On Being Left Behind

Luddite (noun): a person opposed to new technology or ways of working.

First, let me be clear- I don’t hate technology, and I don’t have any misguided fantasies of being Amish. I use the internet virtually every day for work, tasks, and entertainment. I am thankful to live in a house with electricity, heat, and running water. Perhaps, then, my occasional forays into Ludditism are born of idealism mixed with cynicism or simply the angst of having no real problems to deal with. I thoroughly enjoy mounting my high horse with comments such as “Imagine if we didn’t have all these beeping and booping devices! We’d be much more human, and dontchaknow we NEED TO GO BACK TO THE LAND”!!! My Substack fellows can attest to such ravings. While degrees of truth certainly exist in these and other observations, I will continue to use digital technology for the rest of my life (probably). However, my occasional frustration at the pace at which technology advances was stirred just a few days ago when I found myself at the mercy of a car that didn’t have my best interests in mind.

Allow me to dramatize what turned out to be an utterly inconsequential episode. I was stressed out and ticked off to begin my work trip to Chicago. I reserved a car with Enterprise for the three-and-a-half hour drive to save my company some money (it’s more expensive to expense the mileage if I took my car), and I’m not above admitting that I enjoy speeding down the highway in a car I can’t afford. So there I was, picking the car up at the rental location, which is usually a five-minute process. This time, however, I wasn’t so lucky- the only compact car (the type I had reserved) they had available was being serviced at a local Midas. They assured me it would be back momentarily, which turned into a forty-five-minute wait in the lobby. I suffer from chronic must-arrive-at-things-way-too-early-ism, so this delay, while putting me at almost no risk of being late for my first meeting later that day, ensured that I would arrive only shortly before I was scheduled to be present, leaving me with very little buffer. This caused my anxiety levels to spike as the control of the situation slipped through my fingers with every passing moment. Eventually, the car did arrive, and I hopped in and drove home to pick up my wife, who was traveling with me on this work excursion. “Well, at least it’s a cool car,” I thought as I pulled out of the Enterprise location. It was a 2024 Honda Accord with all the bells and whistles I rarely have the pleasure of experiencing. Still, my mood was soured, and I arrived home shortly thereafter with the joy of the good Jesus radiating from my soul lingering anxiety, and a light dosage of self-pity. Anna got into the car, and I punched the address into my phone and went to plug it into the USB port to connect to the audio system and charge it, only to find that my charger didn’t fit into the USB port. I stared at the port, dumbfounded. All that was offered was two little ovals, mocking me as I gripped my apparently outdated charger cord. You see, the end of my iPhone charger is shaped like a rectangle. As I was writing this, I considered looking up the official names of the different Apple chargers, the year that the switch was made, what is compatible with what, and other relevant information that would have added context to this story. I decided against it, however, so you’ll have to be content with this: my iPhone charger cord has a rectangular end that plugs into a block that goes into a wall. I’m sure you are familiar with what I’m describing. I’ve always been able to plug said rectangle into cars. This fancy new car only had ovals- see the images below for what the car offered compared to what I had. Like any good modern, I had spent the majority of the aforementioned delay at the rental location tapping listlessly at my iPhone screen, draining the battery without care, assuming (based on every experience I’ve ever had with cars) that I would be able to charge it while I drove. With a terrifying realization, I knew that my assumption was mistaken and that I would not be able to charge my phone, which was now careening into the teens of battery percentage.

Fortunately, I had invited Anna to join me on this trip. It was a quick trip, and we both thought it would be fun to get away and spend a little time together in Chicago before baby #2 arrives in two months. It was also a good trial run for Jamie (our 18-month-old) to spend a night with his grandparents in preparation for the baby's arrival. While my phone would not have been able to direct me for the 200+ mile trip, Anna’s battery percentage was 70%, and most of the trip was on the turnpike, so I knew we would be fine. However, being met with this challenge after the Enterprise delay, my bad mood and my anxiety spiked, and I proceeded to exhibit behavior reminiscent of my toddler. In a fit of rebellion, I made several pathetic attempts to plug the rectangle into the oval, knowing full well the vanity of my efforts. In doing so, I was reminded of Jamie’s attempts to fit his toys into the most absurd places where they clearly wouldn’t fit. Then, I let out a very mature “ggggrrrrraaaaaahhhh!” as I gave the steering wheel a hefty pound with my clenched fist (still holding my antique rectangular charger). My descent into toddlerhood continued- I’ve heard Jamie make this exact sound on many occasions. The car had bested me, first in being tardy, then in being new. Its features had advanced without telling me or pausing to consider if I had advanced with them; it had assumed that I would. When I hadn’t, I was left behind.

