Please join me in thanking walter. [applauding] thursday night on cspan more book tv. New years day on the cspan networks, here are some of our featured programs. For our complete schedule go to cspan. Org. In january the new congress will see the largest house gop majority. Republicans take the senate majority. In the new senate 36 states will have both senators from the same political party, 21 states with two republicans and 15 with two democrats. A record a Record Number of 53 former house members in the senate. Youre watching book tv. Starting now, Craig Detweiler talks about his book kaywun. Igods. This interview is part of book tv College Series from pepperdine university. You are watching book tv on t1. We are on the campus of pepperdine university. We like to visit and talk to professors who are also authors. Authors. Joining us now is Craig Detweiler his book igods how technology shapes our spiritual and social lives. Here is the cover. What do you teach your at pepperdine . I am a filmmaker first. Screenwriting, production help students navigate the entertainment industry. Also the director of the center for entertainment, part of your professorship. It is a bit of a think tank looking at how media and culture impact each other on both sides how film shapes our public conversation and how maybe you know students can figure out, out you know, how to contribute to hopefully the greater good. Your book is listed and classified as christianity and culture. Why . I am also trained as a theologian. I have always been interested in how religious feelings are transmitted across culture. I am i am a person who has been moved by moving pictures so this is a chance for me to consider how the small screen that we carry in our pocket is slowly overtaking the big screen of cinema. The big screen of cinema but also religion. Well, that is right. What i do in the book is look at new companies that have essentially overtaken our lives, whether apple, google, facebook, amazon those are sort of the big four. We spent so many hours on any given day either on their devices or platforms. How they have built there software how that affects our relationship to each other and our relationship to god. Host you have a quotation from kevin kelly we tend to see god reflected in nature but my bet is technology is the better mirror of god. Next next to that is the picture of jesus. Guest he has the world in his hands. Kevin kelly is such a fascinating character one of the early editors of wired magazine and comes from a position of faith. He has looked looked at technology and how we organize our lives how engineers structure things as a way of talking about the ways in which god might be the original technologist. We look at our dna the human genome project to what degree is the information we have in our bodies a reflection . Are we wired or encoded in an organized fashion . What role again does god may be the technologist play in that . Host are you worried about how much time we spend on technology . Guest as a parent, we deal with a lot of technology. The day that my kid said i want a cell phone, i had to think what putting a smart phone with access to all the worlds information do and what kind of filters might we need to help them understand how to deal with that onslaught. I think all of us feel the effect of too much information. So how we sort through all of the props interruptions the things tugging at our attention and sort out what is urgent from what matters. Host you write jesus was more than a carpenter. He was a techie. Guest indeed. Everyone knows jesus was the son of a carpenter. They dont realize the greek word for carpenter is the word tech talk. It could be that we we will come to think of jesus as more than somebody good with his hands but was he more of a builder . More of a designer, more of an engineer . Maybe we need to look not to the front of the auditorium but the back that person with or tape and a flashlight figuring out how to tweak things and fix them. Host are we idolizing technology . Guest i think when i allow it to be the first thing that i interact with in the morning and the last thing that i do at night, i have allowed it to order my day. The monks actually invented the clock as a way of ordering our days so that we would understand there is a time for work prayer, food. I feel like now we are allowing our smart phones to sort of dictate the hours of our day and i wonder if our relationship is a little too intense, our closest companion. Do we need to turn it off occasionally, to take back the power in our lives, perhaps to power down in order to power up. Host do you power down . Guest yes. Our family loves to leave our phones behind. We live in california. The temptation might be to take the phone to the beach but it is supposed to be time away, time to think time to not be interrupted time to wander. And need for space in our lives to i guess make rum to be surprised by what is in front of us rather than this thing that is sort of telling us what is next. Host is that tough to do . Guest it is very hard to separate ourselves from technology. I have an assignment in class where i tell students to put it away for 24 hours and have no cell phone use can put away computers, laptops, even televisions. It almost drives them crazy. How can i do this. My parents do this. My parents will panic. Yet what they discover is they might begin the activity feeling harried but as they turn off they make more space and suddenly get more clarity and focus. They might do a weeks worth worth of homework in one afternoon because they are suddenly able to concentrate on one thing. Host are their students you cannot do it . Guest all of the students are supposed to do it. Some of them confess how hard it is, that they might have sneaked a peek and picked up a little a little bit of update when they heard that click , but what i i find is they end up kind of remarkably relieved a little bit freed by this thing that is always beckoning them. I think they start to wonder if there is the possibility of recovering a little bit of an electronic sabbath a pause on our lives. Host kaythree is it possible to be a a good christian and still very tech focused . Guest i certainly hope so. I am. I am on facebook and twitter. Yet i am trying to help us to refocus appreciate the genius of the kaywun, people like steve jobs and the engineers at google and Mark Zucker Berg who have redefined our world in amazing ways solve the problems of abundance helped us bring order to the chaos of our world and yet we might still feel a little chaotic. I guess i am trying to challenge all people to question to what degree that we have made technology and idle and perhaps to realize the limits of what it can and cant do for us. Host you. Out, and i want to no the significance, they did not no their real fathers. Guest it is an interesting thing. Such talented and superior and driven people behind these companies. Why is it that apple and amazon you know the the visionaries behind those companies were so relentless and restless in their pursuit . It is interesting that both did not no their fathers. I feel like in a sense they have become our fathers, in a sense the fathers of technology and have this relentless pursuit to be at the top, to be number one. I respect them, but i i also wonder at what. They we will be satisfied. Abcawun a subchapter called the problem with the facebook like. Guest there is really not a dislike. Even if you have bad news to share, the only option is to like it and say i agree you lost your job. So it forces you to make all dues positive even if it is something bad. And i think
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