A Technology Influx — Kyle Stoltzfus — Ep. 024

Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. I'm here again with Kyle Stolzfuss, and you're a teacher here at Faith Builders, and you also run the Communications Department. So you work a lot with technology, and that actually would have been your first college experience if you would have watched the other episode we did.

So right now we're living through a massive shift in technology, and specifically like information technology with smartphones, the internet, computers—a lot has changed in the last 20 years. How have Mennonites adjusted, and what's been the effect on us?

Big question. This is a big question. Now you mentioned that my work is in communications, and with that I work a lot with technology, and it's really changed how we do my work. So producing a newsletter, it starts on the computer. Previously that would have been a much more tedious and long process, and technology has helped to simplify how I go about doing the layout and pulling it all together, and even submitting the artwork to a printer who uses a digital press. So really revolutionary changes in how I go about doing my work. But to the question you asked, the bigger question about how have Mennonites adjusted or adapted to some of the changes, especially of the digital revolution, if you're talking about communications and smartphones, it's how we communicate with each other, it's how we enjoy recreation, and how technology has really kind of permeated our life.

Well, I'd have to ask, you know, which Mennonite do you mean? Is recognizing that there's this great continuum all the way from the more conservative side, and just by definition those being the ones who tend to prefer the tried and the true, the things that have worked in the past, they're going to try to use them again. And then on this continuum to, I guess you'd say, the left or the progressives, the liberals who are more open to change, they want to get in there and tinker and try new things. And those are the folks who are obviously going to be more open to change in technology. So on the right you've got folks who are much more careful or skeptical about the limits of technology, and they might have a phone, say a landline, but it's in a shed outside their house, right?

And then there's, moving a little bit to the left, there might be people who have a computer, but the computer is only used for business. It runs the CNC equipment that they have, they can send and receive emails with it, but it's in a shed as well, and it's just outside of their business, but it's a computer now and it's got internet access, okay? But only for business. And you keep on moving all the way across the spectrum to folks who are very open to any of the newer platforms that have come out, the smartphone revolution, all of this, and they're quicker to adopt that. So it's a little bit hard to speak, you know, just to summarize it all and say this is where Mennonites are at because there's a lot of variety, and you'll see that variety reflected in the statements these people are making about technology and in the practices that they have.

I do think though uniformly, and here I'm going to step out a little bit and make some broad assessments, I do think that generally speaking the information age and information technology has taken the conservative Anabaptist community off guard and somewhat unprepared. Interesting, yeah. Is that because of how quickly it happened, the transition from like the internet kind of taking over so much of the business world, personal world? Is that why, or why weren't we fully prepared? Yeah.

Well, it's called the information revolution or the digital revolution, and there's a reason for that. It's because how quickly these transitions have happened, and when you use the word revolution you're meaning that these transitions happen in such a way that people are overwhelmed, there's a lot of turbulence, there's some chaos involved usually, and I think that describes something, yeah, of how the information age, the information revolution has impacted both the broader society, and since we're at least part of that society, a little subgroup in it, it's hit us in the same way as well. But I think it's hit on some soft spots in some ways that ideologically and in our way of making discernment, in our way of applying scripture, in our way of putting ourselves and our practices under the authority of the word, I think it's caught some weak spots there that we haven't really been prepared for.

That makes, yes, because when you have such a big shift in the world, I mean this is massive how much it's changed, technology has changed how we communicate with each other even from 20 years ago, you know? That's interesting, so it's kind of almost like a test of our people and society as a whole, but definitely us and our values. And for people who are interested, say like Anabaptists tend to be in having a lifestyle that's informed by scripture, that's governed by it in a lot of ways, and that's governed by the intentions of Jesus that precede scripture itself, there's a lot of question, there's a lot of uncertainty how to make some of those applications, and I think sometimes a gap there.

Well then, so we have this big adjustment, this big transition in culture and for us too as Anabaptists, but what have been some of the benefits of digital technology, and then on the flip side what are some negative impacts as well? Benefits, well there you catch me a little bit flat-footed.

I tend to be a bit of a, I guess, a purist, and you could call me a Luddite, the guy who smashes sewing machines just because they're new and different. Maybe that makes me conservative, I'm not totally sure, but we can come back to that question, and there I'll be a little bit more general because there's some uncertainty there in my mind.

