by John Moore
Staff Writer
Last week iTunes sold its 10 billionth song.
Seventy-one year-old Lou Sulcer from Woodstock, Ga., paid 99 cents for an all but tangible commodity: a digital audio file. Johnny Cash’s “Guess Things Happen that Way,” was the magic purchase. With this news we witness the marriage of the new and the old. Others have noted the irony. I guess things happen that way.
There is something to be said about the technological tools and toys that decorate, infiltrate and mitigate our lives. Upon my knees rests a rapidly aging Macbook Pro. Open on my computer are two Word documents, a web browser sporting multiple opened tabs giving me the news, and my iTunes library. Our lives are intertwined with these things and they flow together seemingly in a forward sprawl. It is hard to separate our lives from technology these days, and it is tough to actually live without being controlled, at least a little, by it.
There is also something to be said for books. Staring me down from the desk opposite me sits a two-volume set of Solzhenitsyn’s monolithic work, “The Gulag Archipelago.” The weighty chapters collect dust, as the heavy books remain inanimate. It could be said their story is anything but inanimate. To me and to my culture, they are all but useful—they are all but used. They weigh heavy, but we do not read them.
As time progresses, it seems that our lives become more and more distant from classic stories, both true and mythical. I do not overemphasize the importance of such stories in a culture, but it may be worth a mention. As the focus of our popular art becomes less and less great story and more and more an animalistic side of humanity, one might think a show of concern to be an inadequate response. Of course, that depends on the story.
Burrowed deep in our industrial-sized iTunes libraries, I think we often feel technology— with a little money—will bring us all the security we could ever need, often equating a sense of security with a vague idea of salvation. For Sulcer, happening upon the 10 billionth song purchase from iTunes won him a $10,000 iTunes card. For most of us, had this been our fate, it would seem that we’d witnessed salvation materialize.
A few critics and prophets may tell us we are damned because of our heavy tie to technology, that we should fast from all technological toys and tools. Reality, however, beckons us forward. Neither salvation nor damnation directly flows from technology. Some levelheaded thinking about books and good and even true stories that technology often distracts us from may bring us closer to a better life and a clearer picture of reality. If nothing else, better stories. But in the end, none of these things will deliver us from death or grant us some pardon at a final judgment.
The books staring me in the face right now are not getting read. Maybe that is because I do not make time to read them. Perhaps that is because technology distracts me. I do, after all, enjoy surfing the internet in my multi-tab browser, I enjoy watching cool videos and listening to music on Pandora. These things can be distraction or a draw.
Life is not in books. Life is not in technology. Life is not in community. As one author once said, it is “hidden in Christ.” I begin to guess that Christ is quite large, and that life is not any one thing but a hundred things; a thousand things; 10 billion things. For the one with true hope, it is a story held together by a savior.
Technology has carried us a long way, but I don’t think it can sustain us as we often ask it to do. The richest life, if that is what we are in search of, I think is found in sitting still while listening.
What is human? Maybe we are too distracted to really understand. Perhaps we await the answer to come from technology as we search for what it means to be human. Still, we are left unsatisfied.
To technology and stories too small: we are better than that.