Confessions of a Lapsed Luddite By Charles Wellborn

[Dr. Charles Wellborn is Professor of Religion Emeritus, Florida State University and for 20 years was Dean of the Overseas Campus in London.]

    The Luddites, as many will know, were a small group of English craftsmen in the early 19th century who were alarmed because the introduction of technology into the English cloth industry meant that their jobs were under threat. They reacted violently, seeking to destroy the machines that undermined their ways of making a living. They failed, of course, and the march of new technology went inexorably on.

    I have never been a real Luddite. True, for many years I resisted the lure of the computer, despite the pitying glances of many of my friends. I was a bit of an outcast because I had no email address. But, finally, some months ago, I succumbed and bought a computer. Now I have an e‑mail address and use a computer for my writing (which really gives me, in that respect, little more than my old word processor gave me.) But I like e‑mail. It keeps me in touch with a lot of people with whom it would otherwise have been difficult to maintain connections. I have never been seriously tempted to launch a violent physical attack on machines, factories, or laboratories--all bastions of the new technology--though I have occasionally thought of taking an axe to my television set, especially when all I can get is Jerry Springer, Ricki Lake, or Montel Williams.

    I haven't lost, however, a nagging distrust of uncritical enthusiasm for any and all technological advance. The current convenient axiom in some scientific circles—“if it can be done, do it”--does not sit comfortably with me. I am old fashioned enough to believe that, perhaps, there are some things we can do which, morally, we ought not to do. The problem is that computers and technology are amoral. They are inanimate machines, however much they may mimic human behavior. They have no moral or ethical sense. Whatever morality is programmed into our technology is put there by human beings.  And I am haunted by my Biblical--and experiential--understanding that all human beings, whether they be computer programmers, scientists, technicians, or writers for ethical journals are sinful beings. Whatever moral knowledge they feed into their machines arises out of their own moral sensibility, and that sensibility is always and everywhere suspect.

    I want here to consider only one small part of the technological revolution--perhaps what some would consider a minor one. I have recently been concerned about the widespread use of video and computer games. A perceptive book has come to my attention John Naisbitt, a presidential advisor to Kennedy and Johnson, is the author of a best‑selling book, “High Tech, High Touch,” His analysis of contemporary society is a sobering and thoughtful argument, and one of his most devastating sections describes the effect that inter‑active and computer games are having on children.

    The reach of these electronic games is staggering, with an audience affecting far more people than cinema or books. About 65% of American homes, according to Naisbitt, now possess such games, and nearly half of the players are under 18. Even more alarming is the fact that American children apparently possess an appetite for the most violent of these games, and this kind of game accounts for 70% of the market. Is it surprising that some of these games are being widely promoted with slogans such as “more fun than killing your neighbor's cat.”?

    Here, I must acknowledge my debt to Melanie Phillips, a columnist for the London Times, who has researched these areas thoroughly. Children, quite obviously, are attracted to such games. Many of these games are advertised in a way deliberately targeting children. In 1998 an advertisement in a children's magazine for a game called “Vigilance” encouraged players aged 13-plus to put your “violent nature to good use.”  The ad was illustrated by a picture of a boy's jeans-clad legs, the barrel of a shotgun at his side, and two dead classmates at his feet. The latest games feature rape, torture, and mass killing. By the time the players reach the highest level of the game, “Carmeggadan,” they will have run over and “killed” 30,000 pedestrians.

    Violence in popular culture is nothing new. We live in a gun-obsessed society. But these games are something else. They affect children differently. They provide them with the sensation of  being active killers, and these sensations are becoming increasingly real, through the advances of technology. Soon the players will literally feel the backfire of a gun, the impact of a blow, or the dripping of a victim's blood . They will hear the screams of pain and terror as the child "kills" hundreds of people. Some games are being designed to toy with children's sanity, aiming to induce paranoia and deliberately confusing the child about what is real and what is not.

    The effect of such games is not only dramatic but addictive. Naisbitt quotes one authoritative source who says that one in four children who play become addicted. Very young children who can't tell reality from fantasy become easily hooked. Unlike television such games engage children's entire attention as they are taken on an emotional roller coaster that rewards them for killing people. Respected psychologists say that extended computer use is altering the physiology of children's brains, causing rising attention deficit disorders and depression. It is rearranging the ways their brains work and changing the emotional life of the child player.

    Concrete evidence exists that virtual simulation reality is usefully employed to treat phobic or traumatized patients by desensitizing them and reprogramming their reactions. We know, therefore, that this technique can change people's real lives. Why are we reluctant to admit that this same technique can change individuals for the worse as well as for the better? The fact is that children over a period of time can be programmed to be callous killers.

    Not surprisingly, the military establishment has been quick to take advantage of the technological opportunities. Soldiers are now being trained through electronic war games that provide high tech simulation and conditioning. Laser engagement systems in which blank shots trigger laser pulses on soldier's vests have spawned children's games such as “Laser Tag” whose sales in the United States reached 245 million dollars in 1998. Its derivative in ordinary action terms, "Paint Ball," provides interested individuals with the concrete opportunity to stalk and kill other individuals, without, of course, any actual physical damage. Is it surprising that that activity was reportedly used by the schoolboy killers at Columbine High School in Colorado to refine their skills for their later tragic attack? After the previous attack in Paducah, Kentucky, it was revealed that the 14-year-old killer had fired with deadly accuracy because he had had hours of practice on video games that had encouraged him to develop his skills to shoot people.

