Evan Rosa: From the Yale Center For Faith and Culture, this is for the life of the world. A podcast about seeking and living a life worthy of our humanity
Aaron Cline Hanbury: I reject the idea of technology as neutral tools a hammer is designed to build a house, to, to use a hammer, to kill somebody is not, only just a bad application of an otherwise neutral tool, it's misusing.
The tool itself, it's, it's running against the, telos of that, tool. And so I, I would approach our new technological stuff in the same way. I think these tools have purposes and designers and, you know, made things have a maker, Who has all sorts of things baked in our world is designed a certain way. Our world has fallen in a certain way. and so everything I think we inhabit has characteristics of these and explicit and implicit within What they are.
Evan Rosa: Technology. Aaron Cline Hanbury suggests is never purely a neutral tool, but the history of technological ethics shows that as long as we've been thinking about it, there's been anxiety about it, or perhaps more accurately anxiety about what we might do with it And increasingly what it might do to us,
a journalist founding editor of Common Good Magazine and the author of Wired for Wonder: Dispatches on technology, culture, God and self.
Aaron came of age. As many of us did as the internet entered the home and he spent his career reporting from places where technology, faith, and everyday life collide. but rather than offering another list of sound bite screen time tips, he's asking a deeper question, how do we relate? To the things we make in our conversation. He wrestles with what it means to be human. When the machines we've made can do more and more, he criticizes the seduction that we should just embrace technology simply because it's inevitable.
Explores how connection, efficiency, and unrestrained technological freedom quietly became unquestioned goods to all of us. Why our powers of attention are eroding and we seem to be okay with it and he wonders what it might take personally. Communally and structurally to reclaim our humanity through presence and the rough ground of embodied life.
Thanks for listening.
Evan Rosa: Aaron, thanks so much for joining me on the show.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: Yeah. Evan, thank you. I'm excited.
Evan Rosa: Yeah, it's a really important topic but quickly we're adding a lot of noise to the, to this debate about AI humanity. But I, I don't think much has changed on that front. I, and how I'd start things off in the con contextually is that as long as there's been technology, there's been worries about technology.
As long as there's been advances and, and the ability to do things before we entertain the question of whether we ought to do things, there's immediately anxiety built into that anxiety built into the human condition. And I just wanted to maybe get like a sense for your framing of the tech landscape at, at the moment.
I'm, I wonder if you could like, Trace a little bit of your history with tech, like your, your, your own personal takes,
Aaron Cline Hanbury: So, there's a couple layers to that, one of which is sort of unique to my moment in history, and another of which is, unique to sort of my Christian tradition both of which inform this, so age-wise, I'm just, a child of the eighties who basically is a kid in the house, in a neighborhood in the early to mid nineties when the internet came into our houses.
So in that way, I think those of us who fit that description are patient zero on life with the internet. Right. And so, a lot of our parents. We're interested in the things but sort of, sort of in the way that grandparents are interested in iPads now, like it's a novelty thing. But in terms of kind of growing up with it, um, that's, that's like my formative years.
So like the early sort of what is a chat room or, a OL
Evan Rosa: same here.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: Limewire or, all these things like figuring out fun stuff on the internet and even what is the internet
is sort of right where I lived.
Evan Rosa: Yeah.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: And so in that way, like my whole coming of age story, which is in some ways still going on, right?
Has been the internet boom. And you hear these statements made and how true they're not true they are or not I think is up for debate. But like the world changed more from like 1995 to 2025 than from 1895 to 1995.
Evan Rosa: Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: And so as part of that, yeah, I, I'm there living with it on the tradition side which is interesting.
I come from a low church, Bab Baptist tradition,
Aaron Cline Hanbury: Of both denominational and sort of theological. We have been historically, very early adopters of pretty much any especially popular level technology. So you can think certainly of the earliest adopters in American life of like the radio and its sort of low church evangelical and evangelistic preachers.
You think of some of the early blogs talk radio as that starts to develop. Email newsletters more recently. And we are, we are just quick to hop on the new thing and then sort of ask questions later, which I think is maybe to, to your comment earlier. And so both of those things have been, have been true.
I've been around people who, ostensibly have. Some level of authority. I'm not sure authority is the right word there, but the people who are around me in those, in those positions who are like, yep, I'm getting on this thing and running with it at the same time, it's all sort of new to everybody.
