The Moral Character of Means and Ends

"In the modern world, the most dangerous form of determinism is the technological phenomenon. It is not a question of getting rid of it, but, by an act of freedom, of transcending it. . . The first step in the quest, the first act of freedom, is to become aware of the necessity."[1]

With the death (in May 1994) of the University of Bordeaux sociologist Jacques Ellul, the world lost its most radical, unremitting critic of the impact of technology on modernity. Of course, his writings remain available to those willing to engage in a tenacious search.[2] Neil Postman's Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, Ian Barbour's Ethics in An Age of Technology, Carl Mitcham's Thinking Through Technology, Stephen Monsma's Responsible Technology, and other works, continue the discussion, pushing it in one direction or another in valuable ways.[3]

Many, of course, view any criticism of technology as misguided and they welcome the development and invasion of technology with glee. Technology is a great, positive gift! For others, technology is neutral; it is merely a set of tools, empowering us for our various tasks, a means to our ends. Moral evaluation, in this view, is appropriately directed at an assessment of the ends, and of the users of various technologies, not at the technical means, per se, which are but neutral instruments.

At the outset, then, let us agree that the moral character of technology's users and of technology's consequences are important matters. But the character of the means affects both its users and the character of its ends. The means may also become ends-in-themselves, being developed and deployed "just because" it is possible to do so and not in conscious service of some good end.

In a Christian worldview, at least, there is an indissoluble relation of means to ends. Our means cannot be independent but must exhibit and partake of the end. There must be no contradiction of means and ends, no talk of (good) ends "justifying' (dubious or evil) means. Our ends must be God's ends, the coming kingdom of God. And while we live "in the night," we must act "as in the day" (Rom. 13:11-14). In a Christian worldview, knowledge carries with it responsibility; we must not dissociate technological research, knowledge, and development from a responsible examination of the consequences.

Tools and Methods of Technology

As we examine technology, we need to review it on two levels. First, there is the level of technological "tools." Computers, hydroelectric plants, televisions, and automobiles are examples of such tools. But, second, technology is a "method." Technology is the development of "techniques" or "means" for effectively achieving practical results. Specifically, the technological method is characterized by rationality, artificiality, and efficiency. Rather than following nature, tradition, spirituality, or intuition, technology rigorously subjects its elements to rational analysis, and quantifies, measures, and develops artificial means which are demonstrably as efficient as possible. Technology is the development of the "one best means in every field."[4] In this sense, technology is present not just in our tools (computers, etc.), but also in our political organization (bureaucracy), and in techniques for psychotherapy, church growth, sexual relations, and so on.

In the most basic sense, the development of our technology (both tools and methods) has wonderfully assisted higher education. Transportation technologies make it possible for us to travel places to teach and learn. Engineering and construction technologies provide us with comfortable, well-lighted environments for study. Organizational techniques make possible the integration of masses of people into institutions of higher learning. Who would want to return to an era when higher education was accessible only to the few and the privileged?

Education has always been concerned about information. Reducing history and literature from oral to written form was a great advance: ideas and information could be studied even in the absence of a teacher. The development of the printing press meant that such reading would be widely accessible, no longer requiring a pilgrimage to the location of handwritten copies.

In our generation, information technologies have moved us miles beyond this stage, and transformed higher education. Writing papers or books without a personal computer is almost unthinkable today. Inexpensive photocopiers and fax machines greatly enhance our capacities for distributing our writings. CD-ROM, electronic mail, and computer networks give us access to almost unlimited information. We can communicate by telephone, fax, or e-mail almost anywhere in the world.

Computers allow us to simulate experiments to a degree unthinkable in traditional laboratories. Video technologies permit viewers to listen to and watch lecturers or study objects thousands of miles away, often in detail unavailable in any other format. Lectures and presentations are augmented and often enriched with audio-visual presentations. Communications technologies make possible interactive learning, both with information and with teachers and fellow-students in other locations.

