Technological Honesty

My smartphone is lying to me again. I’m walking around downtown Minneapolis looking for dinner after a conference. My maps app is telling me to continue northeast on Marquette and then turn left at 6th Street. But I’m not on Marquette. I’m a block over. I’m the victim of a well- known problem:  urban canyons can foil GPS navigation, fooling us with false location information. 

Technically, the app wasn’t lying with a false location.  If I zoom out a bit, I see a faint blue circle around my location. The center dot is the best estimate of my location, but the wider blue circle represents the tolerance of the available data. My displayed location is dependent on the number of GPS satellite signals currently received, though my phone tries to be a bit smarter and also uses available cellular and WiFi data to refine the location estimate. It turns out that my actual location on 2nd Avenue is within the larger blue circle. Thus, although the walking directions are based on the false location, I can quickly orient myself and keep going. A short time later my displayed location updates, jumping over a block to show me on 2nd, tracking me very accurately in real-time for the rest of my journey.

Back at home from my trip, as I am writing this blog, I check my location while sitting at my desk in my home office. Compared to the moving target I presented in Minneapolis among buildings that interfered with the GPS, as a stationary target here in the suburbs of Grand Rapids I should be easier to find. But again the location is not quite right – the app thinks I am sitting in the backyard. At least it knows my car is really parked in the garage.  Honesty is a key virtue for Christians to pursue. In this article I first identify the definition and some nuances about honesty, then turn to how technology can aid our honesty or spur us towards dishonesty.

Defining Honest

Merriam-Webster defines the word honest as “legitimate, truthful, free from fraud or deception.” Two of the most respected American presidents are revered largely because of this virtuous characteristic. The honesty of the first American President, George Washington was also renowned, particularly the mythical story of the young George chopping down his father’s cherry tree, but then confessing to the crime later, announcing that he could not lie about it. The truthfulness of the sixteenth American President “Honest Abe” Lincoln was also widely reported. 

Honest statements are not only true but also sufficiently accurate and complete so that the statement does not intentionally mislead. If the listener was unintentionally misled, then at the first sign of confusion, the speaker is obligated to correct the misinterpretation. If one feels the need to justify one’s statement as “technically true” then it was probably misleading and was thus dishonest.

Dishonesty with ourselves is self-deception corrected only when we are truthful with ourselves. Certain truths are unpleasant or even repulsive. In the face of these, I might cope through mental self-defense mechanisms. I might ignore certain information that would detract from my preferred narrative. I might push certain facts into my subconscious. For example, we may need to face the music on our spending habits when deep down we recognize that our expenses are higher than our income. Overcoming self-deception is similar to the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, guilt and depression, and finally acceptance.

Lack of truth can certainly be harmful, but before turning to technological honesty, let’s also briefly look at how truth can be used as a weapon. I can use honesty as a cover for cruelty. Choosing to share a brutal truth, without regard to kindness, is spiteful and hard-hearted. This is particularly true if my opinion was not solicited, Even when asked, I ought to choose my words with care. If I point out an error in spite, rather than in love, I may be hurting more than correcting. If I pronounce judgment on someone’s worth, looks, or ability, my words become stones cast to injure through degradation. Cruel honesty is no virtue. 

Likewise, sharing information that does not belong to me does not count as honesty. Such an act is theft if I am stealing intellectual property. If I am threatening to share this information unless compensated, it is blackmail.  

But what does honesty have to do with technology? Quite a bit, it turns out.

Tech Keeping Us Honesty

Many technological tools are quite reliable. This trait can promote honesty in the users of those tools in at least two ways. First, technology provides a written record of our commitments. We can find such technological tools in some of the earliest uses of writing to document a contractual arrangement. For example, the Sumerian contract  shown in the figure is written in cuneiform on a clay tablet dating around  2600 B.C., recording the sale of a house and field. Modern technology provides additional instruments to document our promises. My Apple Watch reminds me I need to walk a bit more today to hit my exercise goal. Blockchain algorithms are used to authenticate and record a Bitcoin transaction.

A second way technology promotes honesty in users is through error detection. Some tools detect dishonesty in others. A polygraph monitors physiological indicators to signal when a person is likely telling a lie. A police radar gun detects when motorists are speeding. In 1986, a radiation detector in Sweden alerted the world to the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. Some tools help us to be honest with ourselves. If I commit to exercising to keep my blood pressure down, a home blood pressure monitor helps me track whether I am sticking to my commitment. The lane departure warning on my car alerts me when my vehicle strays, probably because my attention was straying. A grammar checker helps me detect errors in my writing. But not all tools are aids to correction. Some are designed to deceive.

Less than Honest with our Tech Tools

Preying on our trust in devices as reliable, some technological inventions have been designed for deceit, aiding and abetting our dishonesty. Deep fake videos take advantage of our trust in the reliability of technology, fooling us into falsely believing a famous person said or did something. Counterfeit money is designed to look just like the real thing, enabling theft through dishonesty.

Ironically, while we might be duped because we trust technology too easily, at the same time we might try to fool others through the common experience of tech breakdown. We might lie about a phone battery dying to get out of awkward conversations. We might claim an email never arrived to excuse missing a deadline. We might paint an overly glamorous picture of our lives by carefully curating a social media persona that glosses over any blemish.