Like my parents have no idea what it was like to grow up with the internet in the house. And so we're just the kids who, who are figuring it out. And then I went into, I am in journalism and so, a huge part of journal, the journalistic work really from the year, I don't know, whatever, 2000 on has been interacting with all of these new developments this way
Evan Rosa: A journalism of technology would, would be significantly different than doing an ethics of technology. Although I don't know if we should do too much like of the chronological snobbery thing where one period is doing better than another.
But journalism and, and ethics are blurring the boundaries quite a bit. Those are live questions politically and, I want to hear from you how, how, like your, your own personal ethics about it like how has, how has that changed?
Aaron Cline Hanbury: I don't know exactly where I fall on the early adopter to Luddite spectrum. Though, I would say I'm not an early adopter and I'm. Pretty skeptical of early adoption, sort of as a categorical statement. I don't, I don't wanna take a medicine that just came out necessarily. I don't wanna try a recipe that no one's ever tried.
Like I don't I'm not, I'm not, I don't, I usually don't wanna buy like the first model of a redesign of a car like that. And generally speaking, my approach is to let's see, let's let this play out a minute and then see where we
Evan Rosa: You not a love at first say kind of guy.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: I'm not, yes, no, that's right. I'd like to see, I'd like to see what happens.
So there's that. I also am convinced of what Albert Borgman calls the device paradigm as it relates to technology. Which is more complicated than this, but let me at least say, or I think what we can at least say about it is that I reject the idea of technology as neutral tools. Meaning I don't think that we have good uses, bad uses, and then in the middle is just this sort of neutral thing.
You can use a hammer to kill somebody or it can use it to build a house. And I think, I think in some ways that's a false binary that people throw up sort of unthoughtful, meaning a hammer is designed to build a house, to, to use a hammer, to kill somebody is not, not only just a bad application of an otherwise neutral tool, it's misusing.
The tool itself, it's, it's running against the, the tell uss of that, of that tool. And so I, I would approach our new technological stuff in the same way.
Um, now that that only opens up an avenue of questions, it doesn't necessarily answer questions. I don't think early adoption is necessarily wise. Maybe that's buffing against some of that tradition stuff I talked about earlier.
Where, where the models we came out of. And I, and I think these tools have purposes and designers and, made things have a maker, who has all sorts of things baked in our world is designed a certain way. Our world has fallen in a certain way. And so everything I think we inhabit has characteristics of these baked in and, and explicit and implicit within.
What they are. And so this, yeah, I get, I get frustrated I guess with some of the like, well, it's a tool and you could use this for good or bad or, or whatever. I don't, I think anybody's rejecting that there can be better and worse uses of things. But it's, I don't think we can shrug our shoulders and say, make whatever you wanna make world and, and we'll just pick out some rosy applications.
Evan Rosa: Yeah, On the question of neutrality, that brings us into a fast, some fascinating terrain because it's hard to ground an ethics of technology. You, you are referring, for instance, to the intended. Purpose by the designer.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: That's right.
Evan Rosa: And and yet the question of redemptive models.
Can, can someone end up beating a sword into a plow share,
Evan Rosa: bringing new intentionality by the user.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: Sure.
Evan Rosa: I'm only complicating that, not because I am arguing against you, but, but, but I appreciate the fact that you're, you're raising all sorts of questions and I think we should raise these questions.
That would, that's like looking like progress to me is, is developing better questions and, and developing new capacities for, for asking them with patience
and and encouraging really clear, thoughtful communication about it. But. I remember feeling super frustrated about a perceived inability to create a more robust ethics of technology than utilitarianism. Meaning like, well, whatever the outcome is, whatever the consequences
Aaron Cline Hanbury: That's right.
Evan Rosa: that's how we would. Be able to evaluate a neutral approach to technology, because if all you have is neutrality, then all you can refer to then are either maybe some ground rules or principles If you want to take a Kian or rule-based approach or divine command approach, or you've got utilitarianism where we're just measuring the benefits, but then.
It does seem that there is more built into certain kinds of technology
Aaron Cline Hanbury: Mm-hmm.