My experience with the 2024 Honda Accord and its dreaded oval charging ports brought to mind the reality of being left behind by technological advances when you knowingly or unknowingly fail to advance with them. My simple experience yielded no real suffering, but you can bet I’ll have it in mind the next time I rent a car. On that next occasion, do I buckle down and buy the latest and greatest charging cord? And while I’m at it, do I upgrade my cracked iPhone 8 (it still has a button!) to whatever number they’re on now? Doing so would be very convenient in a variety of ways. If I adapt for convenience in this simple way, what’s next? Will it be the “necessity” of having the AI-powered robot in my home, optimizing every facet of my life, connected via Bluetooth to the Neuralink chip in my brain? Artificial intelligence and Neuralink (or more generally, brain-computer interface) seem to be on the brink of revolutionizing our world as the internet did several decades ago. I’ve seen many people on LinkedIn state quite matter-of-factly that “the AI revolution is here”, implying that we should accept this fact as a given. What they seem to forget is that revolutions always entail upheaval and violence. And this is what frightens me and spurs my descent into Luddite tendencies- the rapidity of technological acceptance and the lack of thoughtfulness into how these changes will affect our souls. On the surface, it’s so easy to say I would never put that thing in my brain, no matter what level of left-behindness I might have to endure. It’s easy to scorn the emerging AI revolution as an attack on human creativity and a threat to real people's livelihoods. Yet, I am no different than anyone else, ever so willing to sacrifice my ideals on the altar of convenience. As the world becomes increasingly conformed to these and other advancing technologies, our willingness to be left behind may have to grow. How many people (how many Christians, specifically) living 30 years ago, had you told them that they could have with them at all times a device that tracks their location, hears their conversations, allows them to access all the pornography the world has to offer within seconds, and will be proven to cause addiction, anxiety, depression, and a host of social ills would have immediately sworn to never bring such a device into their lives? Yet, we all have smartphones, and we now know all of these things to be features and not bugs, and we still use the technology for the sake of convenience and of not being left behind.

One of the most profound thinkers of our day, Marc Barnes, often writes about the world being made into the image of the machine. His essays on smartphones, GPS, ChatGPT, and technology in general are enjoyable and thought-provoking. “A man with a car in a world designed for feet is a god. A man with a car in a world designed for cars is in traffic”, Barnes writes. He goes on to observe, “technologies tend to change the world along with them, and this nullifies their once-marvellous effects.” His point is simple- technology advances rapidly, and the world and those who live in it become increasingly dull as we conform to its image. I would add that as technology advances, if you fail to keep up with its advances, you are simply left behind. Enterprise will not double-check to confirm that you have the most up-to-date phone charger to charge your phone and get where you need to go when renting a Honda Accord from them. Your favorite restaurant will assume you have a smartphone to scan their QR code menu. It will just be assumed that you’ve kept up. Your ability to participate in society will become increasingly determined by what you possess externally (devices, implants, etc.) than by what you possess internally, such as skill and virtue.

Earlier, I mentioned the Amish. An interesting thing I learned recently about the Amish is that they do not reject new technology wholesale, Instead, they practice selective technology use. They're deliberate and cautious when adopting it, prioritizing what aligns with their close-knit community values and avoiding what could undermine their way of life. It is not surprising that most modern innovations simply haven’t made the cut. As we stand on the precipice of emerging new technologies, such as artificial intelligence and Neuralink, will we consider how these things will reshape our world and, more importantly, our souls? Will these reshapements truly be for the better? How will they affect our lives in communion with one another? I haven’t even mentioned virtual reality to this point, which seems to exist for the sole purpose of increasing our isolation under the guise of bringing us together. I’m less worried about that one, however, as Mark Zuckerberg's fantasies about the Metaverse being the new way to enjoy poker night with the boys haven’t caught on since it first made a big stir a few years ago. Will we consider these questions, as the Amish do, or will our adoption be swift and thoughtless for the sake of convenience and out of the fear of being stuck with a rectangular charger in a car with oval ports?

If you enjoyed this article, please consider checking out Milvian Abridged, a Substack I coauthor with several good friends, where we write about anything that interests us.