Device & Virtue

The merging of human and machines sounds like an Ironman movie. But it’s actually happening right now. We even found some Christians who are praying this is the next big thing.

Has humanity reached the end of its evolution, or could technology light the path for the next stage of human development? People like Neil Harbison believe technology could be just the beginning. Advancements in medicine have brought humans and devices closer and closer together, but where’s the line between healing someone’s defective heart and enhancing their capacity beyond human norms?

Adam and Chris untangle some of these ideas behind what’s called “body hacking” or “transhumanism.” They ask, Could transhumanism be the future God has for humanity? Or are humans overstepping the natural human limits God gave us? Transhumanism is a trajectory we’re on, and we still face a lot of questions along that path.

Most important, Chris comes clean about why he returned his Apple Watch.

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You’ll never guess who just released an ethics statement all about the values they are trying to promote. It’s not the government or your church.

Yeah. It’s Facebook. Included in this episode: All the morals of scrolling through those cat pictures.

How do Facebook and Instagram decide what you see every time you scroll through? Deciding what to show you involves value judgments. If it always showed you the most recent post first, the value would be “newest = most important.” But Facebook’s algorithms are much more complicated. So are its values.

Adam and Chris take a closer look at Facebook’s “News Feed Values” and ask, how do these values align with Christian values, Kingdom values? Can the Church affirm Facebook’s values, or are there values it would do well to oppose?

Values covered in this episode include a priority of friends and family, as well as a goal to be informative. In an age of division and fake news, these values seem more relevant than ever. So does the Church have a uniquely meaningful take on them? Find out in this episode.

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• Facebook’s “News Feed Values”

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Our grandparents met because they lived in the same neighborhood. Today, we meet because we’re on the same app.

From dating scenes to dating screens, the Internet has turned your parent's relationship into a foreign world. Aziz Ansari, in his book Modern Romance, dives deep into how the Internet has transformed love and relationships.

From intimacy and transparency to cheating, sexting, and breaking up, we look at some of the stories and research from his book, and discuss what they mean for Christians.

A few questions we cover:

Does your significant other have the right to know what's on your smartphone?

Do smartphones make cheating easier or more likely?

Does the privacy of text messaging make intimacy easier and faster?

Can sexting be a worthwhile form of intimacy for married couples?

And how do smartphones complicate breakups?

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Some day your computer will drive your car. “Ok Google, Take Me To Church!”

Could driverless cars alter church life? Could they even impact Christian beliefs? As we outsource human activities to technology, those devices come to define our human activities, and even our ways of thinking. How will driverless cars impact church attendance, parking problems, demographic shifts, embodiment, church geographic reach? How will they influence how we think about ourselves as humans?

Adam and Chris raise more questions than answers as they unpack the driverless car craze. Plus, they offer some suggestion for what we should really call these "self-driving vehicles."

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Facial recognition is everywhere—it’s how you unlock your iPhone, and some cops are even using it. So what if your church did?

Software companies are already stepping into the sanctuary. Sure, we might expect China or Facebook or Apple to use facial recognition, but what standards or expectations should we have for churches using it? Could facial recognition help make large churches more personal … or more anonymous?

Facial recognition inhabits more and more spaces in our lives and our society, identifying us and tracking our behaviors. So what happens when it enters our churches? The answers aren't as clear cut as they might seem.

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When did social media start? In 2004 when Facebook started? Nope, try the 1st century!

Social media is anything but new and early Christians played a key role in its growth, Tom Standage argues in his book, Writing in the Wall. We dive in to look his claim that social media existed in the Roman Empire and and that the church influenced its development with their own system upgrades. What does it mean for the Church today that early Christianity developed in an age of Roman social media?

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