Evan Rosa: in its very design than this neutral approach would have it, and it sort
of speaks to some intuitions about the given, is what I would say is like what, what exactly in our moral universe is given such that. it's, it's not neutral in fact,
Aaron Cline Hanbury: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. The other one that people go to, that, that slightly different from a utilitarian approach. And I think actually the most common that I hear currently depending on how you wanna frame it, but basically an inevitability argument or a defeatist argument that like this thing or these things are here,
Evan Rosa: Yeah.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: therefore. Get on board or get run over is basically the implication.
And you could baptize that by saying, so find redemptive models.
But it's, it's still the same argument.
Evan Rosa: yeah. I, when I hear that like these things are here to say, it's like resistance is futile kind of approach.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: Resistance is futile. The idea that technological progress is inevitable, take out the term pro progress, technological innovation, and sort of this forward motion is inevitable is not true in the history of this country or any country.
There are plenty of examples. In my lifetime, we can think of maybe tobacco use. You can certainly think of the practice of dumping garbage into the ocean as a disposal mechanism.
Evan Rosa: Right.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: this is complicated or this is murky right now because of some of the, all of the Maha conversation. But you can think of heavily processed foods like no one out there is saying right now.
Cheddar needs to get outta the way. 'cause Velv, Vitta is the future. It's just like we're rolling through with processed cheeses and so we need to come up with like better, better forms. No, we're saying, look, there was a time when we thought shelf stability was the future and it's just not, it's not good for us.
We're gonna roll this stuff back. We can do that. Like we, we have the ability to, to stop these things. There's countries in Europe that just banned tobacco like outright under a certain age.
Evan Rosa: I mean, What you're referring to is, is not just, it's, it's it's progress.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: Yeah,
Evan Rosa: the point is, is that sometimes progress is a reversion of, of a kind. It's, it's, it's preventing or, or like returning to returning to. More healthy practices or moral practices, moral reform and that inevitability argument it, it, it fails to allow for the possibility of moral reform.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: For sure. And I think, yeah, which to me makes it basically a non argument. you can cer
Evan Rosa: after all. Yeah.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: right, you can say it, but it doesn't seem to be true in history. And I don't know what that, what that's supposed to mean. What am I supposed to do with that? Just shrug off and stop talking about it.
Is that the point? Like what do you wanna, what are you asking me to do? When you say that?
Evan Rosa: I wonder if, if, if that is in fact the sentiment where that's coming from, which is, I don't really know what to say. I don't have the capacity to sit with the complicated nature of this. We just boot to inevitability and, and we just embrace, it's very splitting. It's a very ex extremism kind of thing to do, and it just points out the, you, you, I would emphasize the fact that, that it's a false binary that you pointed out earlier that the false binary of.
Ludism and rejection on one hand or techn, holism and just like unquestioning or inevitable embrace on the other. The fact is we have to sort out the complicated middle and
Aaron Cline Hanbury: that's right.
Evan Rosa: willing to retrace our steps
Aaron Cline Hanbury: Mm-hmm.
Evan Rosa: as we try to make forward motion. That's that. There's a little bit of a paradox in there.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: Oh, certainly. I'm always reminded of, this is exactly the kind of thing you talk about, probably at the Yale Center For Faith and Culture, but there's this wonderful episode of Family Guy where
Evan Rosa: You would be, go ahead.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: they have a,
a scene of am a scene of Amish people. It's like a, the, the episode of set like in an Amish community.
And they start praying. And the prayer is basically, we thank you that in 1923 or 1823, you gave us just the right amount of technology. Not too little, not too much. And they try to there's a couple of other lines in the prayer, but I, I think about that a lot too, that these things aren't static.
And so you're, this idea of sort of like striking this balance too is sort of a fraught project.
Evan Rosa: family guys a, a perfectly legitimate,
Aaron Cline Hanbury: alright,
good.
Evan Rosa: material perfectly legitimate in my opinion. That's ultimately where you see, I mean like think about like the ability to make that joke and the ability for it to land is saying some, it's speaking to some something at a really broad level that's very important to be able to communicate.