But maybe first talk about some of the liabilities or some of the places where these new ways of communicating and doing work have impacted us in ways that I think both our culture is recognizing, the larger culture is recognizing as possibly having some baggage there we didn't anticipate, and then it comes into our subculture too in some ways that could really be crippling if we weren't aware of them. And the first of those, well I mentioned the arena of work already, okay, so I'm just going to dive in there for just a moment just to get one arena. I think I see where you're going, okay, yeah.

There's a lot of other places you could talk about how communications and technologies affect us, but let's think about work. There's this principle you find in Genesis 2 where man was created, and man was created with things to do. He had work to do, he had gardening, okay?

He was going to dress, he was going to keep this, and he was to do that even before he had a mate, right? Just putting some significance on there, man had meaningful work to do, and God intended for it to be that way.

It was part of the creation intention that man has meaningful work. So just establishing there that work is significant, work is meaningful, and it ought to be. I think one of the significant disruptions or the one place where technology could disrupt that is to break the connection between work and meaning. Yeah. And here's where I'm going with that, and I'll just use an example from my work. So again, I do communications work, and it's really very abstract, like I have trouble sometimes explaining what I do. I say I do communications, and people tend to glaze over really fast, like what does that mean? It means I take pictures, it means I do layout, it means I work with the web, and when it boils down sometimes I just feel like all I do is just I just arrange colorful shapes on the screen, okay?

And when I get these colorful shapes arranged in the right order, the way I find meaning in that is that there's this gas that magically appears from a pipe in the ground, it's burned in the furnace in my home, and you'll catch where I'm going with this, I think it's burned in the furnace at home, and it heats the house and it keeps my children warm.

And when you think about it that way it's all really disconnected, okay? Well, yeah. I arrange colorful shapes and gas comes out of the ground and then the children stay warm, and it's hard for me to understand that, it's hard for other people to understand that, and I wonder how do my children think about that, okay? Daddy goes away every day and we stay warm at home, but there's no connection, and it's very difficult for them and for me to derive meaning from a disconnect like that.

So I'm just highlighting here that we tend to gain real satisfaction, we tend to gain meaning out of our work when it's connected to a need, some kind of need specifically for people that we actually care about, and it connects us with them, it connects them with us, and it makes the work feel meaningful. And technology just by its nature is meant to reduce the kind of work that we have to do, and you can't blame it for that, that's what technology is for, it's here to make our lives easier, right?

But one of the consequences I'm just highlighting is that it's possible that our lives just become disconnected from meaning, okay? You can find ways around that, but I would suggest just practically that you find ways of, you know, keeping the connection intact. So when your children ask how do you stay warm, well you say, well Daddy cuts the firewood, Daddy stacks the firewood, we bring it into the basement, and then you help me bring it up from the basement in the winter, and we put it on the woodcore, we bring it over, we burn it in the stove, and you feel the heat, and it's a wonderful thing. So maintain some practices like that that keep you in touch with meaning.

Cause and effect, even in a way. Oh, that's so important. The process. And I've thought about, it's really interesting because you have something really obvious like credit card debt. People go into the store, they grab some groceries, they swipe a piece of plastic, and you have food. Amazing, isn't it? It is, that is incredible technology, that is amazing, but where's the connection there? And then all of a sudden people realize, whoa, I spent way more money than I have because they lose the sense of the process.

Yeah, I don't know, I wonder. It's a lot tougher to do in a bartering economy where you don't have it. Or cash even, you know? You only have a certain amount of $100 bills, say, and when they're gone, they're gone, but when you're swiping a piece of plastic there's no real-world reality connection, you know, except maybe a notification on your phone or something.

Interesting. So there's one part, okay, the connection between meaning and work. The second observation I think, and this one's just pervasive, you don't have to be a Christian to even wring your hands about this one, is the issue of fragmentation, and this has more to do with how we think and how effectively we can break problems down, process information, and then actually take action on it.

So just very practically the way this tends to work is that you can have so many things open at the same time, and that doesn't necessarily have to be a problem, but it tends to be that these tasks are absolutely like unrelated to each other. So you've got one thread over here open where it's email, and these emails are coming in, it's all flat, there's no way of distinguishing which is from one task, which is from another, there's no fingerprints on them.

