{"id":5768,"date":"2010-03-20T12:55:44","date_gmt":"2010-03-20T12:55:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2010\/03\/saturday-afternoon-book-review-10.html"},"modified":"2010-03-20T12:55:44","modified_gmt":"2010-03-20T12:55:44","slug":"saturday-afternoon-book-review-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/03\/saturday-afternoon-book-review-10.html","title":{"rendered":"Saturday Afternoon Book Review: Rob Merola"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rob Merola was one of my finest (and “favoritest”) students at TEDS. He fell in love with another one of my favorites, Linda, and they are now married and ministering in Sterling Heights Virginia at St Matthew’s Episcopal. I follow his blog<\/b><\/a> and when I saw he was reading <\/i>You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto<\/a>\"\"
\n<\/strong><\/em>, I asked if he might review it for our blog. So, here it is… but I have a question first: What are you doing about this issue? Are you seeing people limiting connectivity or even walking away from it?<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
\n

It is my belief that Jaron Lanier’s book You are Not a Gadget<\/i> is one of the most important books a serious minded person in the early 21st<\/sup> century can possibly read.  <\/span>It is so because the basic question it addresses is, “What does it meant to be human?”  <\/span>Perhaps even more to the point, it raises the question of “How do we appropriately recognize and honor one another as unique persons <\/span>of depth and substance?”<\/p>\n

I’ll admit right up front that there is a lot of this book I simply do not understand.  <\/span>But I do understand enough of it to get his main point; the digital world and it its representations of persons threatens to diminish, reduce, and flatten us.   <\/span>And because we increasingly interact with each other through digital mediums instead of face to face, our relationship also are diminished, reduced, and impoverished.  <\/span>The individual is replaced with the hive.<\/i> <\/i> <\/span>A unique point of view is obscured in a mash up.<\/i>  <\/i><\/span>A distinct voice is lost in the computational cloud.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n


\n<\/p>\n

As an example of Lanier’s concerns, consider the following
\nparagraph:  <\/span>“I know quite a few
\npeople, mostly young adults but not all, who are proud to say that they have
\naccumulated thousands of friends on Facebook.  <\/span>Obviously, this statement can only be true if the idea of
\nfriendship is reduced.   <\/span>A
\nreal friendship ought to introduce each person to unexpected weirdness in the
\nother.   <\/span>Each acquaintance is
\nan alien, a well of unexplored 
\n<\/span>difference in the experience of life that cannot be imagined or accessed
\nin any way but through genuine interaction.  <\/span>The idea of friendship in database-filtered social networks
\nis certainly reduced from that.”<\/p>\n

Could it be that if we are ever going to be fully present in
\na given moment or to a given person, we are going to have to limit our
\nconnectivity?   <\/span><\/p>\n

Lanier goes on
\nto discuss the pursuit of quality through quantity, suggesting that <\/span>in reality these two pursuits <\/span>are actually heading in different
\ndirections.  <\/span>(My own editorial note
\non this:  <\/span>Just ask Toyota.)  <\/span>Those of us who blog or tweet regularly
\nknow what he is talking about.  <\/span>A
\ncouple of Lanier’s suggestions:  <\/span><\/p>\n

“Write a blog post
\nthat took weeks of reflection before you heard the inner voice that need to
\ncome out<\/i>.”<\/p>\n

“If you are
\ntwittering, innovate in order to find a way to describe your internal state (my
\nnote:  <\/span>but that would take time and
\nwork and reflection!) instead of trivial external events, to avoid the creeping
\ndanger of believing that objectively described events define you, as they would
\na machine<\/i>.”<\/p>\n

Of course, when one is talking about persons, the question
\nof materialism is bound to crop up. 
\n<\/span>Are brain and mind and person synonymous?  <\/span>Can we be reduced to energy (electrical impulse)?    <\/span>Lanier’s thoughts on this,
\nwhich include a call for “intellectual modesty”, are perhaps unexpected:   <\/span>“The desire for absolute order
\nusually leads to tears in human affairs, so there is a historical reason to
\ndistrust it.  <\/span>Materialist
\nextremists have long seemed determined to win a race with religious fanatics:
\nWho can do the most damage to the most people?”<\/p>\n

There are other questions Lanier asks that I expect aren’t
\neven on most of our radars–but they should be.  <\/span>Otherwise the answers are going to be decided for us in ways
\nthat we may find profoundly disturbing, and it will be too late for us to be
\nable to do much about it.  <\/span>For
\ninstance, there is the whole question of authorship.  <\/span>Lanier warns of those who consider it their “‘moral
\nimperative’ that all the world’s books would soon effectively become ‘one book’
\nonce they are scanned, searchable, and remixable in the universal computation
\ncloud.”<\/p>\n

This is just a tiny snippet of the kinds of substantive
\nissues this book addresses.   
\n<\/span>Coming from the “father of virtual reality”, a person at the top of his
\nfield in the very heart of technological prowess and progress, we ignore this
\nbook and the questions it asks at our own peril.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rob Merola was one of my finest (and “favoritest”) students at TEDS. He fell in love with another one of my favorites, Linda, and they are now married and ministering in Sterling Heights Virginia at St Matthew’s Episcopal. I follow his blog and when I saw he was reading You Are Not a Gadget: A…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gospel"],"yoast_head":"\nSaturday Afternoon Book Review: Rob Merola - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/03\/saturday-afternoon-book-review-10.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Saturday Afternoon Book Review: Rob Merola - Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Rob Merola was one of my finest (and “favoritest”) students at TEDS. He fell in love with another one of my favorites, Linda, and they are now married and ministering in Sterling Heights Virginia at St Matthew’s Episcopal. I follow his blog and when I saw he was reading You Are Not a Gadget: A…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/03\/saturday-afternoon-book-review-10.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-03-20T12:55:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0307269647\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Scot McKnight\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Saturday Afternoon Book Review: Rob Merola - Jesus Creed","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/03\/saturday-afternoon-book-review-10.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Saturday Afternoon Book Review: Rob Merola - Jesus Creed","og_description":"Rob Merola was one of my finest (and “favoritest”) students at TEDS. He fell in love with another one of my favorites, Linda, and they are now married and ministering in Sterling Heights Virginia at St Matthew’s Episcopal. I follow his blog and when I saw he was reading You Are Not a Gadget: A…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/03\/saturday-afternoon-book-review-10.html","og_site_name":"Jesus Creed","article_published_time":"2010-03-20T12:55:44+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0307269647"}],"author":"Scot McKnight","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/03\/saturday-afternoon-book-review-10.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/03\/saturday-afternoon-book-review-10.html","name":"Saturday Afternoon Book Review: Rob Merola - Jesus Creed","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/03\/saturday-afternoon-book-review-10.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/03\/saturday-afternoon-book-review-10.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0307269647","datePublished":"2010-03-20T12:55:44+00:00","dateModified":"2010-03-20T12:55:44+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/19879975236b70da80f4cbea933c59d0"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/03\/saturday-afternoon-book-review-10.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/03\/saturday-afternoon-book-review-10.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/03\/saturday-afternoon-book-review-10.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0307269647","contentUrl":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0307269647"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/03\/saturday-afternoon-book-review-10.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Saturday Afternoon Book Review: Rob Merola"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/","name":"Jesus Creed","description":"Scot McKnight on Jesus and orthodox faith for today","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/19879975236b70da80f4cbea933c59d0","name":"Scot McKnight","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c10\/c10b0226ed6cfd8319b2b8742ac4088ax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c10\/c10b0226ed6cfd8319b2b8742ac4088ax96.jpg","caption":"Scot McKnight"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/author\/smcknight"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5768\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}