by Tim Hochstetler
Earlier this month I was encouraged by a friend to attend an evening with British author Paul Kingsnorth in Pittsburgh discussing his new book, Against the Machine, On the Unmaking of Humanity. I had been loosely following Kingsnorth’s writings through his Abbey of Misrule Substack, and when I saw that Plough Publishing was hosting an event at Harvard University it sparked my interest further.
While the perils of technology and the development of AI have dominated the news during the last couple of years, I hadn’t come across anyone writing on the topic I could fully relate to. Either it was doom and gloom, or unchecked enthusiasm for AI’s potential to save humanity. Kingsnorth, however, brought something fresh to the conversation. Perhaps the ‘machine mindset’ is something that goes back further and is a force that needs new tactics to combat. But rather than trying to write another Book Review (there are plenty available online), I’ll share how it relates to my own tech journey in the context of Christian Community
Prior to 2020, few of the members of our Church Community in the Laurel Highlands of Pennsylvania had cell phones, and even fewer had smart phones. While computers had been used in our community businesses since the late 1980’s, screens were largely absent in community homes. Folks whose work did not require the use of a computer could access the Computer Lab in one of the main community buildings for email and the internet, and the primary communication within the community relied on an elaborate internal phone network.
Once the Covid 19 pandemic hit, much changed in our community. The in-person gatherings that formed the structure of our shared life went virtual. Like the rest of society at the time, with the community school and daycare closed, folks started working from home. Screens that once were used exclusively for work, gradually became an easy way for weary homeschool parents to take a break from teaching, handing over the job to YouTube. Before long, Wi-Fi hotspots brought more reliable internet to all community houses, and over the next year and a half, smartphone use increased exponentially.
Five years later, myself and many from my community still have our smartphones, and as the process engineer at Rifton Equipment I rely heavily on it for work and I certainly enjoy the way it facilitates communication with friends and family around the world. But have I also wasted a lot of time with it that could have been better spent? Absolutely! Andy Crouch and his book, The Tech-Wise Family, has been helpful for me to see the unhealthy pull of technology more clearly and rather than letting our homes be dominated by screens make them a place for creativity and character formation.
In the past year we’ve tried to be more intentional with this. Last Christmas, instead of buying electronics, we bought a Dog, which each member of our family helps to care for. In Spring we planted several rows of pickling cucumbers and canned enough to share with friends. Having a wood fireplace in our home forced my family to get outside and split and stack several cords of wood in preparation for winter. The hazelnut and pecan trees in our back yard, planted over a dozen years ago, provided a harvest of nuts that we could crack together while reading another chapter from our family read-aloud. Maybe screens don’t need to play such a big role in our lives.
Paul Kingsnorth imagines those of us determined to resist the pull of technology as “small furry mammals running unnoticed beneath the feet of the tyrannosaurs, we can thus build our own little worlds on the margins and wait for the coming of the meteor, which we can already see coming in the very un-sustainability of technological modernity. The mice don’t attack the dinosaurs, and neither do they wait for them to die out: they just avoid them as best they can, and get on with their work.” What if that is the secret to remaining human?
Tim lives with his family at Spring Valley Bruderhof in Farmington, PA. He serves on the Steering Committee of NCN.