Un-Screening - Post 1

In 2019, I want to write about ‘un-screening’ my life.

First, this is not literally true.  I’m typing this and reading it on a screen.  That reflects some of the ambiguity of screens and technology.  My tone takes for granted both the inevitability of technology – that it is so pervasive that it takes on a world-building sort of omnipresence.  It is the world as we find it.  My son picks up screen technology just as easily as he picks up an apple.  As such, I don’t really ‘have it in for’ technology.  I’m not really interested to score points against it.  I don’t foresee a world without it.  That said, my tone will also reflect a deeply pessimistic account of screen technology, not for what it is in itself, but what we become when we have it.  I don’t think it is a good thing.

Second, this will be a personal reflection.  My own dependence on screens over the course of 2018 seemed morally dubious to me at best.  It certainly wasn’t morally neutral.  I anticipate this writing project will help me to keep something like a year-long Lenten discipline of narrowing the margin between my consciousness and screen usage.  It’s a little too easy to pull out the smart phone.  My mind has been bypassed.  My thumb knows too well what it is doing as it accesses my favorite guilty pleasures, care-free zones, laugh echo-chambers, life escapes.  I have hopes for what I will be doing or thinking about instead of being on screens.  As such, I think an important part of this will be what becomes possible to think or do once screen technology becomes thoughtfully marginalized.

Third, I find screens to be theologically interesting.  ‘Mediation’ is a one-word summary for how interesting these topics are.  Mediation describes representation of content – the baseball game on the radio, the football game or news show on the TV, the space exhibit at the museum.  You know, media.  Want to experience something new, something exciting?  Most of the time, it isn’t direct.  It is mediated by something, and often it is through a screen.  Mediation also describes the work of Jesus Christ.  He represents God to humanity and represents humanity to God.  Much of religious experience seems to come down to questions of access or alienation, being on the inside of temples and holy places or on the outside of them.  What kind of access do we have to God?  What kind of access do we have to the shows we watch?  Screens feel accessible.  But are they?  Do they keep us out of something just as much if not more than they let us in on something?

Again, if screens lose some of their power, this might free us up for a re-introduction to creation.  To trees.  To fairy tales.  To books.  To food.  To drink.  To sleep.  This would be a good thing.