And then over here you've got something else going on, over here you're checking out prices from hotels in Atlanta on Hotwire, over here you've got this document that really deserves all of your attention, but it's kind of trailing along, and then the phone rings, and then there's Instagram going on in the background. You know about this? Yeah, and then yeah, and then you get a text message or something, and then you yeah, yeah. So the underlying assumption we can sometimes work with is that we can actually divide our attention in so many directions like that and push them all forward simultaneously, right, and still find satisfaction. Multitask, yeah. But the reality is that we only have one attention to give, and that attentional resources, the ability of the brain to focus on one thing and give attention to that, it's actually limited, okay?

And that's why very quickly when you put yourself in this fragmented multitasking environment, those attentional resources are depleted, okay? And it's much more effective, and oftentimes I think much more meaningful in the long run when you can give yourself to a single task for extended periods of time, like more than 20 minutes at a time, in other words, uninterrupted. And there's a lot of research out there that's saying that if you really want to get productive in a task, you've got to stick to it for more than 20 minutes, okay? If you're interrupted, it resets, and you've got to start all over again and give your energy to that task, whether it's somebody walking in through the door, whether it's the chirp from your phone, even just having your phone there depletes attentional resources in a way that deprives you of the abilities you need to actually focus on one task and to be effective that way.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I've heard of a new thing that's come out in the last year, I don't know, some new research or something, they call it single tasking. Okay. You know, because the push has always been this technology has enabled us to do all of these tasks simultaneously, and that's just not true, and now the push is all of a sudden not multitask, bring it back in, single tasking.

I find that very intriguing. It takes a lot of discipline to do an approach like that. Yeah, in the realm of technology, wow, you have to be really deliberate, yeah. Yeah, you do, and trying to resist the illusion of multitasking is really difficult because there's something extremely appealing about it. I don't know what it is about human nature, but it's really appealing. It gives the sense of a lot of productivity. Oh yeah, great. But it's not really true. I mean, at least most of the time, maybe if you can automate some of the process, but then, you know, but. It might be a stretch to try to blame technology for that, but it has enabled some of those habits in a way we haven't seen before.

So again, just two observations specifically about work. You can take this into a lot of different arenas, how it's affected how well we listen to others and how willing we are to speak before we listen. You could talk about just getting enough sleep, there's all this speculation about blue light and the direct effect it might have on sleep patterns.

Really, we're just beginning to understand, well, I'll say it this way, we've become attached to some of the positive parts of technology and what it's allowed us to do, but we're only now beginning to understand some of the possible liabilities, some of the deficits, and some of those deficits have, I think it's fair to say, they've surprised and sometimes frightened a lot of people. So there's a lot of concern right now, a lot of hand-wringing about like, wow, we've adopted all this stuff, but who's guiding this process, and what's it all doing to us anyway, and nobody's quite certain yet.

That's kind of a scary thought, right at the beginning of something, it's still so new. We cannot see the effect it will have a hundred years from now. We can speculate, but. And so the historians will be writing their histories about this revolution, and just like previous revolutions, they'll say, wow, they were, and you could read it maybe and say, wow, they were so blind to some of these effects. Yeah, it's a fascinating time to be alive.

And one thing that I want to do is 20, 30 years from now come back and watch these videos, you know, and some of the episodes we've done on technology, this is one of several. And yeah, just look back and be like, oh yeah, we got that right, ooh, we got that wrong, you know? Totally didn't see that one coming. Yeah, but it's about having the conversation now, and so that we are aware of these things, we are thinking about them.

So more from a historical approach, when it comes to new technologies or new innovations, as a general rule, not always, but Mennonites have usually been slow to adopt them, or they have, but they've been a little bit reserved, they haven't just gone all in. This is obviously no exception, you know, smartphones came a lot later to Mennonite circles than they did the rest of society, you know, like computers, all of that. What's the benefit of that, and how is that good, how is that bad? Just dialogue about that a little. Okay.

So you make a statement there, and I'm glad you put a clause in, saying that Mennonites have been slow to adopt technology, and again, it depends. There are some arenas where Mennonites have been faster to adopt, and some arenas where they've actually been innovators, okay?

Say in especially in fields of agriculture, where Mennonites have been right at the very front, the cutting edge, and sometimes innovative about the sorts of methods that were being used to enhance productivity, to increase yields, to feed more people, and turn places like, oh, some places in Russia into like the breadbasket.

Yeah. And then there's some history there. There are other arenas, especially if you're moving toward the conservative part of the spectrum where there's been more skepticism, okay? Just some reservation, whether technology can deliver, and especially focusing on communications technology, whether it can deliver all that it promises, or maybe even fear that technology is going to displace some of these old tried-and-true ways of doing communication, like face-to-face interactions, say.