Technology that enables deceit is contemptible, but using technology in the name of honesty in order to harm is equally reprehensible. How often do we see replies and comments on social media that someone claims to be posting in the pursuit of truth, but really are meant to insult and hurtfully criticize? Cruel honesty using technology is no virtue. Similarly, publicly announcing a security flaw in a widely used product without giving the vendor a reasonable chance to first correct the problem is an intentional act of sabotage, done for the thrill or notoriety, without a care for the company or for their users. Such cruel exposure of truth is no virtue.

Conclusion

Christians with influence over technology should work towards designing products that promote honesty in two ways. First, the design itself should be open and clear to be sure users understand how it works, how reliable it is, and how safe it is. Second, the product should be designed with characteristics that promote honesty in the user and avoid enabling deceptive practices.

For those that have less influence over technology design, we still make choices as consumers. As tech users, we ought to be thoughtful about the biases our tools might have, discerning carefully what to buy and how to use it with integrity. Furthermore, our individual buying decisions accumulate into market forces that drive the direction of future design. We implicitly vote for the technology we want tomorrow by what we purchase today. Let us buy and use our tools wisely. 

 

Brain vs. Brawn

Mind over matter. 

Brainpower. 

Life of the mind. 

Brain versus brawn.

Common phrases like this emphasize how much our culture venerates the intellectual. Going all the way back to Greek philosophers, we are led to believe that the purest morality is attained when one focuses on the mind and thought, putting aside the body and corporeal desires. 

However, if the mind is godly and good while the body is worldly and evil, then why wouldn’t God have just created us as spirits?  Instead, he created us as physical beings with mass and inertia, with blood and muscle. If the ancient Greeks were right -- the production of knowledge with our mind alone is good, while the production of things using our hands is the least noble -- then why would God place us bodily in a creation full of physical things and put us in charge of this physical creation? 

Christians can get caught up in a Hellenistic way of thinking, mistaking a focus on the mind for a focus on the spirit. But our soul is not synonymous with our brain. Furthermore, our core identity is not purely spirit. After all, Christians worldwide profess to believe in the physical incarnation of Jesus Christ and his bodily resurrection, and further, put our hope in our own future resurrection of the body.

We might still elevate the mind above the body when it comes to morality and pursuing virtue. However, thinking alone does not imply virtue unless it is accompanied by action. Thinking about embracing my spouse is not the same as the actual physical act. Thinking about serving my neighbor is not the same as actually filling their needs by offering physical aid in the flesh. 

Some temptations have their root in physical desires such as gluttony driven by culinary hunger or lust driven by sexual hunger. However, not all temptation is solely of the body. Pure thought is not always pure: our mind alone can drive sins of pride and gluttony. Sin does not taint our body alone but taints our minds as well.

Giving physical embodiment its due is important for engineers, scientists, and all of us involved in technology either as a career or hobby. Technology is the work of our hands as much as of our minds. It is the physical embodiment of our volition. It is our will incarnate. 

Philosopher Nicholas P. Wolterstorff underlined the importance of equal respect for both mind and body:   “The Protestant Reformation, and, in particular, the Calvinist branch thereof, represents a radical rejection of this scale of values in which the life of the mind is elevated over that of the citizen, in which both modes of life are elevated over ordinary life, and in which the work of our hands is regarded as having no more than instrumental value.“  Wolterstorff allowed no sacred-secular split: “...it was these [production and reproduction aspects of ordinary life] that the Reformers, for the first time in the history of the West, bestowed with inherent and not just instrumental worth -- provided they were done to the glory of God and the good of the commonwealth.” (Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, “Should the Work of Our Hands Have Standing in the Christian College,” in Keeping Faith: Embracing the Tensions in Christian Higher Education, ed. Ronald A. Wells, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1996)

All careers have inherent value. Both the technologist and the teacher, both the machinist and the mentalist, both the physician and the philosopher have inherent worth. All vocations are sacred. All are callings from God. As such, they all deserve respect. 

At the same time, all of these careers and vocations deserve careful consideration so that they live up to their high calling. After praising the ordinary work of our hands, Wolterstorff also calls us to responsibility. It is not sufficient to rest on our laurels of inherent worth. “One serves God and humanity in one’s daily occupation....But one does not serve God and humanity by going into business and then just playing the received role of businessmen, nor by going into medicine and then just playing the received role of physician, nor by going into the academy and then just playing the received role of the academic. For those received roles are religiously fallen -- not fallen through and through, but nonetheless fallen. To serve God faithfully and to serve humanity effectively, one has to critique the received role and do what one can to alter the script.”  

Christians working in technology must consider the purpose of technology.  For what purpose do engineers develop new technological products? How is our work impacted by sin; how are our technological devices impacted by sin? How then should we work as redemptive agents in the domain of engineering? We answer these big questions In part by recognizing the impact of sin and working against it. We answer them in part by directing our technology design efforts to honor God and love our neighbor, as a Good Samaritan. In all cases, we answer not only the thoughts of our mind but with the tangible actions of our hands.