#Seed012: Adopting Technologies

With the rise of AI, families and communities must start to collectively assess their use of technology

Jul 11, 2023

‘Narcissus’ by Caravaggio, (1594-1596). (Image: wikimedia)

The point of the Narcissus myth is not that people are prone to fall in love with their own images, but that people fall in love with extensions of themselves. - Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

I occasionally come across as a luddite. But those who know me well know that I’m very interested in technology. I understand technology to be our extension in time and space. Regarding those extensions, Marshall McLuhan writes, “Every extension of mankind, especially technological extensions, has the effect of amputating or modifying some other extension.” It is in this sense that technology is so fascinating. Whenever we adopt new technologies, we modify not only the way we relate to the world but also the way we understand it.

New technologies are adopted exponentially faster, thus consistently altering and shifting our worldviews. Since World War II, technological shifts turned subsequent generations unrecognizable to their parents. From the automobile and the airplane, the television and the computer, to the internet and social media, and now natural language processors, each new generation (or age group) live in different worlds. In an earlier publication, I mentioned that communities must include our past ancestors and the next generations. But what happens, when we all live in vastly different worlds?

“My mother,” answered Telemachus, "tells me I am son to Ulysses, but it is a wise child that knows his own father.” - Homer, The Odyssey, Book I

As community-builders, we need to ask ourselves what ought to be a community’s criteria in adopting technologies. It other words, how do we consider appropriate technologies? To answer this question, it’s worth reflecting on the Amish and their use of technology. Contrary to popular belief, the Amish are not anti-technology, but rather have developed a set of criteria to judge whether a technology should be adopted or not.

Inspired from those principles, I’ve compiled a list of four criteria that community-builders can use when thinking about adopting technologies:

Enhancing family and community bonds: Does this technology support and strengthen our family and community bonds, or does it undermine them?1
Distancing from the consumerist monoculture: Will adopting this technology help us maintain a degree of separation from the consumerist monoculture, or will it bring us closer to it?2
Evaluating by experience: What have our practical experiences with this technology shown us in terms of its potential risks and benefits to our family and community?3
Selective adoption: Considering the potential impact of this technology on our families and way of life, should we adopt, modify, or reject it as a collective?4

In my home, for example, I use these questions to guide my thinking in how I introduce my childen to digital technologies. I don’t necessarily believe that my children should be cut off from the digital world, but I want to instill a sense of intentionality. If they watch a film, I want them to do so actively. If they play a game, I want them to learn something about themselves and the world around them. These are some of the criteria that I use, but it’s important to have community-wide conversations on these subjects.

I stress that the point is determine the appropriateness of each technology. As community-builders, these questions are also important. Though many of us don’t live in intentional communities like the Amish, we still have places where we congregate and come together. Resilient communities are usually on the same page when it comes to using technology. A perfect example are playdates. Every parent can relate to their children suddenly getting jealous of their friend who watches television all day or their spends their time on their smartphone. As community-builders, it’s important to ensure that a community is aligned when it comes to technology. A consistent approach will do wonders in how community members interact with one another. I cannot stress this enough.

Appropriate Technology Community Workshops

I believe that community groups should regularly convene what I call Appropriate Technology Community Workshops. These workshops would provide a space for community members to come together and share their thoughts, questions, concerns, and solutions to the way they use technology. If we accept the idea that technologies are our extensions, we need to ask ourselves how do we extend in the community space. What kind of vision are we committed to? Is it one in which we are equipped to confront the integration of artificial intelligence in our lives? Is it one in which a community will collectively resist social media platforms? I don’t think there’s a specific answer to these questions but rather a community ought to be aligned in it’s adoption of technology.

It’s also easy to only consider digital technologies given their impact on our everyday lives. Going back to the technology as our extensions, this broader definition can really lead us to a deeper understanding of ourselves and of our communities. In Tools for Conviviality, Ivan Illich explains how technologies that were meant to solve particular problems have actually done the exact opposite. The institutionalization of schools have made us dumber, hospitals have made us sicker, and cars have made us slower. Without active resistance, this monopoly, as he calls it, will overtake us. He writes, “It is also difficult to be protected against monopoly when a society is already littered with roads, schools, or hospitals, when independent action has been paralyzed for so long that the ability for it seems to have atrophied, and when simple alternatives seem beyond the reach of the imagination.” A resilient community convenes to identify and create simple alternatives. It adopts appropriate technology that enhances family and community bonds and distances itself from consumerism. It creates opportunities for its members to test technologies out and to collectively adopt or reject them. Appropriate technology is about intentionality. We live in a time of abundant choice. But that abundant choice has imposed an artificial scarcity which leads us to unquestionably adopt the latest trends. For our communities and families to be resilient, we need to collectively think about how and what we should adopt.