So there's, it seems like there's a grid that's used to discern, especially in the old order circles, you can really see this, there's a grid that's used to discern what impact a certain technology is going to have on the individual's spiritual life, but maybe even more significantly in our culture, the community's life, and how the individual relates into the community.

And there it causes them to question the effect of individuals, you know, kind of rising above the community, and how might this disrupt the way the community runs.

But all told again, I think I've got to kind of jump back to some of those first questions, say, you know, how have Mennonites done? So I don't think we've engaged it extremely thoughtfully, or especially as you move toward the middle of the spectrum, there's been a bit of a gap between where there's not been a lot of discernment exercise, and technology seems to have fallen into a bit of a gray area, unless it's related to content. So we care about what you watch, you know, pornography's off-limits, don't get too stuck in, you know, watching movies and just aimlessly kind of frittering your time away. We know there's some moral boundaries there, but I don't think we've known exactly how to grapple with some of these things that feel gray or kind of amoral.

Kind of like, we have some pretty clear lines as what is healthy to watch, what isn't. Yeah, in terms of content. Yeah, as far as like the actual content, but what about the actual medium itself? What about YouTube.com?

There's some great stuff on YouTube, very educational things, but there's some terrible things. That's much more difficult to navigate, you know? Well, I think I'm going a little bit deeper than that, even saying, what does it mean for a young person to have access to a library of even good theological content on YouTube? And is that different than them, say, going to their bishop and asking a question about the doctrine of the Trinity, when they're more likely to just get on their phone, which they have access to, it's an incredible wealth of information, and just look it up there?

And not so much talking about even the theological flair that they might get there, which is also significant, but what does that shift mean? Yeah, and we're only beginning to understand those things, or the speculative ones. It shifts it much more to the individual. The individual goes out and Googles it or whatever, and comes to their conclusion, and it's just them, it's their own personal thing, and whatever.

But what you were saying is, what's the effect this is having on community, is something you mentioned before. So if you go and ask your church leader that question, that's different, that builds community, that builds connection. If you go to Google, what's the connection? Yeah, and there's a lot of various other questions that begin to kind of burble up when you start to look at technology that way. There's the content, yes, but then there's just the platform. There's just this way of looking at things, which turns out not to be neutral in my mind. And we've got to find ways of assessing and working with those platforms as well. Well, and even when we did the interview with Matt Landis, and he talked about how these mediums, say, Facebook, very much it is not neutral.

They have an agenda. For one thing, they're a business, they're trying to make money off of you. There's a reason it's quote-free, you know? Yeah. When you go on Facebook and you see a post, you have the option to like it or to, you know, the different, you know, emotions, but there's no dislike button.

So right there, out of the gate, they have directed which way you're going to go when you go to Facebook. It's not neutral, you know? They very much have made distinctions there where they, I don't know, I just find those things interesting, and I wonder how many of those are there, and we just miss them, and how much this is actually impacting our thought process.

With Facebook, the first thing that pops up is this dialogue box asking you to speak, you know? What's on your mind? What are you feeling? What are you thinking? And people do that, they speak, they emote, they put things out there, but that's the requirement for you to join the community, you speak, okay? You get your mind out there, you interact, and it's not always, that's not the way we build the really significant and lasting communities. We have to do a lot of listening to, and I'm not saying that Facebook doesn't allow you to listen, but the people who are on Facebook as, you know, stalkers, the ones who are just going around reading, they're the ones who actually, they don't get the good feelings out of it, and they tend not to benefit from it as well either.

So I guess just, you know, when the focus is for you to speak, to express yourself, and instead to listen, there's something subtle there, but it is significant. And the second one to mention is that technology, again, is built to make our lives easy. One way it does that is to put content that it discerns, and very well many times, put content in front of us that it discerns is going to be relevant to us. Stuff that we want to read, which is great, it's making our life a little easier, we don't have to spend so much time getting out there and exposing ourselves to different ideas, but there's the problem. You're building this kind of reservation where you.

Bubble effect, yeah. Yeah, the echo chamber, the bubble, where most of what you're hearing just reflects back on you what you already believe, and affirms your opinions, and it's all really nice, this kind of back-padding environment, but it might be destructive.

And that's something that any strong community needs to have, the ability to put contested opinions out there, and give exposure to ideas that sometimes challenge you, okay? Sometimes rub you the wrong way, or at least that cultivate your growth by stretching you, okay? And if you're just feeling comfortable all the time, you're probably not growing very much. Yeah.

