{"id":138,"date":"2024-01-25T13:50:28","date_gmt":"2024-01-25T18:50:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/?p=138"},"modified":"2024-01-25T13:50:28","modified_gmt":"2024-01-25T18:50:28","slug":"technology-and-epistemology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/2024\/01\/25\/technology-and-epistemology\/","title":{"rendered":"Technology and Epistemology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Technology and Epistemology<\/strong><\/p>\n

S. M. Gollmer<\/p>\n

The first step in avoiding technology\u2019s negative impact is to recognize that it does change us.\u00a0 Any of us who lived part of our adult lives before the smartphone can attest to this fact.\u00a0 However, our children who know nothing different, being disengaged from their phone is seen as privation, not a benefit.\u00a0 It is only now, through long-term studies, that the impact of screen time on mental health is being seen.\u00a0 But the issue isn\u2019t of recent origins.\u00a0 When I was growing up, the question was not the phone or computer, but the time spent in front of the television set.\u00a0 We could discuss its effects on cognitive and social development, but one often overlooked effect is on how we perceive the world.\u00a0 Neal Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death<\/em> states, \u201cTelevision is the command center of the new epistemology.\u00a0 There is no audience so young that it is barred from television.\u00a0 There is no poverty so abject that it must forgo television.\u00a0 There is no education so exalted that it is not modified by television\u201d (p. 78).\u00a0 Although written in 1985 his observations can be applied equally to our current sources of media.<\/p>\n

The word epistemology, as defined by a retired Cedarville professor, is, \u201cHow I know that I know that I know.\u201d\u00a0 It comes down to the process of knowing something to be true and the authorities I accept.\u00a0 When living in small, isolated communities, the process of knowing is through personal experience and social interaction.\u00a0 Authorities are parents, elders, and religious leaders.\u00a0 Due to the impact of technology, it is hard to find any community that is truly isolated from the diversity of cultures and ideas in the world.\u00a0 Replacing personal with vicarious experience and socializing virtually, children and adults alike are caught up in a fluid culture that has many authorities and yet no authority.\u00a0 Instead of discerning good from evil (Hebrews 5:14), which requires maturity and deliberate evaluation, we adopt the zeitgeist of our environment.\u00a0 This \u2018spirit of the age\u2019 is a combination of pop culture and worldview, which are not always compatible.<\/p>\n

Consider our postmodern technological society of the Western world.\u00a0 Herbert Marcuse is seen as an influential postmodern voice as he critiques the repressive nature of modern technology.\u00a0 Leszek Kolakowski in Main Currents of Marxism<\/em> observes that Marcuse\u2019s ideal society \u201cis to be ruled despotically by an enlightened group [who] have realized in themselves the unity of Logos and Eros, and thrown off the vexatious authority of logic, mathematics, and the empirical sciences\u201d (p. 416).\u00a0 Paradoxically, it is logic, mathematics, and the empirical sciences that make technology possible.\u00a0 Taken to its logical end, a postmodern society, which rejects the objective nature of the physical world and the ability to know objective truth, undermines the existence of technology.\u00a0 It is understandable to critique the dehumanizing impact of modernism, but swinging the pendulum to the dialectical opposite is not the solution.\u00a0 If we are to properly evaluate technology, we need to develop and exercise the ability to discern both good and evil.\u00a0 This entails knowing what authority to trust and integrating technology in such a way that it does not undermine what it means to be human both experientially and socially.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Technology and Epistemology S. M. Gollmer The first step in avoiding technology\u2019s negative impact is to recognize that it does change us.\u00a0 Any of us who lived part of our adult lives before the smartphone can attest to this fact.\u00a0 However, our children who know nothing different, being disengaged from their phone is seen as… View Article<\/a>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions\/139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}