The internet is an astounding tool that links us to one another. It offers us an immense array of connections, ideas, and opportunities. But it’s also a web we can get stuck in.
From social media addiction to YouTube rabbit holes to the Tetris effect to cellphones that seem permanently lodged in our palms, technology is a sticky thing to detach yourself from, and it has a way of slowly taking over your life, like a spider’s web in an abandoned house.
With so much of our lives tied up with technology, what do we risk losing? An experience of simply living real life, perhaps? The formation of genuine, embodied human communities and relationships not mediated by the artificiality and alienation of a screen? A rootedness in our senses, and through them, in reality?
A Long, Hard Look at Screens
Many smart people are asking these questions. There’s MIT professor Sherry Turkle, who has written a number of books and articles about how technology usage affects society—such as the way it has dried up deep, face-to-face conversation. There’s journalist and tech writer Nicholas Carr, who wrote a book about how the internet has rewired our brains and shortened our attention spans. Historian Dixie Dillon Lane unplugs on weekends to live more fully and be more present with her family. And there are writers Peco and Ruth Gaskovski, who run a Substack dedicated to articulating a framework for healthier technology use and highlighting ways to recover goods lost to the techno-vortex.
Commentators such as these argue that we need to rethink our relationship with technology. That means placing concrete limits on its use to prioritize true human flourishing through presence, wholeness, focus, contemplation, and in-person connection. This is “tech resistance.” It’s a growing movement to reclaim our humanity from the over-dominance of machinery. In “The 3 R’s of Unmachining: Guideposts for an Age of Technological Upheaval,” the Gaskovskis argue, “somewhere in history, we took a wrong turn on the road of technology, and it’s time for a course correction.”
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