And that's kind of the idea with this project, is sharing perspectives within the Anabaptist circle to spark more dialogue in our circles, you know? And I have a feeling this video is definitely going to spark some dialogue in some churches, you know, like get people thinking about these things.

Yeah. And that's a place to start. There's a lot of, there's some original work being done, even here at Faith Boulders, which I think is encouraging. We're talking about some of these effects, trying to push into the gray areas and claim those areas as saying, well, this is a place where you can actually exercise Christian Mennonite discernment, and we're just starting to get into it, but the conversations need to happen. Yeah. So when it comes to technology for us as Mennonites, how can we be proactive and deliberate in how we use this stuff, and not just, like you had been referring to, some of those gray areas of technology where it's just kind of, we're not really sure, how can we be much more intentional about how we use it, and how can we learn to use it in a positive way without just swallowing all of it, including the negative parts?

Yeah, what's something practical we can do? And again, it's just, it's in the very nature of any revolutionary time that the old habits of life, the old ways of doing things, they tend to be disrupted. So the question is, how do you guide that process? Because if you're a child of the age, right, if you're participating in the age in any way, and participating in the use of technology that it offers, it's going to shape you. It's going to alter some of those patterns, it's going to change what you value, and it's going to change how you relate to people around you. You just got to take that for granted, and there's no amount of hand-wringing that's going to fix that problem, no amount of anxiety or fear that's going to address that.

So, and even though worry might give you a little bit of something to do, and use up some mental energy, and maybe make you feel a little bit better, at the end of the day, you've got to be conscious of it. And like you said, you have to be intentional, and then take some ownership and say, okay, this is where we're at, and this is how we can exercise discernment with this technology, and guide the formation process. If you don't do that, you're going to just kind of swallow the whole thing, and get the negative with some of the positive. But it seems to me that overwhelmingly, especially with technology, if you just accept it, and accept some of the promises that it tends to give us, it's going to ultimately be destructive.

Now the question then, again, just returning to it, well, okay, so that's great, but how do you do that? And I'm just going to make a general appeal, first of all, to how we might be able to inform the way we use technology with some more general operating principles, and then maybe we can make some practical applications.

And that goes along the lines of this. So if you approach scripture, and you want to think about and understand and guide this process of technology, which is a good thing to do, you could be disappointed, right? If you're looking for like passage verse kind of guidance there. There are some ways in which the scripture is very specific about activities that are endorsed, like seeking justice, the welfare of your neighbor, some that are prohibited, like fornication, idolatry, you know, the list goes on, and kind of focus on the negative sometimes.

But if you're going to try to address your view of technology that way, you're going to be disappointed. So you need a different way of looking at it, including those prohibitions. There's certain things that are off-limits, obviously, but you need a way of getting this biblical framework to inform and change the gray areas where there tends to be blank spots. Because you're not going to find a passage that says, you know, thou shalt use Facebook, but only between 8:00 and 8:30 in the morning before thy children rise from sleep, or something like that. It's not there, okay? So what that means, I'll put out, you know, the silver dollar word, and then I'll explain it.

What that means is that you need a robust hermeneutic. You need a way of viewing, and then through exegesis, applying the scripture that actually gets in there. And that'll be through this process, you can call it doctrine, or you could just call it discernment, where you take the general operating principles of scripture, and you form this kind of grid, or this perspective of the world, that allows you to fill in the gaps where there's not specific mandate or direction. And that is what's going to inform how you think about technology, and it's going to change what technologies you accept, and which of those you reject, or just how you use them, what sorts of content you absorb.

But unless there's that grid being formed, a way of valuing things, and discriminating where there are gaps in the scriptural record, because they didn't have access to all this technology when the scripture was written, you're probably going to fall short on that. So you've got to make this grid.

And ultimately, that grid needs to lead us to Christ, okay? So all of our exegetical work, all of our discernment, all of our doctrine, comes under this great purpose that God seems to have in mind when he first created us, and now as he's redeeming us, of us taking on the mind of Christ, of us leaving behind this old way of living, which is, you know, a lot about fulfillment, it's a lot about gratification, this short-term view of life, and it becomes something that's altered, where the landscape shifts, and you begin to take on the mind of Christ. And it's a new way of thinking about the world. It's a new way of valuing things, and it's a new way of loving both your neighbor and the creation of loving the Creator.

