We’re winding it up on The
Next Story this week, but I’m sure I’m going to have lots to think about
for weeks to come. I’ve been amazed at how much more aware I’ve been over the
last few weeks of the digital technology all around me, and the way that I interact
with it.
Quality versus quantity has been one of the main things on
my mind this week. Take my mobile phone as an example. It’s an iPhone 4. The
tech-savvy among us will be aware that there are two newer versions of this
phone out already, and I find myself wondering from time to time whether I
should upgrade. But here’s the thing - I’m pretty sure that I’m already only
using about 20% of the functions my current phone is capable of. It does
EVERYTHING (and more!) that I need it to. My phone isn’t broken. It’s never
been dropped in a swimming pool or a toilet. But it’s not the newest model, and
I realise I’ve been tempted by advertising to think I should get a newer,
faster, slightly flashier version of it, just because I can. I wonder if I’ve
been hoodwinked into thinking that speed and efficiency are virtues, that a
person who gets more things done in the same period of time is somehow a better
person than one who doesn’t. It’s easy to equate lack of speed and multitasking
with laziness in our culture today. I wonder about our ability as a culture to
slow down and consider things deeply, to ponder big thoughts about important
matters.
The discussion in the final chapter of the book about
visibility and search engines made me realise in a much clearer way than ever before
that information I leave behind me in a digital world never really goes away.
This is one of those things that I’ve always known, but find it easy to gloss
over and not think about. It still seems to me that the probability is high
that my data trail all over the world is unlikely to come back to bite me, but
it was good to remember that the things I search for online and the things I
write online don’t disappear into the void. There is probably information out
there that I wouldn’t want other, real people (not the faceless internet) to
see, and I’m sure that the same could be said for many of you. Possibly there
are habits and hidden pasts which some of us are deeply ashamed of. In
reflecting on all of this I couldn’t help but think of King David’s words in
Psalm 139:
O Lord, you
have searched me and known me!
You know
when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern
my thoughts from afar.
You search
out my path and my lying down
and are
acquainted with all my ways.
Even before
a word is on my tongue,
behold, O
Lord, you know it altogether.
God knows us even better than the computer banks at Google,
to put it lightly - better than we know ourselves. What a relief to discover
what he does with all that information, some of it so very unsavoury. In Psalm
103 we discover:
He does not
deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay
us according to our iniquities.
For as high
as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is
his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
as far as
the east is from the west,
so far does
he remove our transgressions from us.
Our computers might never forget what we do, but praise God
that he is willing to.
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