Technology Lessons for the Religiously Minded Individual

When the telephone was invented, the great Jewish sage the Chofetz Chaim mused that its invention demonstrates to those who are weak in faith that God hears our prayers. If people could hear the voices of others from hundreds of miles away via this new device, then surely God could hear us even from on high.

Similarly, the Chofetz Chaim stated about the invention of the camera that the ability to take perfect impressions of people proves to all the dictum in the Zohar and alluded to in the Talmud that every act of a person in this world, both good and evil, creates a testimony at the moment of heavenly judgment.

The pace of change in our modern world has amplified this idea. Only ten years ago one required a different device for taking pictures, answering phone calls, watching video, editing video, making computations, reading newspapers, recording sound, giving driving directions and filming video.

Today each of these functions and many more can be accomplished using one device, the iPhone and its android competitors.

Source: jeshoots.com

The ubiquitous smartphone presents both an opportunity and a challenge for educators, something I discussed in a recent MOFET webinar which I hope to blog about in the near future. But it is an even greater charge for religiously minded individuals. The saying from the second chapter of Ethics of the Fathers that all of our deeds are written in a book has now been vividly demonstrated.

One does not need to look only to the smartphone as proof that everything one says and does is being recorded for posterity. Every time one goes to social media, a news site or blog, this becomes painfully obvious. When I open Facebook or the New York Times, all I see is cameras. My wife sees costumes. The reason of course is the ads.

It seems almost every site now has ads. Full disclosure, this blog has ads too. You have to pay the bills somehow. What is unique about Internet ads, making them so attractive to advertisers, is that they are targeted to the individual. I see ads for cameras because I am passionate about livestreaming sporting events as the faculty advisor of the Cougar Nation Network. My wife is planning our children's' Purim costumes so as she searches for deals online, these deals follow her to every website she goes. The Internet is tracking our every move and using the information gathered to tailor messages for us.

This is nothing new. Five years ago, the Wall Street Journal published a series on digital privacy entitled What They Know. The tradeoff for getting so much online for free, our news, entertainment, our documents, and even our email is that we are no longer the customer, we are the product. Google and other online ad companies track our every move online, selling our activity to advertisers wishing to pitch their products to likely buyers. All of our actions online are recorded not in a book but in a vast database.

This might seem scary and it is at times. But it also unlocks the great potential of this brave new online world. For just as technology records what we do, it allows us to share our passions with others.

I told my nine year old daughter the other day how when I was a child, even if I owned a video camera and was creative enough to make movies, I had a very limited audience for my productions. Perhaps I could screen my films to my family, maybe even my friends in school. But I had no access to any media broadcasting platform. My video could be seen by dozens, not more. Now one can make movies that are watched by hundreds, thousands, or even millions. We live in an online meritocracy. With passion, creativity, hard work, and some luck, anyone can share one's creations with a vast audience.

This I believe is one more message technology offers the religiously minded modern person. Our actions matter. Every one of us can change the world. As the Talmud says, man was created alone in the world to teach us that every human being is an entire world. I am writing this blog post alone in my kitchen but the moment I click publish, it will be shared with the entire world. Our job is to enrich this world with which we are sharing.