And when that mind becomes to be incorporated into us through the witness of scripture, it alters how we think about the advantages, the disadvantages of scripture, okay? So the goal is to have all of our lives come under the authority of Jesus, and the way that that happens is for us to build this scripture-informed grid, and the gap between where the scripture is definitive and where our experience frequently is, is something that can be kind of navigated or filled in with the authority of the Holy Spirit through the mind of Christ and the Spirit of Him.

Kind of building out a framework, a worldview. Yeah. That doesn't sound very easy.

Yeah, that's not overstating it. Yeah. This is very difficult work in some ways. Well, I mean, it's so much easier just to say, well, we just won't do these certain things, instead of actually going through that process you just described. Yeah. And that to say too is that that could mean that as you're evaluating certain choices about technology, some of them may need to be just discarded, okay? If you can't control it, you've got to discard it. If it can't come under subjection, then it has to be discarded, you know? It's better to enter into the kingdom of heaven, again, picking on Facebook without Facebook, then they have 10,000 followers, and a stream of likes, and yet be cast into outer darkness, right?

And that's the possibility we're facing here. If your eye offends you, you've got to pluck it out. You've got to get rid of it. So there might be a place in that discernment to discard entire arenas of technology. And this reason is a possibility. Yeah, if it's not coming under Christ's authority, if it's becoming kind of a rogue thing, if you might call it that. If this technology, if you're not able to bring this technology into submission to the Word of God, yeah, that's a very valid point. And the general observation there is true, just that this worldview, this way of evaluating things and making choices, it's going to shift how you engage the technology that you do accept.

It's going to put limits on things, and obviously it's going to change what you say, and what the content of that's going to be. But I think it's also going to change how you go about setting up your own workspace, for instance, and how you manage your own productivity, and what you're willing to tolerate there. So what are practical, real-world things that people can do right now, coming away from this episode?

Yeah, so we touched on some of the theory, the background, taking on the mind of Christ, that's all pretty abstract. Right. Focus it in. Let's be practical about this. Okay.

Well, the first thing I'll say is just that I think you need to be able to offer resistance to some of the promises that technology offers you.

I'm suggesting here something that goes beyond just fear or anxiety. It actually engages it and says, okay, so this is it. How can I be appropriately skeptical of this technology? Because it brings a lot of promises. It says that you're going to be more productive. It even says things like sometimes, if you get this piece of technology, you'll become like this person. It's good marketing. Ah, yeah.

Some of that just falls hollow, okay? By buying Photoshop, you don't become an expert in photography. It's a tool. Even though it might be marketed to creative individuals, it's still a tool, and you've got to learn to use it. I'm suggesting that you've got to develop the ability, again, to offer some resistance and some healthy skepticism there.

And that resistance might just be as practical as when that impulse comes up, lawnmower brakes, where do you go? Are you going to pull out Google and just go after information, knowing very well the whole time that when it comes down to it, you're going to call the small engine guy, okay? All you're after here is information, even though it's not going to change the action in the end. Yeah. And I think sometimes it's worth resisting that itch. Just saying, my action isn't going to change here anyway. I've already got a hunch of what this might be. So just lay the technology aside, take the action, and avoid the attentional deficit that comes from engaging in technology.

Because ultimately, it's really not going to change what you're going to do anyway. So be able to offer some resistance there as an action of will. Maybe part of that is set some boundaries, okay? Learn to find places that are like technology-free zones. And the impulse here is incredible sometimes, where I'm having remarkable moments of connection with my children, but there's lingering anxieties, there's doubts, and the impulse is to like, it's to escape, it's to reach for the back pocket.

And that escaping impulse is just incredible. So instead of having to deliberate about whether you're going to escape the moment or engage the moment, just set some places where you don't have to think about that, okay? Where there's off periods, where the internet might even be shut off for a while, where the phones are off limits. Say at the family table where nobody's picking up their phones.

Boundaries like that can be appropriate and can be very helpful. Part of boundary setting could be deliberate deprivation. Entire cool turkey, you call them fasts.

Say, okay, digital world, see you for a little while. I'm going to go rough it for a week. I have some things I need to do. I need to get my house ready for the winter. I just want to focus on my relationship with my children.

That's appropriate. Technology allows access to a lot of things simultaneously. It gives us those promises. But with that can come that inability to focus on what could be very significant and important. So once in a while, just for the experience of it, I'd say deprivation is appropriate. And you might be surprised at how freeing the experience actually is. Yeah.

