A few days ago Nathan Jurgenson tweeted a short thread commenting on what Twitter has become. “[I]t feels weird to tweet about things that arent news lately,” Jurgenson noted. A sociologist with an interest in social media and identity, he found that it felt rude to tweet about his interests when his feed seemed only concerned with the latest political news. About this tendency Jurgenson wisely observed, “following the news all day is the opposite of being more informed and it certainly isnt a kind ‘resistance.'”

These observations resonated with me. I’ve had a similar experience when logging in to Twitter, only to find that Twitter is fixated on the political (pseudo-)event of the moment. In those moments it seems if not rude then at least quixotic to link to a post that is not at all related to what everyone happens to be talking about. Sometimes, of course, it is not only political news that has this effect, it is also the all to frequent tragedy that can consume Twitter’s collective attention or the frivolous faux-controversy, etc.

In moments like these Twitter — and the same is true to some degree of other platforms — demands something of us, but it is not thought. It demands a reaction, one that is swift, emotionally charged, and in keeping with the affective tenor of the platform. In many respects, this entails not only an absence of thought but conditions that are overtly hostile to thought.

Even apart from crisis, controversies, and tragedies, however, the effect is consistent: the focus is inexorably on the fleeting present. The past has no hold, the future does not come into play. Our time is now, our place is everywhere. Of course, social media has only heightened a tendency critics have noted since at least Kierkegaard’s time. To be well-informed, meaning up with current events, undermines the possibility of serious thinking, mature emotional responses, sound judgment, and wise action.

It is important, in my view, to make clear that this is not merely a problem of information overload. If it were only information we were dealing with, then we might be better able to recognize the nature of the problem and act to correct it. It is also, as I’ve noted briefly before, an affect overload problem. It is the emotional register that accounts for the Pavlovian alacrity with which we attend to our devices and the digital flows for which they are a portal. These devices, then, are, in effect, Skinner boxes we willingly inhabit that condition our cognitive and emotional lives. Twitter says “feel this,” we say “how intensely?” Social media never invites us to step away, to think and reflect, to remain silent, to refuse a response for now or may be indefinitely.

Under these circumstances, there is no place for thought.

For the sake of the world, thought must, at least for a time, take leave of the world, especially the world mediated to us by social media. We must, in other words, by deliberate action, make a place for thought.

The title of a recent article by Virginia Heffernan in Wired asked, “Who Will Take Responsibility for Facebook?”

The answer, of course, is that no one will. Our technological systems, by nature of their design and the ideology that sustains them, are machines for the evasion of moral responsibility.

Heffernan focused on Facebook’s role in spreading misinformation during the last election, which has recently come to fuller and more damning light. Not long afterwards, in an post titled “Google and Facebook Failed Us,” Alexis Madrigal explored how misinformation about the Las Vegas shooting spread on both Google and Facebook. Castigating both companies for their failure to take responsibility for the results their algorithms generated, Madrigal concluded: “There’s no hiding behind algorithms anymore. The problems cannot be minimized. The machines have shown they are not up to the task of dealing with rare, breaking news events, and it is unlikely that they will be in the near future. More humans must be added to the decision-making process, and the sooner the better.”

Writing on the same topic, William Turton noted of Google that “the company’s statement cast responsibility on an algorithm as if it were an autonomous force.” “It’s not about the algorithm,” he adds. “It’s not about what the algorithm was supposed to do, except that it went off and did a bad thing instead. Google’s business lives and dies by these things we call algorithms; getting this stuff right is its one job.”

Siva Vaidhyanathan, a scholar at UVA whose book on Facebook, Anti-Social Media, is to be released next year, described his impression of Zuckerberg to Hefferman in this way: “He lacks an appreciation for nuance, complexity, contingency, or even difficulty. He lacks a historical sense of the horrible things that humans are capable of doing to each other and the planet.”

This leads Heffernan to conclude the following:  “Zuckerberg may just lack the moral framework to recognize the scope of his failures and his culpability [….] It’s hard to imagine he will submit to truth and reconciliation, or use Facebook’s humiliation as a chance to reconsider its place in the world. Instead, he will likely keep lawyering up and gun it on denial and optics, as he has during past ­litigation and conflict.”

This is an arresting observation: “Zuckerberg may just lack the moral framework to recognize the scope of his failures and his culpability.” Frankly, I suspect Zuckerberg is not the only one among our technologists who fits this description.

It immediately reminded me of Hannah Arendt’s efforts to understand the unique evils of mid-twentieth century totalitarianism, specifically the evil of the Holocaust. Thoughtlessness, or better an inability to think, Arendt believed, was near the root of this new kind of evil. Arendt insisted “absence of thought is not stupidity; it can be found in highly intelligent people, and a wicked heart is not its cause; it is probably the other way round, that wickedness may be caused by absence of thought.”

