What Communion Hath Jerusalem With Silicon Valley?

At a meeting of tech gurus, moral and spiritual questions raise their ugly heads

BY: Donald Lattin

At the recent Internet Everywhere CEO Summit in San Francisco, high-tech gurus gathered to network at the W, the city's posh new hotel and hangout for young Silicon Valley millionaires. For three days they wore "smart badges"--electronic name tags that beam data at each other, figure out whom the wearers have met, and e-mail lists with their names and electronic addresses. Can Internet brain chips be far behind?

Most of the minds and moneymen at the Internet Everywhere conference focused on two questions: First, how can we get the Internet out of our computers and into everything else--cars, television sets, kitchen appliances, supermarket carts, personal organizers, cell phones, and wristwatches? And second, who's going to make the most money off "constant connectivity"?

Quietly sandwiched between presentations by executives from Intel, IBM, AOL, MSNBC, and dozens of other Internet companies was Tom Mahon, a guy with another question: Do we really want to be connected to the Internet seven days a week and 24 hours a day? What's the social and spiritual fallout, he asks, from constant connectivity?

Mahon, a Silicon Valley ethicist, suggested that conference delegates turn to ancient "user manuals" like the Bible, the Koran, or Buddhist sutras and see what they have to say about "accessing our own inner technology." Mahon says that all religious traditions talk about the value of moderation, but that's often forgotten in our headlong rush into the future. We're producing a portable society of stressed-out workaholics with no time for thought or reflection.

"We have to stop making things just because we can and stop re-engineering ourselves to fit the technology," he says. "We get faster, and we get more frustrated. Interactivity becomes hyperactivity. We need to pause, we need to breathe. We're talking about 'smart refrigerators' when 70 percent of the world doesn't have food to put in a refrigerator." Mahon is no Luddite. He sees the obvious value in the Internet. But he questions the temptation of turning that tool into a lifestyle.

"Constant connectivity isn't that much different from a dial tone," he says. "We have these things called telephones. We can pick them up anytime and call anyplace in the world. But we don't sit there all day and listen to the dial tone."

Because he's worried about the spiritual effects of that steady buzz, Mahon has tried--unsuccessfully--to interest divinity schools in studying Internet marketing and runaway technology as theological issues in the new century.

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