Program Or Be Programmed, part 2: Don’t Be Always On

Instead of operating in time, computers operate from decision to decision, choice to choice. Nothing happens between the moments I type any two letters on the keyboard. As far as the computer is concerned, this word is the same as this one, even though I took one second to produce the first, and a full minute to produce the second. The machine waits for the next command and so on, and so on. The time between those commands can be days, or a millisecond.

That’s how Douglas Rushkoff unpacks the asynchronous nature of computers, their programmed bias to operate outside of the flow of time. Thus the first of his Ten Commands for Life in A Digital Age (see an intro to the book here): Don’t Be Always On.

Rushkoff can recall the early days of online discourse, when discussions lasted for weeks at a time on cyber bulletin boards. Users would log in to a website, read all of the comments on a given topic, then most likely log off before considering and then composing their contribution to the discussion. Then, hours or even days later, they would log back in and post their entry. It was slow and deliberative.

Now we don’t need to log in. We’re in a perpetually logged-in state. We don’t have to go get the discussion, because new digital platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and those ubiquitous blog comment sections bring the discussion to us. Our phones and screens bleep and blink with every response to our content. We devour it quickly and then repost/retweet/reshare.

Rushkoff’s analysis of this is solid stuff, and I won’t parrot it here. I’m interested in how this always-on tendency, which runs fundamentally counter to the asynchronous bias these digital programs are all built with, affects ministry. How do pastors, for example,  exploit the bias of computers?

“Nothing happens between the moments I type . . . ”

Well, almost nothing. Something is happening in the person to whom my typing is directed. Some anticipation is building, surely, and the longer I stretch those moments out between keystrokes, the more that anticipation builds, the more my Facebook friend will expect from my composition. The more I take advantage of the bias of the digital medium and make it wait for me, the more important what I have to say will seem.

Can the things we need to say in our ministry contexts fit in a thumb-punched email or text? Character limits aside, are we not speaking of the same mysteries our forefathers and foremothers spoke of in abbeys, cathedrals, deserts, and prisons? And don’t these mysteries demand time? Don’t they resist quick replication and summation? I mean, if it can’t wait, how important is it?

Since reading POBP, I’ve switched all of the notifications on my smartphone applications to “off.” I’ll check my emails when I want to, and I’ll respond to them in time. Those tweets aren’t going anywhere, so I don’t need to be alerted the moment they’re posted. And that latest volley in my Facebook debate with my brother-in-law over NPR’s firing of Juan Williams–I’ll get to it when I mean to do some debating, not while I’m listening to the new The Extra Lens album.

My contributions–and therefore my ministry–will come out better for allowing the computer to do what it wants to do–chew up those moments in between.

How do you exploit computers out-of-time bias? Or are you drowning in a wave of status update notifications?