I should immediately make clear that I do not mean to equate Facebook’s and Google’s very serious failures with the Holocaust. This is not at all my point. Rather, it is that, following Arendt’s analysis, we can see more clearly how a certain inability to think (not merely calculate or problem solve) and consequently to assume moral responsibility for one’s actions, takes hold and yields a troubling and pernicious species of ethical and moral failures.

It is one thing to expose and judge individuals whose actions are consciously intended to cause harm and work against the public good. It is another thing altogether to encounter individuals who, while clearly committing such acts, are, in fact, themselves oblivious to the true nature of their actions. They are so enclosed within an ideological shell that they seem unable to see what they are doing, much less assume responsibility for it.

It would seem that whatever else we may say about algorithms as technical entities, they also function as the symbolic base of an ideology that abets thoughtlessness and facilitates the evasion of responsibility. As such, however, they are just a new iteration of the moral myopia that many of our best tech critics have been warning us about for a very long time (see here and here).

Two years ago, I published a post, Resisting the Habits of the Algorithmic Mind, in which I explored this topic of thoughtlessness and moral responsibility. I think it remains a useful way of making sense of the peculiar contours of our contemporary moral topography.

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In 2015, former Google and Uber engineer, Anthony Levandowski, founded a nonprofit called Way of the Future in order to develop an AI god and promote its worship. The mission statement reads as follows: “To develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on artificial intelligence and through understanding and worship of the Godhead contribute to the betterment of society.”

A few loosely interconnected observations follow.

First, I would suggest that Levandowski’s mission only makes explicit what is often our implicit relationship to technology. Technology is a god to us, albeit a “god that limps,” in Colin Norman’s arresting image drawn from Greek mythology’s lame, metal-working god, Hephaestus. We trust ourselves to it, assign to it salvific powers, uncritically answer its directives, and hang our hope on it. But in its role as functional deity it inevitably disappoints.

Second, it seems to me that the project should be taken seriously only as an explicit signifier of implicit and tacit realities. However, as Levandowski’s project makes clear, quasi-religious techno-fantasies are often embraced by well-placed and influential technologists. To some degree, then, it would seem that the development of technology, its funding and direction, is driven by these motives and they should not be altogether ignored.

Third, the article discussing Levandowski’s project also leans on some comments from historian Yuval Hariri, who has developed something of reputation for grand claims about the future of humanity. According to the article, “history tells us that new technologies and scientific discoveries have continually shaped religion, killing old gods and giving birth to new ones.” He then quotes Harari:

That is why agricultural deities were different from hunter-gatherer spirits, why factory hands and peasants fantasised about different paradises, and why the revolutionary technologies of the 21st century are far more likely to spawn unprecedented religious movements than to revive medieval creeds.

Both miss the reciprocal relationship between society and technology, and specifically between religion in the West and technology. It is not only a matter of technology impacting and effecting religion, it is also a matter of religion infusing and informing the development of technology. I’ve cited it numerous times before, but it’s worth mentioning again that David Noble’s The Religion of Technology is wonderful place to start in order to understand this dynamic. According to Noble, “literally and historically,” modern technology and religion have co-evolved and, consequently, “the technological enterprise has been and remains suffused with religious belief.” We fail to understand technology in the West if we do not understand this socio-religious dimension.

Fourth, the author goes on to cite advocates of transhumanism. Transhumanism is usefully construed as a Christian heresy, or, if you prefer, (post-)Christian fan-fiction. I elaborate on that claim toward the end of this post.

Fifth, some of our most incisive tech critics have been people of religious conviction. Jacques Ellul, Marshall McLuhan, Ivan Illich, Walter Ong, Albert Borgmann, Wendell Berry, and Bill McKibben come to mind. Neil Postman, who was not a religious person as far as I know, nonetheless attributed his critical interest in media to a reading of the second commandment. The tech critic of religious faith has at least one thing going for them: their conviction that there is one God and technology is not it.* Valuing technology for more than it is, then, appears as a species of idolatry.

Sixth, all god-talk in relation to technology takes for granted some understanding of God, religion, faith, etc. It is often worth excavating the nature of these assumptions because they are usually doing important conceptual work in whatever argument or claim they are embedded.

Seventh, in the article transhumanist philosopher Zoltan Istvan claims of the potential AI deity, that “this God will actually exist and hopefully will do things for us.” The religion of technology is ultimately about power: human power over nature and, finally, the power of some humans over others.

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*Clearly, I principally have in view the monotheistic religious traditions.