Beyond the sort of esoteric place that most technological ethics have lived for, for a long time. So the, the ability to begin using satire, begin using straight up comedy. It's going to get at certain truths that, that people might not otherwise realize are connecting for them.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: That's right. And I think one of the conversations not to take something from family guy to serious, but one of the conversations that I don't see discussed enough, people are definitely discussing it which is a false binary that also comes up in a lot of interviews nobody's talking about. So people are definitely talking about this, but an under-reported or an under-discussed element is that the places, to your point where sort of tech ethics are most discussed and sort of live are also the places that in some ways are insulated from the impacts of these technologies. Meaning we already see a really stark class income opportunity divide along the technological line. Which is in direct contrast to what we were promised, right?
So we were promised the internet as this level playing field. And it hasn't given us, it hasn't given us that at all. And if you back this up into the eighties and seventies, with television, it's the same thing. There's, there's direct correlations between time on these tools and then academic performance, which leads to all manner of life outcomes that are, that are talked about in places like Yale and, and Harvard and these sorts of like, economic and sociological distinguishers.
Evan Rosa: Yeah.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: So it is interesting to get, to try to make sense of why I'm saying this. It is interesting to hear these things discussed like at a family guy level. 'cause it feels like often that's where the questions aren't. Both aren't asked and the space for reflective answers aren't available. Which is, which is a huge question I think to be asking.
Evan Rosa: That's right, and, and I think, the, the. The way I take this is sort of, there's a cynicism that exists at the level of family guy, south Park, Simpsons, Rick and Morty, which like will be able to, to shake otherwise comfortable say that with scare quotes.
Comfortable approach to incorporating technology. Into life and, and, and in a way that is commensurate with our values because you build the tech and then you build the ethics to like post facto justify it. and, the brand marketing messaging these days has to include the way that it's going to support way down the chain, right.
Uh.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: the people are, right? Yeah.
Evan Rosa: Like all the way around the world, flatten it out. Make a level playing field, give everyone access like capitalism, wants to promise. But, but we do need to be shaken with, with a dose of cynicism, if only for learning to question and, and criticize when, when it's merited.
So I, I, I think there's a huge value to, to that kind of,
Aaron Cline Hanbury: And we've seen it in the last, I'm trying to remember when the the big ISIS stuff was. That was over 10 years ago, right? It was, so either way the last 15 years or so we've seen a lot of this play out, like the promise of, of, unfettered, ostensibly unfiltered, though it's filtered. Access to information among a wide populace was supposed to make us smarter and give education, quote unquote, to the mass quote unquote education to the quote unquote masses.
And what we ended up getting was various forms of online based radicalization. So you see this directly with the rise of isis propaganda videos disseminated, and then in our own country. Where there has not been a lack of ISIS activity at the time. We see other forms of, say, conspiracy theories, radicalization at various points, mainly of the undereducated and mainly of people who are very online.
And so this thing that we were promised has the, almost the opposite almost the opposite has happened and has almost exclusively happened among the people whom we were told it was gonna help.
Evan Rosa: Yeah, yeah, yeah. These kinds of predictions about like what the actual benefits are gonna be. They're really only predictions. And we can't, we can't exactly tell the future. People like Jonathan Het, who's who's now.
Demanding in a very helpful way to look at the data, to look back now at, at, at data that we should have been collecting all along. And you might say in an ideal scenario, which we, we do not live in you test things out first. How would we test out the impact of, of technology on humanity first before implementing it?
I don't know, but we have to try to understand it as we go and. I think he represents a major a growing faction that is willing to step back and willing to roll back and, and, and willing to delay the use of tech in young children's lives for quite a while So, so, so that we might cultivate our full capacities.
Of, of careful thinking of, I would say mental health, spiritual health of of relationality, developing emotional intelligence, all sorts of stuff that So the, the adverse effects that we hoped social media, right? Like emphasis on the social was supposed to do, it was supposed to draw people together.
It's supposed to create connections, disseminate knowledge for the sake of, of all sorts of good. And, and I think height rightly points out recently that it's, it's really, it's not social media, it's attention media. It's, it's, Just commodifying the human attention. And I think this is getting at your take on wonder these are not just adverse effects, but they are in many ways, as you say, the, almost the opposite of what we were hoping this stuff could do.
I, I think the commodity of attention is, is really what is underneath a lot of the tech development is
creating.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: Yeah, I think, I think It is certainly true that we can't know the effects of here. I'm coming across probably more Luddite than I was trying to come across. It is true that we can't know the effects of some of these technologies until they're tested. But one really perverse thing about. The way we have pursued early adoption in these instances is that the Guinea pigs have been our children.
