Who Rules Who?

I spend most of my working days in front of a computer, working with databases, creating animated tutorials, teaching research through live demonstration, developing a library collection, and checking the inevitable e-mail. It's only when the system goes down or the power goes off that I notice how dependent I am on all my electronic tools.

Something has fundamentally changed in the past couple of decades. Our rushing technological revolution has made last week's gadget obsolete and next week's gadget so amazing it takes your breath away. The sheer human ability to advance the frontiers puts me in awe. The things we can do with information management, engineering, medicine, and so on, have made us almost god-like.

But the one thing we're not doing much of is thinking through what it means to link our lives with the new technologies. No, I'm not talking about the fact that we're tied to our e-mail and our cell phones and our 24/7 virtual lives. I'm referring to a more spiritual implication - that we are finding in our technology a God substitute that can guarantee us entertainment, fulfillment, maybe even a chance to live far beyond the current lifespan. We are conquering disease, enhancing our pleasures, and wallowing in our accomplishments.

But are we free?

That's at least one of the questions we should be asking.

The other is this: If we've found a new god, what have we done with the one we used to serve?