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I have been deeply skeptical about the arguments of Jacques Ellul and others concerning our enslavement to technology, as well as the arguments of Peter Berger about the "heretical imperative" that modernity imposes on us. Technological modernity tempts us, as Craig Gay has argued, to act as if God does not exist, but this is just another of many temptations that need to be resisted. Modernity is another form of worldliness; nothing fundamentally new here.
On the other hand, there may be something to the thesis that technologies do enslave us. Bonhoeffer suggests in Creation and Fall that our freedom from the world ended with the fall: "We too think that we rule, but the same applies here as on Walpurgis Night: we think we are the one making the move, whereas instead we are being moved. We do not rule; instead we are ruled. The thing, the world, rules humankind; humankind is a prisoner, a slave, of the world, and its dominion is an illusion. Tehcnology is the power with which the earth seizes hold of humankind and masters it." Perhaps in a postlapsarian world there is a certain kind of slavery to technology and cultural patterns. Perhaps we should understand our "enslavement" to the products of our own hands as an aspect of our slavery in sin and death, a slavery broken only through the resurrection of Jesus.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, June 29, 2005 at 10:59 AM
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