iGods Quotes

“Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann laments, We who are now the richest nation are today’s main coveters. We never feel that we have enough; we have to have more and more, and this insatiable desire destroys us. Whether we are liberal or conservative Christians, we must confess that the central problem of our lives is that we are torn apart by the conflict between our attraction to the good news of God’s abundance and the power of our belief in scarcity—a belief that makes us greedy, mean and unneighborly. We spend our lives trying to sort out that ambiguity.”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“Bigger, louder, and faster don’t necessarily create deeper disciples.”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“When we treat the earth as an object, we dehumanize ourselves.”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“In an era of too much information, the need for discernment and wisdom will be greater than ever.”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“Where shall we express our hopes and fears? If we post our concerns on Facebook, we may forget to cast our cares on the Lord, the one who sustains us in our sorrows.”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“beauty,”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“We see why the apostle Paul standing in the Greek Areopagus would announce, “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.”[31] He studied their art, their public space, their technology and then connected it to God’s creation of the world. Paul drew upon Greek poetry, “For in him we live and move and have our being,” incorporating it into his sermon. But after saluting their handiwork and praising their poets, he challenged them to move past idolatry: “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.”[32] Saint Paul respected the Greeks’ technē but challenged them not to be blinded or bound by it. He challenged the iGods of his era.”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“What kind of rule are we supposed to enact? In Genesis 1, God modeled creativity and benevolence, pouring out blessings on humanity. Throughout the Bible, good kings are contrasted with evil rulers. Just leaders practice shalom, demonstrating particular concern for the poor and needy, the widows and the orphans.[26] Godly dominion is marked by care and concern for the least of these. It is rooted in interdependence rather than personal gain. What a far cry from greedy or tyrannical despots. McFague notes the contrast between these competing visions of our calling in Genesis: “The first model sees the planet as a corporation or syndicate, as a collection of human beings drawn together to benefit its members by optimal use of natural resources. The second model sees the planet more like an organism or community that survives and prospers through the interrelationship and interdependence of its many parts, both human and nonhuman.”[27] Genesis 1:28 is a call to responsible rule. While God rests from creating, our job is to keep chaos at bay.”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“The former editor of Wired, Kevin Kelly, sees technology stepping into the gap formed by the decline of religion’s influence. He suggests, “Because values and meaning are scarce today, technology will make our decisions for us. We’ll listen to technology because our modern ears listen to little else. In the absence of other firm beliefs, we’ll let technology steer. No other force is as powerful in shaping our destiny. By imagining what technology wants, we can imagine the course of our culture.”[17] As noted in the introduction, technology has become a new religion, a way to make sense of the world.”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“The creation groans from all the pain and sorrow that surrounds us. We have a strong sense that life is not the way it’s supposed to be.[4] We cry out at injustices, rail against inequalities, long for things to get fixed. The long march for racial, gender, and economic equality is an ongoing struggle. Progress is rare. When it comes to electronics, the advances seem to arrive on a regular basis. Every holiday season, we’re greeted by upgrades, by a new network from 3G to 4G to 5G. Products make progress seem easy and inevitable. The hard work of design and engineering is hidden. Yet, even the latest, greatest technology breaks down. Unfortunately, we don’t know how to fix our gadgets. The mechanics that drive our devices often defy our comprehension. We toss out our old computers and cell phones, and we embrace the new and improved. Replacing isn’t the same as redeeming.”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“A crying need for wisdom and discernment emerges in an era of too much information. What do we discover as we attempt to see through technology, to assess the promises it offers? Technology has become an alternative religion. It has distinct values, celebrated saints, and rites of passage. We sacrifice our privacy in exchange for services. Our passions become quantifiable, often reducing us to a target market or a call to monitor. This conclusion will focus on the eschatology of technology. What does all the efficiency point to? Where does a world of smaller, faster, and smarter gadgets lead?”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“The iGods started pure—Google wasn’t sure they wanted advertising. Going public with their stock resulted in the need for quarterly returns. It forced Google and Facebook to bow down to the even greater gods of commerce. The question of access remains. Who will control the flow of information? Will a few get rich at the expense of others? Techno-enthusiasts at the annual TED conference envision a gift economy where the sharing of ideas leads to profound breakthroughs in science and education. Others fear the controlling power of information technology. What happens when the information we share freely is aggregated aggressively, when too much information lands in the hands of the wrong company or country?”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“We will still need to consider the implications of our blind faith in technology because the iGods’ promises did not point to or include the divine. Instead, they suggested that we are becoming divine as we develop such amazing intelligence within smaller and smaller devices, so small that a point of Singularity will blur humanity with machine, our minds with eternity. Should we find this inspiring or distressing? What is the telos of technology—the end goal?”