Evan Rosa: So, yeah.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: You know what I mean? How, like something's off about that. Something's off about the, and we're, we're rolling it back at almost breakneck speeds, but there's something off about the fact that like there's a promise of a certain technological end and then it's like, well, we gotta give Chromebooks to every elementary school student. I'm like real fast. Now there's, there's a lot of stuff to do with the economy of education there. That hurts. there, but I, yeah, every time I think about the idea of testing, I think certainly we have to live with it and see, but man, I should be great if it wasn't my children who even if we could test it more on myself, you know what I mean?
Let's let, let's let some adults be the Guinea pigs here. Not in height's case teenage girls.
Evan Rosa: Right, right. So we should camp out on this before we do the social attention thing, because I, I think this is an, a really inviting point you're making. Which, I, I think we should try to use some analogies argument by analogy like you were using earlier, whether it's Cheddar and Velv, vita, or. A new, maybe it's a new vaccine, right?
That's gonna trigger like some, some reactions here. Would you sign up your young child for a prog a vaccine program that you, that hadn't been studied? And, and of course not even with reference to any conspiracy theories, just the, the average parent would not do This and yet, and yet, I, I, I recall.
From 2006 and the first iPhones on the pacifying nature of holding a i, I guess it would've been blues clues at the time. Now it's bluey up in front of a child in their backseat who's screaming
and, and just out of, a desire for some sanity.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: That's right.
Evan Rosa: Turn on that blue light and you dazzle them with these, this thing, and then you hand it to them and they start interacting and you start congratulating them for how easily they got it.
And how amazing is it that kids know how to pinch to enlarge? That there is a tragic and so, such a sad, and I think at an aesthetic level. Thing about that.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: Oh yeah. I think, I think there's a book from the eighties called the Plugin Drug that is about TV and central to her argument. I think it's a, her central to her argument is that kids don't have TV addiction, parents have kids on TV addiction. And I think there was, that almost meant exploded to an absurd case with some of the some of the cell phone and iPad stuff.
I think some of that's getting walked back a little. With some of the height conversation and all this. Right. But it certainly is true. Look in a county, one county north of me last year, an entire daycare center got shut down and indictments handed out to owners and employees. 'cause they were given it's not funny, it's just funny. They were giving Benadryl to the kids around nap time to, to get 'em to go to sleep or chill out or whatever. So like in our society, we have mechanisms and intuitions around how cruel this is to say, you're annoying me. So here's this thing.
Evan Rosa: Yeah.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: And I don't think there's any research to suggest that Benadryl is addictive, but we at this point have plenty of research to suggest that cell phones and technologies are, and not only that, if you're a teenager, we're starting to have these, probably a great word for them. I don't know. Hybrid combo addictions where you might have a tech or attention addiction paired with a, with a sex addiction, like a porn addiction. Or you might have a tech instant gratification, addiction, dopamine addiction tied to an eating disorder with an Uber Eats or whatever.
So we can combine these addictive tendencies into this one thing. Yeah.
Evan Rosa: Yeah,
absolutely.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: Sort of shocking. Yeah. And the beneficiaries of which to your point, are usually the people who don't have to deal with, I don't know, noise or conversation or, teenagers are awkward. Like you don't have to deal with that stuff,
Evan Rosa: Yeah.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: If they're off doing their own thing.
Evan Rosa: Yeah, I mean that's, I, I I I think that's right and it's, I'm noticing a theme, right? Whether it's at the, the production level and the design level where, where there's this the people benefiting from the economics of this technology are are already. Very rich and, and they're telling a story that is meant that, that says, well, this is part of the, part of an, growing opportunities for economic thriving all the way down to below the poverty line.
And, and then there's this other case where, at the user level, in this case, parents very well-meaning parents, and perhaps unintentionally unconsciously are, are, are experiencing the benefits when they are already in a position of privilege, at least with respect to the child. And there's, it's just a form of control and we're just sort of offloading some adverse effects onto our kids in order to.
Get whether it's for sanity's sake or babysitting sake, right? Some folks can't afford babysitting. That's why those kids have, might have a phone or not iPad. And, and it's but it's always passing it off onto the other. There's a, there's a, what this point's toward is a kind of. A lack of empathy, lack a lack of perspective taking, and a willingness to, if not be the Guinea pig ourselves.