The Virtual Campus

The development of educational technology is unlikely to slow down. In a recent article in the Sunday New York Times educational supplement, Rosalie Stemer reviewed the growth of "The Virtual Classroom."[5] She describes a class in electrical engineering at Southern Methodist that includes not only 44 bodies present but six others watching live from New Jersey on television monitors, occasionally interrupting the class on speaker-phones. The six are working toward degrees from the National Technological University in Colorado, which offers similar courses from 45 other universities!

The State University of New York and the California State University, two of the largest multi-campus systems in the United States, are experimenting with electronic "classrooms" utilizing video, computer networks, and machine-graded examinations. Even on some smaller college campuses, students may "take a class" in a computer lab or on their dorm room computer. What drives these developments is (1) the potential economies of one teacher with a class of hundreds or thousands, (2) the potential to educate many students who would not otherwise be able to get to campus, (3) the possibility of more people studying with high- demand, "star" faculty, and (4) the opportunity to actively involve students by giving them computers capable of experiments and greater interaction (rather than passively sitting through a lecture).

Students in a physics studio at Rensselaer Polytechnic "sit at computer work stations that provide text, full-motion video, audio, color photos, graphs and spreadsheets. Probes hooked up to computers let students carry out experiments. Multimedia software asks questions, displays and analyzes student responses, plots results and outcomes, and then asks new questions."[6] According to Stemer, some faculty and administrators worry about the effects of high-tech higher education on the student- teacher relationship. But a greater concern seems to be whether faculty members will be adequately compensated (e.g., for their video performances), and whether job security and turf control are protected.

It is hard not to be appreciative of much of this technological development. I, for one, am very grateful for the personal computer as it has assisted me and my students in writing and editing (I don't think we are just "word processing"). I am very happy that I have two video interviews of Jacques Ellul (albeit in French, which limits their usefulness with most of my students), since he never came to the U.S., and is now departed. I am working on developing a video series in Christian ethics.

The Language of Technology

Christians, after all, are called to be "in the world" as "ambassadors" for Jesus Christ. We can hardly do that very well unless we learn the language, the customs, and the terrain of the country to which we have been sent. This country speaks the "language" of technology and the computer. It "speaks" e-mail and fax and "travels" by audio and video. We will fail as ambassadors if we do not learn the language--no less than if we were to be sent to France and refused to learn French.

But even in France, even while speaking French, our accent would remain because of our deep socialization by our home country. Our heart, our values, our character, our ends, would derive from the home country we represent. While we are "in" the world, we are "not of" the world (John 17: 14-18). We live in "this age" but we are not to be conformed to it, but rather transformed by the renewal of our mind, and conformed to the "age to come" (Rom. 12:1-2; 13:11-14). The Christian "is the citizen of another Kingdom, and it is thence that he derives his way of thinking, judging, and feeling. His heart and his thought are elsewhere. He is the subject of another State, he is the ambassador of this State upon earth; that is to say, he ought to present the demands of his Master, he establishes a relation between the two, but he cannot take the side of the world. He stands up for the interests of his Master, as an ambassador champions the interests of his country."[7]

In particular, then, I want to raise six issues which are points of tension between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of technology, for educators. These are not necessarily the only, or the six most important, points to be raised. But each of them is important and perhaps the whole will provoke us to pursue our project as Christ's ambassadors in higher education. In the way we teach our students, design our courses and curricula, speak up in faculty meetings, and model of a different style of life and work, these might become some of our concerns.

