or uncritical adoptionism (technological pragmatists) on to those who worship at the altar of technological messianism (technicists or techno-utopians), though these individuals on the fringes are few and between, although the technicists are growing outside the fold. The vast majority of the general American population, whether Christian or otherwise defaults somewhere in the middle category, with a strong tendency toward uncritical consumerism. Planned obsolescence and abbreviated product life cycles tempt us into the latest and greatest. While not worshiping at an altar of technological redemption, many of us find ourselves captive to the lust for greater efficiency and unrestrained technological capacity.
If you’re anything like me, we too are products of this overly technicized age. Blackberry (check), ultralight mobile notebook, wireless earpiece, mobile digital recorder (check, check, check). In our entertainment life, we want the biggest LCD’s or Plasma TV’s. We want the latest technology, the cutting-edge treatments, and if we can be environmentally responsible, and all on interest-free credit, even better. Perhaps one of the most significant demonstrations of this in recent technology was the release of the iPhone.
Increasingly I have become aware of a personal trend toward mechanization in my life and the subsequent driving pursuit for efficiency. This is something I will return to later, but we can make some preliminary connections. Most if not all of us remember the early days of modems, email and electronic bulletin boards. It is interesting to analyze the level of impatience with communication delays as we saw a parallel increase in download speed and internet access. In the early days of what became the web, if you were one of the few to be connected through a modem, now if a page does not load instantaneously I become irritated. With the onset of mobile browsing and blackberry services I find myself squeezing every last bit of time out of sitting at red lights, hallways and lounges between meetings, even on the way out to the mailbox. I find it increasingly difficult to unplug, to unwire every moment of my life. What is troublesome is that without reflection these tools are changing the way that I interact with people and forcing me to accommodate lifestyle choices driven by them. My wireless earpiece seems less foreign to me each and every time I use it.
Within one camp of responses are Christian thinkers who call for careful examination and offer responses that are suggestive of a sentimentalist rejection of these emerging technologies. By this sentimentalism rejection I mean an appeal to a less technologically available age, where the technology itself is the real problem. The technological sentimentalism expressed by these types of respondents have led to the charge that Christians are technological luddites—a pejorative charge aimed at marginalizing any critical response to the unhindered pursuit of technological progress.
Technology here is a threat, something inherently evil. This technological sentimentalism is labeled by Carl Mitcham as Ancient Skepticism, which questions the value of the new. In a worldview where tradition and longstanding practice and beliefs is valued, innovation is perceived as a wrong or an evil to be avoided. In the culture wars, technological advancement has become a divisive political topic.
On the other end of the continuum, only a small minority of the population have been involved in any sort of technological messianism. Here technology is savior of society and thus is something inherently good and to be desired. Despite only having a small following, the majority of contemporary Christians appropriate a form of chastened technological optimism, thus, defaulting to a naïve technological pragmatism uncritically appropriating technology via a consumerist mentality. We want what we want, when we want it. This is not only expressed in the mainstream consumer markets, but similar sentiments can be seen in medical and scientific communities as well. Technicism in its purist form is more of a cultural artifact of a secularized mindset rooted in a form of scientism—the belief that human ingenuity will solve all of problems through unhindered scientific research.
A third category of engagement is the reflection of what I have begun to refer to as technological responsibilists. Stephen Monsma offers a Christian definition of technology as “a distinct human cultural activity in which human beings exercise freedom and responsibility in response to God by forming and transforming the natural creation, with the aid of tools and procedures, for practical ends or purposes” (Monsma 1986, 19). He and others like Jacques Ellul and Albert Borgmann offer a position of critical uneasiness with the ubiquity of our technological immersion and its impacts upon our humanity. They seek to call our attention to the line between tool and homo faber that increasingly has blurred, but in a manner that demonstrates sophisticated understanding of the technologies themselves.
Several unresolved questions mark current discussions between Christianity and the new and emerging technologies. The development of a sophisticated Christian philosophy of technology will need to account for the following areas:
These areas mark only the beginning of a necessary conversation regarding these new technologies. Their emergence, thus, marks a situation of both promise and peril, one which requires a critical theological engagement and a sophisticated understanding of the technologies themselves not only in their technical specifications (even though this is very important), but also in their philosophical ontologies or metaphysics (reflecting on their realities or essences of these technologies) in order for us as Christians to offer a viable model of technological responsibilism. I am, therefore, arguing for a form of realism, a technorealism if you will, that experiences what Carl Mitcham calls “a romantic uneasiness” with this technology, and what I have unpacked elsewhere as technological responsibilism.
My own brand of technological responsibilism appeals to a virtue enriched model. The classical notion of virtue was aimed wholistically to human flourishing and the cultivation or habitus of excellence in all areas of life. For the Aristotelian notion of the virtuous life, you could not be merely committed to moral excellence over and against the intellectual virtues, but you must be embodying both. The moral virtues or excellences of character were to be pursued in tandem with the intellectual virtues or excellences. These intellectual virtues consisted not just of phronesis (wisdom) and theoria (abstract reasoning), but also of techne (technical knowledge and skill). The virtues model in the classical world saw a place for technical capacity that was not all encompassing, totalizing or reductionistic, but was governed by wisdom and love. It is with some burden that we move beyond the mere technical discussions of these issues and access potential insights from a more sustained interest in philosophy of technology that I propose we begin to think through technology.
Barbour, Ian. Ethics in an Age of Technology. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993.
Borgmann, Albert. Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2003.
Ellul, Jacques. The Technological Society. Translated by John Wilkinson. New York: Vintage, 1964.
Houston, Graham. Virtual Morality: Christian Ethics in the Computer Age. Leicester: Apollos, 1998.
Huggins, James K. “The Assumptions of Computing.” In Ethics in the Computer Age, edited by Joseph M. Kizza, 46-50. Association for Computing Machinery, 1994.
Mitcham, Carl. Thinking through Technology: The Path between Engineering and Philosophy. Chicago: Univ of Chicago Press, 1994.
Mitchell, C. Ben, Edmund D. Pellegrino, Jean Bethke Elshtain, John F. Kilner, and Scott B. Rae. Biotechnology and the Human Good. Washington, DC: Georgetown Univ Press, 2007.
Monsma, Stephen, et al. Responsible Technology: A Christian Perspective. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986.
Pullinger, David. Information Technology and Cyberspace: Extra-Connected Living? Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2001.
Waters, Brent. From Human to Posthuman: Christian Theology and Technology in a Postmodern World. Burlington, Vt: Ashgate, 2006.
[1] Geoffrey Rowell, Hell and the Victorians: A Study of the Nineteenth-Century Theological Controversies Concerning Eternal Punishment and the Future Life (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974), 14.
[2] Cf. Brian Alexander, Rapture: How Biotech Became the New Religion (New York: Basic Books, 2003); Franklin Matthew Eppinette, “Bodiless Exultation? Transhumanism and Embodiment” (MA diss., Trinity International University, 2004), 12-28, 46-48; “Human 2.0: Transhumanism as a Cultural Trend,” in Everyday Theology (ed. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Charles A. Anderson, and Michael J. Sleasman; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 191-207; Francis Fukuyama, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2002); C. Christopher Hook, “The Techno Sapiens are Coming,” Christianity Today 48 (2004), 48.
[3] Gabriel Marcel, The Philosophy of Existence (trans. Manya Harari; Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1969), 19.
This presentation was originally delivered as a workshop lecture at the Christian Medical & Dental Associations 2008 National Conference.