Look for ways to at least very consciously and knowingly consider the effect of our actions, both at the production level and at the use level
Aaron Cline Hanbury: Right. And I think, I think younger kids, they are telling us this, so we, we know from survey after survey that Gen Z and younger are both the most tech capable among us, but also the most tech skeptical. And I think we see this in really dramatic ways in sort of suicidal tendencies.
So they don't, the kids, the youths they don't like it. And so I think they're telling us that some of this experiment was basically at their expense which is, which is certainly something that needs to be considered and needs to be considered seriously.
Evan Rosa: I've been wondering what the new punk rock is.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: Mm-hmm.
Evan Rosa: like when there was something to react to, right? Like what will the new reactionary movements, what would they look like? And, and I think there's this kind of, there's these cycles of generational reaction
Aaron Cline Hanbury: Mm.
Evan Rosa: and and all, sometimes all it takes is, is the fact that your parents did it.
To reject it. But in this case, it sounds like, to, to me, my observations, and I hadn't heard about the, the booing that it's the new industrial revolution. But it sounds to me like, like young people are, are who, who, who have grown up with it. Right? They're digital natives and. They are the babies in the car seats that were pacified with that.
And they're still at this point, capable of, of think becoming reflective, right? Emerging with a, a, a set of critical criteria for a kind of life that they wanna live. And, and there's an option, there's an opportunity for ra raging against the machine. And an opportunity for a new kind of punk rejection of the mainstream.
I've wondered, as I became a parent, I've, I've got four kids and, and two teenagers, two teenage teenage girls. And it's fascinating to me to, to sort of see the ways in which they are interacting with it. And but it's all happening in real time as well. And
Aaron Cline Hanbury: Well, I think I think this might circle back to the attention social media,
distinction. I. was that I think all of us at some level.
Particularly as it relates to cell phone, social media, these sort of like very practical applications of the technological boom feel the same things. And that is that our attention is fried and it sucks. And I think we all have the, those of us who are in relationships, healthy relationships, you have these moments, whether it's, I don't know.
On a date somewhere, or finally getting to relax on the couch or a weekend away, you have these moments where your attention, a great novel I would put up in that category. So last year I read Hannah Coulter twice, three, two, or three times, just, I just couldn't stop reading it. But you have these moments where your attention is focused to the extent that neuroscience tells us we can focus on one thing.
And it's feels so refreshing and in many ways you feel more alive. Like there, there's this sense of it's almost, it's almost akin to purpose. You could find all kind of nebulous ways to describe it, I think. But that feels so different from even watching live tv and you have this weird mix of I don't know. A dramatic TV moment on the pit where like somebody, a patient's about to die and then you get like baby wipe commercials and then you get like a Cialis commercial and then you get like to the local bad Toyota commercial. And then in Georgia right now, oh yeah. Then like 11 different governors candidates are running for their governor.
And then you go back to this like person having cancer and dying and you're like, what's
like, what's now for those of us who grew up with TV like that, that doesn't feel as unnatural in the moment, I think as when you look back and compare it, but it's just fried. And then of course when you get to cell phones and social media feeds, our attention is, is all over the place.
I love two things. I love a lot of things. Two of the things I really love are yard work and the cooking.
And, and
cook cooking. I can certainly, often I'll have like sports talk radio on, so maybe it's not a great example, but one of the things I like about cooking is that it just commands your whole body's attention in one, one space.
Evan Rosa: Yeah.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: Obviously there's passive elements, but you know, for the most part you're dialed in and you're doing the thing. Yard work is the same way. I don't do particularly well with headphones and so I, I mow the grass and do yard work just me out there
Evan Rosa: yeah.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: and it's great. It's great because I don't get many chances to be like that, and I don't, and my point there is that I don't think I'm that unique in that space.
I think a lot of us feel that. And so the task or the work, or however you'd wanna frame it, is to figure out ways to uncover the right questions. Questions that are like, here's some questions that, here's some cultural assumptions that come up all the time that if, I think, if you actually think about it, are a little silly.
Connection is a defacto good.
So social media connects us. We're more connected than ever, as if that's an unquestionable.
Evan Rosa: Right.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: good. And that efficiency is always better than inefficiency.
