"Restless Devices" (Felicia Wu Song)

TITLE: Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age
AUTHOR: Felicia Wu Song
PUBLISHER: Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2021, (232 pages).

With the fast-changing technological landscape, issues pertaining to human-machine interactions continue to evolve. Since the turn of the century, people are increasingly using technological devices in all of their human interactions. Whether one is a digital native or digital immigrant, the common denominator between the different generations is the use of technology. What is increasingly common is that time spent for both adults and kids on digital devices is also rising, albeit for different reasons. Addiction, mental health, restlessness, and so on are becoming more unsettling each day. Just think about it. How many people can live without WiFi or some form of Internet access? In this book, author and professor Felicia Wu Song argues that we are all descending down a digital environment that is threatening to unravel our personhood and calls us all to start on the journey to recover our humanness through a process of re-embodiment. We do not have to surrender to every desire to upgrade our devices or to constantly check our phones for the latest news. Song proposes three paths forward:

1. Spiritual disciplines and practices
2. Recovery of our Human Embodiment
3. Living in Community

Part One of the book is more diagnostic to help us understand the digital ecology we are living in. Taking us back to the 1990s, she tells of our fascination with computers and games. By the turn of the century, the Internet evolves from a simple dial-up into a wireless behemoth for all kinds of social communications. From what was previously done offline, nearly everything now could be done online. What was previously considered an Internet that is "out there" is now very much into our homes and our lives. How we respond to technology advancements depends not just on our usage but on our understanding of what technology is doing to us. She warns us about the "terms of agreement" that many of us have signed up to unwittingly, that we have given away not only our information but our precious time and resources. Many commercial companies understand the connection between our physiological and psychological tendency to want to be connected and are using it for their own ends. Recognizing the importance to redeem both our time and our lives, Song guides us through the four stages of "The Freedom Project." The first stage is a regular cold-turkey digital fast. Stage Two requires us to do a "digital stocktaking" to check our time and usage of the different digital devices and apps. Stage Three is about internalizing these processes into a regular pattern or liturgy. Stage Four considers alternative futures to rethink our usage and relationship with the digital world. 

My Thoughts

The audience for this book is primarily an academic one. It is useful for researchers, scholars, and students of social engineering, etc. The author is not alone in her critique of technology. She engages a host of experts who had spent time thinking and engaging the effects of technology on human behaviour. At the beginning of each chapter, she puts forth a key thesis to prepare us for where she is going, lest we become lost in the spaghetti of information provided. She is well-versed in the many apps and existing social media platforms. Readers can be rest assured that they are learning from someone who is not just lamenting on the current state of digital infatuation in society but someone who is more intent on redeeming rather than dispensing away with. This calls for a lot of discernment on our part. We cannot mindlessly give away our precious time to do what the modern apps are tempting us to do. Everything has a purpose and as long as we are in control of how we use the technology, we are fine. The warning however is apt. For the uninitiated, it is a wakeup call to be more critical of what we use on a daily basis. For the rest of us, Song's reminder is for us to keep in step not with the pace of technology but to make space for ourselves. Currently, mainstream culture tend to accept the use of technological without much critique. Books like this will equip us with appropriate questions to ask about why we are doing what we are doing. We learn how to question our presumptions and things we normally take for granted. Uncritical use of technology is like swimming in quicksand. It swallows us in slowly but surely, emptying us of ourselves and our purposes over time. How the future will become will depend on how much control we cede to the technological titans. 

The title of this book is intriguing. Can inanimate devices be restless? Or is it more true that restlessness refers more to those who use them? I believe the latter is more challenging. Biblically, we are all infected with the restlessness associated with Cain. This reminds me about our constant search for meaning, for significance, and for purpose of life. Our relationship with technology reflects such a search. Our restlessness will continue to shift from one device to another; one technology to another; one platform to another. In fact, the basic need for communications and self-expression is the same. Only the medium has changed. In trying to keep up with the changing technologies just to do the same thing, we need to reckon with why simple tasks are now made more complex than before. A simple phone call is no longer simply picking up the phone and dial. There are passwords to unlock the phone. There are different phone apps to choose. Calling has become diversified from traditional phone numbers to conventional email addresses and latest VOIP apps. Sometimes, how we connect depends also on what type of phones our recipients are using. Can iMessage and FaceTime work with Android phones? What about the latest video-conferencing facilities like Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and Zoom? Are the apps complicating our need for a simple phone call? I believe they are. That is why I think we need to take a regular step back to examine what we really need, so that we do not become caught up in the commercial battles of the technological titans. 

This book has a crucial message that we all need to hear. We don't simply take a break from these devices. We need to use that space to reconnect with our Creator God, and to learn once again that salvation comes not from the latest and the greatest, but from Almighty God who loved us and gave His Son for us all. If this book could free us from the tentacles of technological temptations in some way, it would have worth every cent.

Felicia Wu Song (PhD, University of Virginia) is a cultural sociologist of media and digital technologies, currently serving as professor of sociology at Westmont College in Santa Barbara. Her publications include Virtual Communities: Bowling Alone, Online Together and articles in such scholarly journals as Gender & Society and Information, Communication & Society.

Rating: 4.25 stars of 5.

conrade

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This book has been provided courtesy of InterVarsity Press and NetGalley without requiring a positive review. All opinions offered above are mine unless otherwise stated or implied.