At the risk of sounding naive I am going to say yes, it is value neutral. Like any tool, it is not the tool itself that does anything of any value but rather it is the user that is responsible for whatever comes from using the tool. I think technology is simply another tool in a long line and history of tools that have been available to preachers for a very long time. What people do with technology is entirely up to them.
I was sort of ok with Laan's article until I read: "We might add that also, like God, in a sense, it is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. The other name for the Internet, the World Wide Web, suggests as much. It performs miracles too, so to speak: The most amazing information lies at our fingertips and appears with lightning speed." He seems to go off the deep end here. Granted, technology has been used for evil purposes but so has the Bible, the printing press, etc. By the end of his article you'd think he believed that the Internet was the spawn of Satan, let alone technology.
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I wonder how C.S. Lewis would have created The Screwtape Letters if he was around now. I think that the preferred method of communication would have been through something on the internet, although that it is merely fantastic conjecture by a wonderfully imaginative author. The author sure does seem to go of the deep end doesn't he?
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is the user of the tool that ultimately brings the value to the finished product, and I guess your view of technology as value-neutral could be viewed as being dependent upon who is using it.
ReplyDeleteI still think that technology has to be viewed as a source of value. It could be either be beneficial or detramental based upon HOW it is being used not relient soley on the medium itself.
I think I take the view on the opposite extreme - I would say no medium, no tool, is purely value-neutral. As a result, I don't really understand why the author of the article is so scared about the internet. Just because the printing press is old and we're used to it doesn't mean it's value-neutral while the internet is not. Every medium shapes the message, and we have to be aware of how it does so.
ReplyDeleteI guess it would be called the Screwtape Blog!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, when I think of the word "technology" I think of it by itself without the aid or guide of a human. The printing press is, by itself, a machine which can be used to print a variety of material. Because it was used to print "heretical" works does not mean that it must be evil (value) and should be destroyed. Did the church destroy it because of how Luther used? No, in fact they used it themselves.