Evan Rosa: Ah,
Aaron Cline Hanbury: Like people right now with ai love to be like, I'm 10 times more efficient than I used to be.
Evan Rosa: right.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: And may I, maybe you could make a great case that efficiency is always better than inefficiency, but nobody that are the people that I generally hear aren't actually making the case.
They feel like they can say efficiency and then walk away.
Evan Rosa: Yeah.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: I think that's the work to be done is actually sort of unpacking some of this 'cause I think, yeah, by large, I think a lot of us are in the same boat. And you're just sort of living in these, these streams. Trying to sort of find your way out of 'em.
I try to find ways to walk 'em back. And it, and it feels to me even just to camp out on some of the height stuff again.
Like it's really sad that we had to get to like massive depression and suicidal thought levels in order to be like woken up into
Evan Rosa: I know.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: questioning some of these things.
Evan Rosa: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm hearing
connection in and of itself, connection for the sake of connection. There's nothing about connection that, that demands that it be a good thing. Same with efficiency.
What is efficiency for what? Right? Like we need to add in telos, we need to add in.
Intention and purpose and, and think about the direction that it's moving in. And I, I would, I think relatedly freedom in certain, in certain ways, right? So like you, you, I really enjoy the way you treat the, the question of freedom in the, in the book.
And so what I, what I really like about this, the, the space that we're currently talking about right now is. Is that it does all come back to our ability to attend and to wonder. And I think, I think the fact that our, our powers of attention are in a steep decline at the moment. It is a worrisome thing about, about the way we're being formed
and the way our children are being formed.
And yes, there are adverse effects and it is a shame that, that we need to encounter all sorts of. Truly awful consequences that were unintended to wake us up to, to these kinds of things. But there is also a slow erosion that that can often be invisible.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: for sure. Yeah.
Evan Rosa: And, and I think like your points about connection, efficiency and freedom are doing that.
And. It, it, it, it strikes me that I, I'm, I'm enough of a, a Buddhist to, to, to think that like at some level, yes, our attention is, is in some sense all we have in a given moment and and where it's directed and the quality of it. That's, that's who I am in some important sense in this moment I that that, I wanna appreciate and that I think the, the.
Increasingly, it's not the fact that it's technological and it's not the fact that it's a large language model. That's not what's immediately a question. It's the fact that we just assume that connection, efficiency, and freedom are all just like def facto good no matter what.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. And the connection when, I, my wife was saying this, Hannah has been off of Facebook for a long time, so I don't even remember when this conversation started. But, but she she had this phenomenon early on in our marriage that one particular friend who's just sort of. And she's always difficult, but she she would post something on Facebook
and then, and then be upset that my wife hadn't followed up in some way or wasn't like actively dialed into that thing that was posted on Facebook. It would raise all these questions for Hannah, like maybe you can't have more than whatever it is.
10 friends and I, some of this has been, this was our conversations earlier, I've since had conversations with I guess it's a therapeutic settings around interpersonal neurobiology. There actually is something to this that we, we can't have 10 intimate friends in a lot of ways. You can't even really have four like, and just even manage all of what that means.
Now you need to have four.
You need to have 10 friends, you need to have a hundred friends. But like at some point you're not, it reaches these levels that are untenable to have a meaningful depth of relationship.
So the point is that
Evan Rosa: i.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: Just because Facebook label labels them friends doesn't mean that you have 1800 friends in any meaningful sense. And, and so I, I, to me that's just almost encapsulates this idea that the connection did not expand our capacity for friendship.
It actually just fried all of these connections, so to speak,
Online connections are by and large devoid of a public accountability in a way that in-person connections are have built in accountability that in-person connections have built in such that they can end up being really bad for us.
So if in a pre, let's call it a pre-digital world. If I were to try to meet up with, I don't know, an underground white supremacist group that I wanted to be a part of, I have to walk through the streets and get in my car and have, I don't know. I don't know if maybe it's pre-digital, but I myself a credit card, I don't know, but I would've statements showing like the places I've been and I would've to feel the shame of walking in certain doors and walking out of them. If I were gonna cheat on my spouse, I'd have to leave the house and do that in a very tangible way. And some of the things that kept us from doing those things, was sort of the social pressures of doing things in public.