1. Protesting and resisting the culture of entertainment. Because of the omnipresence and audio-visual intensity of television and other entertainment media in our culture, professors and students sometimes reinforce the idea that education should be entertaining. It is too easy to allow this to be uncontested. We need to argue for (and exhibit) restraints on television and the "Walkman" culture, and on behalf of the joy of reading, discussion, and contemplation. By crafting challenging, substantive lectures, by our passion for learning, by guiding our students into great literature, by giving our full attention to our students, we may be able to draw our students toward something much richer, deeper, and ultimately more gratifying, than card tricks and smoke-and-mirrors.
2. Resisting the curricular monopoly of technical disciplines. Certainly we need good engineers and technologists. Medicine, nursing, business, and science, however, are also effectively technological disciplines today. There is a tendency to promote "practical," vocationally-oriented disciplines-and to deprecate the "soft," impractical study of literature, philosophy, theology, history, and the arts. In my view, we need to strengthen the general education curriculum so that those who view university education as technical, vocational training will be significantly exposed to a more traditional liberal arts menu. And let's encourage more of our students to major or minor in philosophy, history, literature, and other non-technological disciplines.
3. Resisting the tyranny of quantity over quality. The technological mind is quantitatively oriented. But the information superhighway already has a traffic jam. The quantity of information is overwhelming and aggressive students may access volumes of facts and sources. But in this process, quality is often difficult to judge, and depth is difficult to probe. So too, large classes may seem more important than small ones. In my view, Christians should show leadership in focusing on less information, more sophisticated and mature analysis, greater quality ("classic" texts), and on deeper relationships with fewer people.
4. Resisting the depersonalization of education. With larger numbers, and the rise of video and extension education, personal relations of professors with students (and, for that matter, professors with their colleagues) are threatened. But interpersonal relations, face-to-face conversation, and debate are important pedagogically. Furthermore, our students are whole persons, individuals with names, stories, and struggles. Abandoning these relations in favor of machine-mediated relations betrays important values in the kingdom of God we represent.
5. Resisting the technological standardization of information. The media we use make possible--but also filter and constrain--what counts as information in our learning. The replacement of essay examinations with machine-graded, standardized testing is a good example of this trend. Information about the truth and reality of our world comes in diverse and complex ways. Student intelligence is not equivalent to one's ability to complete timed, standardized IQ tests. The people of Christ are shaped by a robust appreciation of the diversity of God's good creation. Technicized "facts" are only one part of knowledge, one (but only one) contributor to wisdom and understanding.
6. Resisting the technicization of all fields. The intellectual methods that are appropriate to biological science or civil engineering are not the same as those appropriate to psychology, history, or biblical studies. We are seeing a takeover of all fields of learning by the technological mind, and we must resist. Raving rationalism, the subordination of the qualitative to the quantitative, the worship of "facts" and "effectiveness" diminish and distort most areas of life and learning. This trend has been most visible in the pathetic obeisance social "science" has paid to the methods of natural science. But across the curriculum, technological values have intruded, displacing traditional, spiritual, and moral values. "Normality" and predictability become high values. "Success" in quantitative terms replaces "goodness" as the primary moral value.

In the above, I have not spelled out in any detail an alternative Christian vision. The six issues, and my provocative language of resistance, are each worthy of debate. The extent to which these (and other) points of tension are experienced or observed by faculty and administrators will differ from place to place and field to field. My purpose is to give a perspective which provokes Christians in higher education to cultivate their specific identity as ambassadors of Christ's kingdom, and then carefully examine their relationship to the rising dominance of technological tools and methods in higher education. We have only one God, and it can't be Technology.

Notes

1. Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (New York: Vintage Books, 1964), xxxiii.
2. Of his more than thirty volumes of social criticism, The Technological System (New York: Continuum, 1980), The Technological Bluff (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (New York: Knopf, 1965), and The Humiliation of the Word (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985) are especially appropriate to the topic of this essay. The Presence of the Kingdom (New York: Seabury, 1967) gives an outline of his Christian response.
3. Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Vintage, 1992); Ian Barbour, Ethics in An Age of Technology (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1993); Carl Mitcham, Thinking Through Technology (University of Chicago, 1994); Stephen V. Monsma, ed., Responsible Technology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986).
4. Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (New York: Vintage Books, 1964), 21.
5. Rosalie Stemer, "The Virtual Classroom," New York Times (Jan. 8, 1994), "Education Life" supplement, 39-41.
6. Ibid., 40.
7. Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom (New York, Seabury, 1967), 45