    The close, though perhaps unintended, links between the military and the computer games industry, dubbed by Naisbitt the “military‑Nintendo complex,” are reflected in the fact that children are being induced to buy games for “the smell of napalm” or “the beautiful sound of your arsenal blowing away tanks.” It is not surprising that modern war, projected to us on our television screens, has devised euphemisms for its most destructive actions. “Euphemisms” are polite words for unpleasant actions. Thus, we are told of “collateral damage,” which means that innocent civilians have been killed, or “smart bombs,” which are weapons presumably intended to reach their planned targets. What results is that play is becoming like war, and war is becoming like play. The harsh realities are neatly wrapped up in verbiage.

    I am not one of those who posit a simple one-dimensional solution to our problems. After the recent terrible incidents of school violence in the United States, there were those who rushed forward with a single cause behind the violence. Some blamed everything on lax gun laws. Othere picked out the movies or television as the culprits. Yet others singled in on what I have been discussing in this article--violent computer games. The answer, of course, does not lie in one single area. We face a larger cultural crisis. In an atmosphere dominated overwhelmingly by materialism and hedonism, these outbreaks of violence are not surprising. Indeed, they are predictable.

    If a culture has lost its way, morally, and has opted to discard or ignore the ethical and moral wisdom accumulated across the centuries, who can predict what terrible results will come? In a culture which exalts monetary gain above all other goals and pursues a consistent "feel‑good" ethic in personal behavior, the tragic results are inevitable. The decision to throw away or ignore the ethical and moral wisdom of centuries can have only one result--chaos.

    I call attention here to only one aspect of that moral stupidity. Obviously, our education system has great problems. There are those who tell us that the answer is a “computer in every class room.”  I do not oppose that idea. But the notion that putting machines into the hands of our children will automatically solve our problems is fatuous. True education is not simply a matter of being able, by the push of a button, to assemble all the facts. It was Walker Percy, the American novelist, who observed that if we persist in believing that education consists of the simple assemblage of facts, “we will rear a generation of moral idiots.” True education teaches people how to use facts and leads them on into the higher realm of ideas, concepts, and dreams. It can enable us, and our children, to unravel many of the mysteries of ordinary human existence, but it will also confront us with the stubborn arenas of ultimate mystery--the questions which our computers can never answer, such as the meaning of life and existence.

    I inwardly cringe when I stand at the check‑out counter of my supermarket. Behind the counter is a young girl who can manipulate adeptly the keys of her machine, tabbing up my purchases accurately (I hope)--but who gazes at me with heavily made-up, glazed eyes that clearly indicate a lack of knowledge, interest, or concern about such things as truth, beauty, or love--or even my existence, as a customer, as also a human being.

    What seems to be missing from many in today's world is a sense of perspective. Human beings have created our machines. Now, the question is, “Who is the ultimate master?” Machines are created to be used, not to dominate our existence. I know from experience that I can tap the right keys on my computer and call up an almost inexhaustible wealth of useful information. I also know that I can tap other keys and conjure up on my monitor screen the most depraved and utterly evil images of a sinful humanity.' That is not the fault of my computer. I have pressed the keys, and other human beings have fed into the network the filth and dregs of their twisted and money‑obsessed minds. In a real sense sow, this is still the same old story: the powerful forces of evil are at work in the world.

    My wanderings in this article have led me far beyond my initial concern with the problem of violent computer games. My concern in that area remains the same, but the problem is far more extensive than that. I have classed myself as a “lapsed Luddite.”  I am not a Luddite in the sense that I do not share the illusion of the simple nineteenth-century workmen that they could solve their problem by violently destroying the mechanical weaving looms that threatened their livelihood. But I share with them a deeper and instinctive fear, never verbally expressed, or, perhaps, even realized, by them. Despite all its benefits, the machine can be ultimately an enemy of humanity. That is not the fault of the machine. It is our own responsibility.

    I take my stand firmly on the proposition that there are some things, technically possible, which morally should not be done. Whether these things are actually done rests on the judgment of human beings, and the validity of that judgment depends on the individual's moral sensitivity.

    And I would also remind us that machines are not infallible. We are sometimes so obsessed with the machine that we give it a status it does not deserve. A somewhat ludicrous observation comes to mind. Part of the planned celebrations for Millennium Eve here in London, where I am writing, was the inauguration of the “Millennium Wheel”--a giant ferns wheel, the largest in the world--located on the banks of Thames near the Houses of Parliament. It was due to begin turning at midnight on New Year's Eve, opened with much ceremony by the British Prime Minister. Despite all the publicity build‑up, it didn't open. All because of a "computer error." It has eventually begun to turn, after a month of readjustments. A more serious example is that of a terrible train accident near Paddington Station in central London just before Christmas. Several people were killed and many injured. The cause, despite intense investigation, is not yet clear, but the strong suspicion is that it was due to "computer error" in the signal system. Machines are always and everywhere susceptible to mechanical error. We cannot trust our future to them.

  Thinking men and women, rightly concerned about the amoral age in which we are fast becoming involved, should take a lesson from popular culture. The adequate image of the computer is not the lovable, somewhat inefficient robots who were the companions of Luke Skywalker in "Star Wars", but the cool, inhuman, and unfeeling voice of Hal, the computer run amok in Stanley Kubrick's epic film, “2001.”  One image lulls us into complacency; the other is a salient warning 

Updated Monday, June 04, 2001