And what some of these connections online have allowed us to do is to connect with people who match up with our worser parts and can reform us into those worser parts. There's another lie we could get into, which is that the internet allows our worser demons or however you wanna frame it to thrive.
I actually don't think that's 100% true. I think they can also engender and build negative formation. Anyway, all that to say, I, I, the connection point I think over and over again has showed us and current radicalized groups online are, I think a great case in point of how sort of broad global, but also super specific connections have not been a good thing.
Uh, and so even just saying things like, we're more connected than ever almost, I'm not even sure if that's a, we should take that as a neutral statement.
Evan Rosa: It makes a lot of sense. And I think, I think what I'm hearing in it is, is the importance of embodied relationship or if not embodied relationship, yes. Physicality, but it's, but it's the particularity
Aaron Cline Hanbury: Mm-hmm.
Evan Rosa: technology, ai, social media. It allows for abstraction,
The, the fact is. Particularity, and this is where like what I appreciate about your sort of memoir and like dispatches approach to the book is like, it's, it's particular story that helps to foster connection
because there's direction to story, right?
There's plot and there's c like circuit and, and, and movement and, and cycles. And I think, I think, that adds this dimensionality to, to it that would allow, allow for technology to be present through it all, but, but but would keep us grounded. to use some wienstein, this quote of his back to the rough ground call. It's like, it's sort of like a, a charge. Let's go, let's get back to the rough ground because the smooth ice before us is just impossible to grip.
and and the abstraction of that and the flattening of, of flattening out of things.
If we can get back to particularity context and appreciation of physicality of, of our limited, our finitude. It can be such a beautiful thing to interact with, but it requires the like the virtues of just like presence and one day at a time, one moment at a time.
It's hard to do.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: It's hard to do and I don't think, I don't think, and I hope this came through both in the writing and other places, I, I'm very skeptical of our ability to make these changes as individuals. So there's a whole body of technological tech writing and blogging and whatever that is very like tips based, put down your phone at the dinner table.
Limit screen time for kids check email twice a day. Those are like great things to do and people should, we should all figure out like rhythms and patterns. Often those are attenuate, those often attend extremely privileged situations. So I feel like naming that not, not, there's a fair amount of workers in the, in the white collar world who cannot say, I only check email twice a day.
And I think that's actually part of it.
Evan Rosa: Yeah.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: those people need to have space. So even when, Cal Newport is I have all these structures and yeah. 'cause it's also part of your brand, which is great. I love Cal Newport stuff, but I think I, I, I have no way how I, for many of those things, I don't know how I would implement them.
And I probably have one of the most flexible jobs there is in terms of being able to say stuff like that. So if I worked at IBM or just some big company, I can't be like, I only do tech four hours a week.
Evan Rosa: Right. Or,
We are so ready to, to offer. theoretical ways out without understanding that there is an experiential side to this, a habitual side to this that is going to put up all sorts of resistance to whatever principled tips and tricks and
advice is out there.
Advice is the thinnest form of, of wisdom, you
Aaron Cline Hanbury: A very practical one is, I don't know how old your younger two are, but it's virtually impossible to be an elementary school parent without a bevy of apps on your phone.
Evan Rosa: It's ridiculous. Yeah. They're 11 and eight.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: So, right there, and all, I say that to say not to be defeatist, but there are structural, perhaps policy certainly ecclesiastical, community based. Changes that need to be made that are, that go beyond the have some discipline which I mean, you need that too, but it, it feels to me like we need both things in order to make real progress on some of these challenges.
Evan Rosa: Huge challenges, but I think what, what you're doing with like drawing, drawing attention to
to to this and a new appreciation for it. And then resourcing thoughtful people with alternatives, and pay attention to their own story Super valuable.
I really appreciate talking to you today, Aaron.
Aaron Cline Hanbury: Yeah, Evan, it's fun.
Evan Rosa: Thanks for joining us today Friends. A special thanks to Aaron Klein Handbury for joining us today. Noah Sentil is our production assistant. And I'm Evan Rosa. I produce the show. For The Life of the World is a production of the Yale Center For Faith and Culture at Yale Divinity School. For more information, visit us online at faith dot Yale dot edu and life worth living dot Yale edu, where you can find a variety of educational resources, including podcasts, videos, books, and more, all to help people envision and pursue lives worthy of our humanity.
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