Yeah. Kind of like making technology serve us instead of us serving us. Yeah. Because it does have a mind of its own, doesn't it? It does. It can, wow, it's like, which one's the tool here? You know, technology is supposed to be the tool we use, but in the end, it's almost as if it controls us sometimes.

I think that's really clever engineering by the people who built these things, because they're trying to sell a product. They want you to use it as much as possible. Of course, they've built into it ways to make you continually use these things.

Yeah, I don't know. That's interesting. Other practical things. I would suggest, and kind of building off of what you just said there, there is this idea of planned obsolescence, where there's an entire industry that's focused on technology. And the way that industry keeps on moving is by making new technology and by making the old technology obsolete, right? Right.

So there's some economy that's coming in there. And to keep the economy rolling, you've got to be making new products. And the thing about the technology that we face with information technology is that obsolescence happens really quickly. And it's possible to just be like accumulating this locker full of equipment just because it's new.

So remind yourself when you're thinking about a purchase of technology is, am I getting this just because it's new, or because it's actually meeting some kind of need? So do you need the latest SLR, or is the restriction that's placed on you by the lower capacity of the old SLR actually challenging your creativity?

Yeah. Okay. And it's sometimes actually helpful for us to put restrictions in place in the creative process, especially, so that we've got to find a way around them. It just helps to remind you that it's you who's in the driver's seat and not the technology. The technology is just a way of you getting out there and using the technology to guide it. But it can't be the first thing. So limit your spending. There's another way of thinking about technology and limiting it. I think sometimes people have these concerns and like they don't really know what to do with it. And I think sometimes it's if someone can come along with some good understanding and be like, here's some really practical things to get you started.

Try going without your phone for a week. Try these different things. And you'll be able to find a much better path because all of a sudden you start realizing some things like, hey, you know what, I can survive without this stuff.

It's very helpful tools, but we have to understand how to use them properly. Yeah. And you can, it's surprising how entire supportive communities will spring up around this idea of, let's get ourselves down to five apps on our phone because I've got 36 and they're all shouting for my attention.

And my screen is just filled with notifications and what do I do about this? And if you can kind of cluster up with some other people and say, okay, we're going to work at this together. And it's almost like Alcoholics Anonymous. It really does start to blend into that territory. Yeah.

You can say, okay, we're going to get together and we're going to do this together, guys. We're going to limit ourselves to five apps and we're going to meet for coffee at the end of each week and talk about how it's going. And there can be some really beautiful things that come out of experiences like that. That's just crazy that we're having conversations like that already. You know, 10 years ago, I've been just like, you know, 10 years ago, the App Store didn't exist, you know? Which is overwhelmingly unbelievable. The iPhone didn't exist. Yeah. Like 2007 was the first time the iPhone ever came out and that was 10 years ago. And like 10 years ago, I mean, it seems like a long time, but that's really not, you know?

And it's crazy that we already have to think, yeah, I'm just trying to figure out the ramifications of these huge changes in society and in our own culture. Whew, a big task. Yeah. Big task. Just stay in the conversation. There's a lot happening here right now.

The one thing that's sure about technology is that we don't understand everything about how it's influencing and affecting us. Yeah. And it's always changing too, you know? Oh, that's pretty, take that for granted. Yeah. Whew. Well, that was a lot of food for thought. Some good practical things and just a lot of, whew, it's a big issue. We're not going to solve it in one episode.

Wow. Yeah. Well, thank you for being on this and doing this. And I didn't reference this before, but you spoke at a conference on some of this with technology. And yeah, that's on video. We'll make sure and link that up for people if you want to see more on that.

Yeah. Just looks like we have a lot of work to be done in our circles. But I feel that we're on a good path. We're starting in a good way. It's just we need more understanding. I think there's an increasing sense of awareness there. There is. We're not quite sure what to do with this. And that's a good place to start. Yep. That is. That really is. Wow. Yeah. Well, thank you everyone for watching this episode.

A lot of food for thought. And we really hope to continue the discussion on this. We have some other episodes on technology, on how our culture relates with technology and what we can learn, how we can be better stewards of that.

Yeah. So maybe we'll have some more episodes in the future on this as well. If you have maybe an idea or a thought about technology that you think we should cover that we didn't, make sure and let us know. We'll try to do an episode on it. So thank you all for watching and we will see you in the next episode.