The Online/Offline Paradox
Wednesday, February 28th, 2007For those of us in metropolitan areas, much of our life is online [this sentence needed to be rewritten 3 times, and I’m still not happy with it]. Consider tools and toys such as the Blackberry, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Google Desktop Applications. For my teaching, I use an online learning environment called Blackboard.
It is worth considering the connection between our digital life and our analog life. Despite the blur between those two domains, we need to be aware that the difference is something worth cultivating. Technology makes us who we are, only faster and more efficient–we are either better at doing good, or better at doing evil. It may fundamentally change how we do things, but it does not change who we are. The development of who we are always takes place as an off-line process. Call it personal growth, discipleship, or character formation–the hard work of developing maturity cannot take place solely through technology.
I encourage my students to deal with some pretty basic questions that I believe are worthy of some thought. For example:
- Do you have any parts of your life that are inherently off-line processes? What brought you to that conclusion?
- How does my character, my heart, the deep-down-core-of-who-I-am reveal itself through my use of technology? Are there areas where my core beliefs in the analog world are in conflict with my core beliefs in the digital realm.
- Is there a place for God in technology, or is cyberspace a non-theistic environment of human creation where moral law is irrelevant?
- As online environments (cyber-places) grow in significance and value, is there a corresponding devaluation of physical environments, particularly in terms of community gathering areas?
- If your organization has a web-site (for the public) or an intranet site (for employees), how do they differ, and why? What messages, assumptions, or beliefs underpin the way your organization presents itself?
- Does your organization have a way of dealing with a) people who have internet access, or b) people who do not have internet access? What does the organization’s approach say about its underlying philosophy of technology?
These are difficult questions, but they are the kind of questions that every leader must consider and address. If organizations are an expression of the values and character of an organization’s leaders, then our response and activities surrounding technology will also express themselves in our organization’s real world interactions.
As leaders, then, we have both agency and responsibility. In other words, we have the ability to act, and we have responsibility for the results and ramifications of those acts. This should strike us with both terror and humility, since it is in this kind of leadership that our inadequacy is most palpable.
