Line upon Line

While technology can bless lives, there is a looming danger. Like the tephra-plumes billowing over Pompeii, we live directly in the path of an erupting Vesuvius: the dark side of the Information Age. This dark side is not limited to pornography and titillating chat rooms.

From texting our fingers raw, to an endless stream of video games and twitter-mania, trivial pursuits are like lava entombing our potential for greatness. To borrow a line from Charles Dickens, “…it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness” (A Tale of Two Cities).

A life enthralled with trivial pursuits is a monument to diversion–an epitaph of things that matter least. It is “living below our privileges” (President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “Your Potential, Your Privilege,” Priesthood Session, General Conference, April, 2011).

Medium over message

Many are addicted to gadgets, trading interaction with present company for the seance of communicating with dead games and ghosts in the machine.

Even a casual observer will admit that our fascination with gadgets sometimes kills the message for the thrill of the medium. In this way, valueless information is elevated to the sublime simply because it is dressed in colorful icons, flying thumbs, and light-speed keypads.

Today’s cell phones are mobile offices, entertainment centers and audio/video recording studios. Observe any cell-phone user with a group of friends; the tendency is to ignore present company for the long-distance demands of absentees. (See my previous article, “Be Where You Are”)

Technology as blessing and curse

Elder Neal A. Maxwell counseled, “We rightfully worry about taming our technology so that it serves us, rather than dominates us. But we cannot tame our technology without taming ourselves” (Neal A. Maxwell, “Eternalism vs. Secularism,” Ensign, October, 1974, 69).

While technology can help us be more efficient and productive, we must never trade our potential for greatness in exchange for the bright packaging of a wasted life.

Children and gadgets

If electronic gadgets, the internet and video games are addicting to adults, imagine what an opiate they can be for our children. How did my generation grow up without cell phones, the Internet and video games rated “M” for mature (code for blood, guts and sex)?

Successful parents are involved. A click of the mouse or sweep of an icon can penetrate impressionable minds with destructive images or time-wasting trivia.

There is no such thing as electronic privacy for our children. We would not sit idle for a home invasion. Why would we do so for internet intruders or electronic soul robbers? Know what your children are viewing; know what their friends are suggesting.

The blessing of pondering

The problem isn’t gadgetry or the trivia within technology; the problem is us.

Addiction to trivial pursuits is an ancient affliction. The apostle Paul observed this affliction among the Epicureans and Stoics of his day, who “spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing” (Acts 17:21).