When Jon Foreman sang about Christianity as a “new way to be human” in 1999, previews for The Matrix were already running in theaters, envisioning a fictional dystopia where the union of man and machine cast a strange shadow on the catchy phrase.
Today, 15 years later, science fiction’s visions of a technologically augmented humanity are closer than ever to science fact, and will demand advances from ministry leaders to respond to new dilemmas of the heart, mind, and body.
Recent foreshadowing of a brave new future came in June, as Microsoft unveiled the “almost human” Cortana AI, modeled after a human personal assistant, including (in a leap beyond Apple’s Siri) the ability for casual conversation and humor with users—a significant step towards beginning to integrate artificial personalities into people’s daily routine.
Meanwhile, mad tech-prophet (and Google director of engineering) Ray Kurzweil continues to tell us to “Get ready for hybrid thinking,” referring to cloud-connected human brains, possibly within the next decade. “Our thinking then will be a hybrid of biological and non-biological thinking” Kurzweil predicts, potentially with dramatic implications.
Additionally, advances in virtual reality technology (including with close-to-market Oculus Rift device) continue to pioneer immersive virtual environments, which, if successful, will likely spill beyond gaming into business, community/worship (think church meets The Matrix), and undoubtedly, vice and sex applications.
In the future, will you be ready to do relational counseling between a “single” person who’s become emotionally entangled with their AI personal assistant? When your married parishioner confesses hooking up with (and falling for) a lifelike pleasure robot while on a business trip, will you counsel them through issues of adultery, or something else entirely? What are the moral implications for people who can afford to get ahead of poorer co-workers because of implants allowing direct neural access to the web? And what about that young couple next door who leave your church to “find community” at that gigachurch 2,000 miles away … via hologram (the foundational tech for this will exist by next year)?
Just a sneak preview of tomorrowland’s pastoral dilemmas. These situations seem outlandish now, but a realistic tech trajectory could put them all well within our lifetimes. We’ll think about it too, and meet you up there in a few years.
Barring the rise of the Robot Overlords, of course.
Stress and Overwork are Becoming Cultural Norms
50 years ago, optimism about technical progress was lapping at the high-water mark, and the future looked bright. As a symbol of that cultural optimism, the 1964 World’s Fair in New York glistened with promises of coming automation and consumer paradise. The future? Less work, more play, more time with family. More meaning in life. Lives of leisure—as technology took the humdrum and mundane so that humans wouldn’t have to—were predicted to be the coming norm.
For those living the future today though, leisure hasn’t been the fruit of technological advancement, stress has. Author and business reporter Bob Sullivan comments at BoingBoing.net:
“It took labor unions hundreds of years to get workers nights and weekends off; smartphones have taken them away in less than a decade.
There are hundreds of studies describing America’s epidemic of overwork, the end of free nights and weekends, the constant stress brought on by digital umbilical cords, the constant interruptions from email, voicemail, instant messages, tweets, Snapchats. Smartphone users check their e-mail 150 times every day, according to industry research. Workers recently told researchers that 50 percent are expected to check their e-mail on weekends, and 34 percent while on vacation. No matter on that last point: Most Americans fail to take their meager allotment of vacation anyway.
Meanwhile, Americans seem to think they like this. A Gallup poll released this month found that employees who check email outside of work are 25 percent more likely to say they experienced a lot of stress yesterday, yet by about the same margin, they are likely to describe themselves as ‘thriving.’ Yep – many Americans seem to think stress is good for them.”
The impact of always-on living on our well being is dramatic, affecting physical, emotional, and spiritual health. Can you paint a picture of a different future for your church and community? That vision shouldn’t have the naiveté of 1964, but it shouldn’t have the jaded digital addiction of 2014 either.
Going to Collections?
“Passing the plate” has been part of Christian traditions of generosity for millennia. But as the digital world grows, so does digital generosity. “Crowdfunding”—social giving powered by the web for a specific purpose—is on the rise dramatically, with thousands of campaigns every year. In fact, “Social causes” (including those church-related ideas that are beginning to click as you read this) accounted for about 30% of crowdfunding activity in 2012. For more context on the growing scope of this, an estimated 5.1 billion dollars of crowdfunded money was raised in 2013.
The variety of crowdfunding sites reflect varying applications and cultural needs. While seminal crowdsourcing site Kickstarter may work for limited projects (suited well for producing an album or documentary), the strict limitations of the site mean that your project won’t be funded if it doesn’t meet its financial goal—and many charity or ongoing initiatives won’t qualify to be funded in the first place. IndieGoGo is a more general site, supporting a wide variety of initiatives, GoFundMe is targeted toward supporting individuals (including, from our research, at least one seminary student hoping to escape debt), and Faith Launcher (specifically dedicated to funding faith-based projects).
While passing the plate by hand will never be obsolete, there’s room to consider how crowdsourcing might energize generosity for ministries, missionaries, and other works of local churches as our culture shifts toward living—and giving—online.—Written with info from crowdsourcing.org
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