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“The world of technology is the sum total of what people do. Its redemption can only come from changes in what people, individually and collectively, do or refrain from doing. —Ursula M. Franklin”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“This is the iGods’ alluring and dangerous promise—to place us in the center of our own self-reflexive universe. But what if we don’t necessarily know what is best?”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“What is the danger in the personalization era? Psychologists call it confirmation bias—“a tendency to believe things that reinforce our existing views, to see what we want to see.”[53] What happens when we encounter new information that contradicts our beliefs? Researchers at Stanford monitored subjects’ brain activity to trace how they responded to cognitive dissonance. Democracy is endangered when we only listen to people we agree with.”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“Jacques Ellul suggested too much information creates a confused sense of impotence: The infinite multiplicity of facts that I am given about each situation makes it impossible for me to choose or decide. I thus adopt the general attitude of letting things take their course. But the course that things take is essentially that of the process of technical development. . . . The more the number and power of means of intervention increase, the more the aptitude and ability and will to intervene diminishes. . . . Information is the main carrier of contraception.”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“Google keeps their formulas secret even as they devour more of our habits. CEO Eric Schmidt believes that what customers want is for Google to “tell them what they should be doing next.”[39] Such pronouncements awaken fears of Big Brother or The Matrix. We may need to reclaim our agency, our responsibility.”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“There is the constant temptation to relate to the iPhone rather than our world. It is a convenient filter for screening calls, keeping colleagues at a manageable distance. It provides a safe place to hide when we’re anxious in a crowd. We avoid awkward moments by fading into our phone. It prompts us to look down rather than up, to ask Siri for answers rather than our friends, our parents, or our God.”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“Pop culture was repackaged with the iPhone in mind. Our news, information, and video feeds were reformatted to Apple’s specifications. In a Wired cover story, Nancy Miller dubbed the resulting shift as “snack culture.” She described the endless buffet of “music, television, games, movies, fashion: We now devour our pop culture the same way we enjoy candy and chips—in conveniently packaged bite-size nuggets made to be munched easily with increased frequency and maximum speed. This is snack culture—and boy, is it tasty (not to mention addictive).”[47] We are all grazers, sampling from a wide array of apps and inputs. Professor S. Craig Watkins notes how we are consuming less of more. Thanks to the iPhone, “we have evolved from a culture of instant gratification to one of constant gratification.”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“Technologist Kevin Kelly suggests, “If a thousand lines of letters in UNIX qualifies as a technology, . . . then a thousand lines of letters in English (Hamlet) must qualify as well. They both can change our behavior, alter the course of events, or enable future inventions. A Shakespeare sonnet and a Bach fugue, then, are in the same category as Google’s search engine and the iPod. They are something useful produced by a mind.”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“While we like to think that our theology shapes our understanding of the world, our understanding of the world often shapes our theology. The central metaphors of an era will often shift our notions of God.”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“our beliefs invariably drive our decision making.”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“We exchange our privacy for access, and we may be losing our sense of agency in the process.”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“We have been swamped by a tsunami of new technologies, without pausing to consider whether they are good or bad, helpful or hurtful. Are they making us more thoughtful, more articulate, more loving?”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“It is good to be connected to family and friends, but when we cannot resist the urge to check updates or upload a photo, we are veering toward idolatry. Idols serve our needs according to our schedule. When we call, they answer. They give us a false sense of being in control. But over time, the relationship reverses. We end up attending to their needs, centering our lives on their priorities and agendas.”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“When it comes to technology, we celebrate the icons of Silicon Valley as iGods worth emulating. We reward them for granting us superpowers. With a smartphone in our pocket, we can transcend the bodily limits of space and time. We can send and receive, buy and sell, upload and download with a swipe of our finger.”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“Our faith in technology connects us to long lost friends. It also enables us to avoid people we’d rather text with than talk to. It is our hiding place. Our faith in technology is so widespread that we feel we must be always available, always connected. Technology demands our attention. Our faith in technology is so complete that we place devices into our children’s hands at earlier ages and stages. We train our kids to look down rather than up. Our faith in technology is so passionate that we rarely question the wisdom of our embrace. We text now, worry later. Our embrace of technology is so boundless that we have poured staggering riches on those who brought us these magic devices.”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“We can be completely ignorant about how or why something works and yet still relish the results.”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

“Sam Lessin, project manager at Facebook, suggests, “We as a species in the last few decades have gotten three new superpowers. . . . We can literally remember anything, we can talk to anyone on earth instantly for free, and we can process huge amounts of data.”
― Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives