Hello and welcome to the Speak Life Podcast, episode 502. My name is Thomas Thurrogood, media producer at Speak Life, and today we have a conversation between Glenn and Nate about the Apple Vision Pro, and we're asking, is it life-enhancing tech or is it a dystopian hellscape? You've probably heard about the Apple Vision Pro if you haven't already bought one, uh, this virtual reality or augmented reality headset. There's some debate about whether it's virtual reality or augmented reality, and I'll touch on that at the end of the episode. But for now, enjoy Glenn and Nate's conversation. This went out live on our YouTube channel on the 9th of February, and you will hear Glenn and Nate interact with some people who commented on the live stream. So enjoy.
SPEAKER_05Hi, I'm Glenn. This is Nate Ware from Speak Life. We like to see all things through the lens of Jesus. So the Apple Vision Pro, is it Miracle Tech or is it a dystopian hellscape? Nate, your quick answer.
SPEAKER_02Dystopian Hellscape. Yeah. I always go for dystopian hellscape.
SPEAKER_05You're the Hellscape guy. I'm the Miracle Tech guy.
SPEAKER_02I'm an I'm a pessimist, a tech pessimist. Okay. And I believe that uh this is our inevitable descent into the subhuman. And uh yeah, it's already started.
SPEAKER_05Which plague from Revelation is this?
SPEAKER_02Is the I never bother playing that game. Okay. Uh they're all I'm a you know, this is all just a all plagues all the time. All plagues. No filler. Yeah. That's the way this one's gonna go. But uh yeah, you said at the beginning, Glenn, you said uh we like to see all things through the lens of Jesus. Yep. While now Apple are inviting us all to see things through the lens of the Vision Pro.
SPEAKER_05Of consumerism, of what is now the new lens. So do do people know what the Vision Pro is? Can you can you help us understand augmented reality, is it?
SPEAKER_02Apparently, and basically you've just got your phone strapped to your face now. Okay.
SPEAKER_05Why don't we see some vision some vision of the Vision Pro? Let's give us an idea. Here's a guy with a ski mask, but it's not just a ski mask. It can go slightly opaque, it can go full opaque, and he's basically got all his apps from his phone there and just with his fingers, just yeah. And it tracks your eye movement, which I think is key. We might get onto this. It tracks what you're looking at at multiples. And so I mean, watching a film on it, you can't be against watching a film on the Vision Pro, can you? That's okay. That's not a hellscape.
SPEAKER_02Uh depends what you're watching. Um but if it's Toy Story 4, Hellscape, but yeah, so uh this is basic I mean it's all part of bringing the screen closer and closer to our face, is what's happening. So we've had, you know, had the old movie theatres, and then we sat in a smaller room with a television, and then we've graduated to a laptop computer and a mobile phone, and now we're literally just gonna put that on our face. But what's brilliant about it is that you're looking through your apps. So so as the augmented reality works. Not virtual reality, augmented reality. Because you're seeing the the the room around you, but of course you've got this uh these little icons. Yes. And uh you've got your you know, your your laptop screen is now floating around like you're a kind of Iron Man.
SPEAKER_05And one of the problems that people are saying about it is it's a bit heavy, it gets a bit hot, the battery life is rubbish, and you've got this cumbersome kind of battery pack off the back if you want it to last for longer than an hour or two.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_05Um and so this is but this is just 1.0, right? Yeah. What is 2.0 gonna be like? What is 3.0 gonna be like?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and that and that's one of the things when Apple have done this in the past, when they've been the kind of market leaders in innovating with well, arguably they haven't innovated, but they've just made popular some technology that has been around for a little while and they present it in such a way that people have gone, oh, that's now a viable option. Like I might get myself one of those. Yes. And first time it comes out, no one can afford it. It's like, was it three grand for one of these? And so therefore, it's only going to be accessible to a certain number of people. Yeah. But after a couple of years, once the next version comes out, the next version after that, the price point drops, you can jump on the ladder at you know I remember VHS and Beta Max.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I remember people paying like a thousand bucks for a basically what amounted to a clock if you got a Betamax, because that became the redundant technology. But yeah, then by by the end of its life cycle, you were getting them picking them up for like 70 quid and that sort of stuff. So as the price point comes down, will you buy an Apple Vision Pro?
SPEAKER_02Of course I will. There's absolutely no way it's the it's inevitable. We don't choose, you know, like I say, we don't no one chooses to watch a YouTube video, no one chooses to watch a TikTok. Right. You will eat what you're given, right? Yeah. We will consume what we've got.
SPEAKER_05You can find yourself in the cupboard late at night, like snacking your face off.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and everyone said when the iPad was released, yeah. What a ridiculous idea. Who needs this kind of halfway house between my mobile phone and my laptop? This is ridiculous, right? How many iPads? I've got like eight iPads now.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And do I need them? Yes, obviously I need them. They're essential. There is, you know, they're completely vital to living in a modern world because I've been told that's what I have to do, and I will I will do what I'm told by our capitalist tech overlords.
SPEAKER_05Yes, that's and the game. That's the game. And if you want to opt out, you are the weird one. You're the muddite. And yeah. In the same way, like a teenager who doesn't have a phone like feels completely left out. We will feel we will feel the odd ones out if we don't have the ski mask on. Is that what you're saying?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And people looked daft. The early adopters always looked daft. Yeah. And then it starts, as I say, the price point comes down, people start to think, oh, what's the you know, what's the utility of this thing? Or maybe I could see it working for me. And as hopefully we'll we'll discuss in a bit more detail, maybe. This isn't that it's not a game changer.
SPEAKER_05No.
SPEAKER_02This isn't that different from what we've had before.
SPEAKER_05It had already been changed. Yes. We've already lost.
SPEAKER_02It's inexorable, right?
SPEAKER_05We're just since when? When when are you when's the inflection point? When do we pass the point of no remote landscape? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, I reckon you can if you go with what's his name? Neil Postman and his 1986, maybe 82 book, uh Amusing Ourselves to Death, he basically traces it back to the the invention of the telegraph.
SPEAKER_06Okay.
SPEAKER_02So he says that once news was able to pass uh almost instantaneously from you know Baltimore, from Washington, DC to Baltimore, or from uh Baltimore, not even that far. From Washington, DC to Detroit. He's talking about American Cloud Impact. And he says that now this information super highway along the telegraph wire is presenting people with information immediately which they can do nothing about. Okay. It is what it is. You receive it. Yeah. And and it's not going to change how you spend your day. Okay. But it is decontextualized information which you have now received and you have to sort of do something with, even though it's not practical for you to know this. So he was arguing, I mean, I don't know when the invention of the telegraph was. 18 something. Yeah. Yeah. 70. Yeah. But it's it's like it will go back that far. Yeah. Would you go earlier? Are you going to suggest or are you going to say, no, this is back in 2020 with Steve Jobs and the iPhone?
SPEAKER_05Well, I okay, if you want me to go right back, I'm going to go back to the written word. Like as a game changer.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_05As something that has literally rewired our brains. And like psychologists will will speak about literate societies. The difference between literate society and non-literate societies, you can see it on brain scans. And you can do tests with people and people from non-literate societies. You can teach them to read, but if they if they haven't um grown up in that kind of society, their brains are shaped differently, such that when you do that test, have you ever like done a test and it'll have the the letters red, but the letters are green. And you have to say the colour of the letters themselves is green. The word red is there, but the letters are green. And you're told to say the colour of the letters. If you're from a literate society, you really struggle with that. Okay. And it takes you ages. You see red and you can't not read. You can't not read. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Once you've learned to read, you're basically cursed to read everything that's in the language that you can read. Okay.
SPEAKER_05And it has and it has changed the human person, right? Okay. So here is uh the advent of a certain technology that has absolutely gotten into the wiring of our brains, right? And and changed and then at the at the level of society, it it meant that, for instance, the people of the book, the Jews, even though they were smashed by the Assyrians and then the Babylonians and the Greeks and the Persians and the Romans, because they were still a people of the word, the people of the book, you couldn't destroy that, right?
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_05And and so that like the survival of the messianic people. Um it was sort of bound up with the people of the book as well. And and and then you know, you come through into the New Testament and you get this idea that absolutely face to face is the ultimate when it comes to the human person. Right. And you've got the Apostle Paul saying, Um, we see through a glass darkly, 1 Corinthians 13, but when Christ comes, we'll see face to face. Like like everyone is is got the opaque lenses on right now. Everyone then we'll see, then we'll see face to face, and at some stage we'll put down the lens of this world and we will see Jesus face to face, and it's a profoundly human vision for what the future is. Um, but then you get like in the New New Testament, John writes uh at the end of both his shortest epistles, John, 2 John and 3 John, he says, I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit and talk with you face to face so that our joy may be complete. So even there in biblical times, you've got this sub-optimal state of communication, which is the written word. And in one sense it's suboptimal. In another sense, the only reason I'm a Christian today is because the Bible, right? Right. And the Bible was passed down from generation to generation, and John, you know, writes, These things are written so that you may believe in John chapter 20, verse 31. And so technology is woven into the human person, it's woven into the story of God, it's woven into the way that the mission of God has operated, and yet there is something suboptimal about the written word. Okay. And you want to put down the letter and you want to have a conversation face to face. Um, and so it's it just seems to be a problem that's baked into the human condition, and I don't think it originated in either 2008 or 18, whatever it was, with the telegram.
SPEAKER_02So is it BC or A D the problem? So the you're saying writing is obviously precedes the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. Yeah. But by how much so it's the Phoenicians, I believe, who are the guys with the alphabet, right? Yeah, script. And so we can blame them.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, we can blame them. And and yeah, and what's the difference between a pictogram and then going into letters and and that you spell out it's magical, it's magic, you spell these words. So, like the there's something about technology that has always been a part of the human story, and the Bible has a positive relationship, I think, with technology, and saying this is for the good, and the people of God use the book, and the book is good for the people of God, then it's good for the mission of God. It's suboptimal, it's not the same thing as face to face, but it's a technology that that God is happy to use and that humanity benefits from. But the real problem is it can dehumanize as well. Right. And if I'm just constantly reading John's letter and and he's standing right there, he would say, put down the papyrus or whatever, and let's see.
SPEAKER_02But what if you could read the letter whilst it's next to John's face?
SPEAKER_05That's right.
SPEAKER_02As you're seeing John in his letter, and your eyeball is actually reading, but you're reading Peter because you prefer Peter's.
SPEAKER_05Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_02Because I mean there's one sense in which you want to go, okay, this is a perennial issue, it's been a kind of it it's something of a human universal that our relationship with technology produces great benefits, but also kind of obstacles or or challenges. Um, but this the the specifics of the Apple Vision Pro thing. Yep. Should we let's get into the bit of that? What is the yeah? I've said it's not a game changer, this is just putting the phone closer. We're saying it goes all the way back to the Phoenicians and the Sumerians and everything else. Yeah. So nothing's different, everyone just carry on as normal. But what is different and what is kind of unnerving about this?
SPEAKER_05Because every technological shock produces real trauma.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Like think of the invention of the printing press. You know, it's great for the dissemination of Luther's tracts and pamphlets and that kind of thing. But you could also trace back the 30 Years' War and, you know, all sorts of like Protestant Catholic um kind of fighting and infighting, you know, through this bit of technology. And you know, maybe the first thing off the printing press was the Bible, but pretty soon pornography and and you know, and so the with every tech shock, um, there is always trauma in kind of adjusting to it. I think the trauma with this is yeah, bringing your attention out of the realm of the face-to-face in a way that you just can't switch off, you know, in a way that is just like I know I probably look at my phone a lot too much, but I can at least put it in my pocket, you know.
SPEAKER_02But I suppose because you can take obviously you can take the thing off, right? And we said you know you mentioned the battery life is atrocious, right? Um it's when it's sort of uh you know, it wraps itself around. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um but there's something, I suppose, that is a distinction between here is here is uh media, content, whatever it might be, that I'm giving my attention to instead of giving my attention to the the real world around me, right? Using my eyes to kind of notice, recognize actual distance. Whereas this is saying, no, let us let us give you the lenses through which to view the entirety of the Cosmos and the entire world around you. Let us mediate your relationship in an even more immediate way than we've done with the iPhone. Yeah, yeah. Because now this thing has become it's augmented reality. Yeah, it is how you see. Um and I suppose that's that's probably what feels like the the difference. So biotech is something that we've been, you know, there's been discussed for some time, you know, like to what extent do human beings need to kind of not just augment, have an augmented vision of reality, but be themselves augmented by technology in order to kind of better engage with the world around them. The cyborg theocracy, yes. Well, that's a phrase.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, Mary Harrington's phrase, cyborg theo and and again she would go back a lot earlier and say that things like the invention of the pill was sort of a cyborg theology, uh theology of theocracy in in which the technology was disabling a function of the human that had current that had previously functioned. Lots of other technology can enhance functions of the human, so you can put lenses on that will help to correct for your short-sightedness, that is to increase bodily function, yeah. But from the 1960s onwards, we've become comfortable with switching off certain human features of the person and and disabling our ourselves using tech. Um so that's that's and that just brings again into sharp relief this question of like what is the human? Like what people are trying to preserve something that's human, and they're really worried that this uh so-called leap forward might be a step into the abyss and taking us away from whatever it is that is the human. And this is why it's a profoundly Christian question, I think, what what is happening with tech, because we need to have a concept of what is the human. Yeah, and if we don't have a concept of what is the human, then why not? Yeah, why not just put the implant in and just download dopamine hits and and upload your consciousness to the cloud and it's bliss forever? You know, what what what is it that we're trying to cling on to? And I think I think people, whether they know it or not, are wrestling between two very different very like dear Christian motivations. One is to use technology to in improve our lot, and another is to say that there is something inviolably dignified and worthwhile about the human being that that cannot just be um traded away and made into uh robotics. And we're we're having this very Christian conversation, whether we're using Christian language or not, I would say.
SPEAKER_02And I think we so we should come to the the what is a human and what is what is this kind of text saying about what it means to be human. We'll come to that in a moment because Joe, hey Joe, we've got some comments we'd like to uh or questions in the chat. Please just to say we are uh we're glad you're here and we are obviously appreciative of the irony that uh you're watching this on the screen, perhaps even uh very close to your eyeballs. So uh yeah, um everything we say has to be understood through that uh framing paradigm context. Uh Joe.
SPEAKER_07Uh well we've got one question from Mark Gilmore. Thank you, Mark. It says, Should we try to pave the way for Christians who will eventually have to draw the line on tech? Do you think such a point will come?
SPEAKER_05Oh, it it has come, and we we must draw lots of lines on tech. Is that what the line?
SPEAKER_02Um the line should have been drawn back in with the Sumerians, that's what we're saying. This is no no. So so should we now, considering the direction of travel and the fact that this is only gonna get worse, should we prepare ourselves to be drawing lines in the future? Is that that's his question?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, I think so.
SPEAKER_05I if we're not drawing lines already, I th I think we are being swept up into a a vision of life that is not not Christian at all, you know. Um so if if we haven't even thought about going on a Twitter sabbatical, right? If we haven't even thought about having some kind of policy about what I do with my phone when I first get in, whether I have my phone in the bedroom, what my children do. Like if we if we are not already drawing lines, then we've we've been overwhelmed by this already. You know, that we we have we have crossed the line in into where we need to think about these things very, very carefully.
SPEAKER_02And it's um it's yeah, to change the analogy, it's the boiling frog. So, you know, we're sort of being this thing has been dialed up gradually and slowly, to the extent that I I think this Vision Pro thing isn't a significant difference to what we've had before. Um and I I think one thing that's particularly relevant to the fact that this is an Apple product that we're talking about, clearly, other ones will be available, if not already, in the near future. But is the way in which um Apple, through their marketing and their branding, were able to completely dissolve the line between work and play. Yes. And to basically say, so when were the adverts? We should look this up. Can someone look up when the adverts were like I'm a Mac and I'm a PC? Yeah, yeah. They're really interesting adverts because they basically Apple were able to present themselves as saying, like, you don't want to be like these stuffy guys who think abuses are just for work and you know, like filling in spreadsheets and stuff like that. That's a total waste of time. What you need is uh is a product that works for you. Yeah and it it's a place to play your music and and to look at your photographs and to maybe, yeah, of course, you've got to send the old email or two. But we're just groovy cats here, so let's all just chill out. And let's basically blur everything into the same every every Monday morning is now a Saturday evening. Every Saturday evening is now a Tuesday evening. Time and space has been completely condensed and melted together so that you're always at work. Yeah and you're always on holiday. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And you're always exhausted. 2006.
SPEAKER_042006. 2006.
SPEAKER_05I'm a Mac and I'm a PC. And like one of the things in the Vision Pro advertisements was about how you can have a home office and you can just, you know, at the flick of the switch, you're at the Grand Canyon.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05And it's just like, like how it and it's it's a disturbing thing maybe to think about, you know, can you bring the the Grand Canyon to the office in that sort of sense? I'm much happier bringing the Grand Canyon to the office than what we currently have, which is people going to the Grand Canyon and getting out their phones and going, oh look, TikTok. Or Gmail, right? Yeah, yeah. Because that that would be like going to the Grand Canyon with your suitcase. Yeah. Like no one, no one goes to the beach and gets out your suitcase and like here's my portfolio, my my you know, my phyllo facts. And like, but we we do do that. We we precisely go to the beach and get our phyllo facts out and and send a few emails from the beach. And so actually actually, in a sense, like a line that matters a lot more was crossed with the smartphone than is crossed with with Vision Pro. And if we're not already drawing lines, it's far too late.
SPEAKER_03Hi folks, it's Thomas Thoroughgood here, media producer at Speak Life. You might recognise my voice as the guy who does the filler bits on the podcast. It's part of my job to think of how we can include you more in the work of Speak Life and bring you behind the scenes, if you will. And so we have a very exciting thing called the Speak Life Discord server. It's an online platform where you can interact with other Speak Life supporters and the Speak Life team. We have bonus content, creative theological discussion, and lots of fun along the way. So if you want to join that, you can just go to speaklife.org.uk forward slash give. Okay, back to the podcast.
SPEAKER_02And the BlackRoy thing, you know, was you know, did did slightly pre-see the iPhone as being this place where, you know, because you and it appeals to our sense of pride that we are so sharp and on it and important and valuable and and we need to be contactable at all times, that of course, whilst I'm at the Grand Canyon, I can, you know, I I I'm the kind of guy who of course I can't take a day off, you know, but I am the kind of guy who's able to juggle both these really important work commitments and you know, whether I'm on a family holiday or something. Which on that video, can we just go but to the clip on the on the ad for the pro the Vision Pro? The guy, there he goes, puts it on. It's him, it's a bit later on when he's um he's at the kitchen table, yeah. And then he's doing his work, got some text messages and stuff's coming in. And then this was the most chilling part of it. Okay, yeah, you're watching Napoleon. Napoleon, whatever.
SPEAKER_05Chilling.
SPEAKER_02Okay, okay. I just you know, I'm I'm obviously in a hotel room. It's the it's the big long kind of hippie looking dude. Here he is, here he is. Oh, yeah, he plays football, yeah. Paul, right? He's busy, I'm working, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And I can actually play football with my son in the kitchen. I can be a good dad. I'm a great dad. While still look at us having great family time together because I can see the ball.
SPEAKER_04I'm still engaged with you. Until the kid puts a video on and there are no balls. And that's that's the civilization. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02Like and the idea, so I was thinking about this with so at what point does it become a kind of tech nanny that parents in, you know, I'll admit it, it's happened way more than I'd like to confess that we were in a restaurant. Okay, here's just you can have a little iPad time in the restaurant, right? So there you are, and you're all having now. Of course, in the olden days before Bluetooth headphones, the kid had to sit there and just stare at this silent screen, just kind of imagining what was happening. But now we can put the headphones on, right? So the kid is now with the screen, with the headphones, and sitting at the table, yeah, and just kind of consuming like this, right? You're like, It's a scene from Wally. We're here, yeah. It's exactly it's on the axiom, and you know, eventually we'll be given our super centennial cupcake in a cup, and and we can change our outfits because we'll just press a button. But it does feel as though that kind of that line has already been crossed. And the question now is just, you know, when am I gonna buy one? I mean, literally it's you know, how cheap do they have to go?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and uh but I think with all these tech shocks, it takes a long time for us to mature into the use of this technology. You know, and and you know, I I think there are ways of using the internet that are for for the good. It's taking us a long time to catch, and you know, we still haven't really learned the lessons about the internet and then social media hits, and we still haven't learned the lessons about social media, and then AI hits, and we still haven't learned the lessons of AI, and now Vision Pro hits. Um, and it will take us a long time to kind of process this, and our virtue will take a long time to catch up with our technique, and technique is always outstripping virtue in as as humanity rolls on. But there have got to be ways in which technology can serve the human. Yeah, because yes, it is better to be face to face than to write a letter, but without those letters that John was writing, we don't have a New Testament, we don't have Christianity, we don't have you know everything that's come from it. And so there's there's gotta be ways in which the tech can serve the human, but you've also just got to be so wise, and if you're not already drawing lines, um you're you're just letting the human totally be kind of washed out by by by that kind of diffuse attention to everything that means attention to nothing, really. And you're you're very good at uh talking about the the attention economy and the ways in which what social media is doing and what's what Vision Pro is is trying to do at a at an even greater level is to kind of harness your attention. Tell us about that.
SPEAKER_02So, friends, Romans, countrymen, sell me your ears. Oh, see what did that change one of the verbs? Uh so basically your eyeballs, your eardrums are for sale. Yeah, there is money to be made from harvesting your attention and or grabbing your attention and then keeping your attention for as long as possible. Because as soon as someone realizes that you're uh uh paying attention to something, well, now is an opportunity uh to really make use of you, which is to turn you into an economic uh token, right? You are the product, so now you can be sold, right? Yeah, and so so basically the attention economy is I mean, and again, it proceeds the internet and all this sort of stuff because advertising has been around for just as long as there's been um any kind of writing and and that sort of stuff. So um the way that uh that social media is functioning is that when you're not paying for it, that you are the product. Therefore, the aim of the company is to get your attention, keep your attention, because as long as it's keeping your attention, it can make money from you. And this was really kind of um, I thought quite um well done in the social dilemma documentary, which came out about three or four years ago, uh that was on Netflix. There's a lot of people who worked in tech for some time talking about um basically the meetings they had where they were scheming for ways to get your attention more quickly and to hold it for a longer duration, and that was the thing because the more time you're looking at this, the the the more money they can make out of you. Now, I um one concept within that which I found absolutely fascinating was a thing called um infinity scrolling. So um apparently human beings have something called, we have something called uh I am one of you! The mask slips just for a second, then I think the humans uh we are the humans. Um I am one. Um we have portion bias, so we are predisposed to want to complete a portion of something.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_02So uh they did a test with a bowl of sugar and different sized spoons. Okay. This is back in the days when people used to have sugar in drinks and stuff because you're not allowed to now. Monsters. Um so they would change the size of the spoon and see whether that had any impact on how many spoonfuls or how few spoonfuls people would take. What they found was that people felt the need to take one spoonful of sugar to help their medicine go down. So they double the size of the spoon, people take a single spoon. They halve the size of a spoon, half one spoonful. So the point was we there was a portion bias where people thought the right thing to do, and this may be there's maybe all sorts of psychological reasons why, but we all want to take one of something. Yeah. And to take two of something might feel excessive, but like three, it's like we're quantifying this, right? So one of the things they recognized uh when building social media platforms was that when you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you went, Oh, I've just done a I've done a Facebook now. Yeah, I can go and do something else. I've done a page of Facebook, and that is enough.
SPEAKER_04Yep.
SPEAKER_02So they thought, well, hold on, they keep doing other things, playing with their kids and you know, um enjoying themselves. Um, what we need to do is to keep them on this page for as long as possible. So that's where the idea that the page will just continually refresh and you will never get to the bottom of this web page. And the scrolling now, the other thing, just to add this in, just to kind of finish it off, is that the difficulty when you're scrolling through something like Twitter, for example, or Facebook, and you can see like five or six or seven or eight posts in a row, and so you can see those, so you can see what's coming next, right? TikTok doesn't work like that, Instagram reels don't work like that, Facebook uh YouTube shorts don't work like that. They give you one complete screen, yeah, and you know that you scroll up, there's another one coming. Yeah, but you've got no control whatsoever over what that thing is, and that's the thing that we found, and I'm sure loads of people watching this will have experienced. That's the point where you suddenly kind of shock, and you're like, How long have I been on this thing? Yeah, just scrolling through absolute nonsense.
SPEAKER_05And and there's a point at which, if that's in your hand, at some stage your hand might get heavy. You might think, I should put this down at some stage. Yeah, and with the 1.0 Vision Pro, you definitely want to take it off because it might be getting too hot, the battery's gonna run out, it's too heavy. But 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, when it's just glasses or when it's just contact lenses, or it's just an implant behind the ear, yeah, it's it's you're bringing the screen nearer and nearer until it's not even you choosing to look at the thing, yeah. It is the way that you see everything else. Yeah, yeah. And that that that is it, that is a game changer, and that becomes something where you can't draw the line anymore. Yeah, you know. And so there was a Black Mirror episode very early on, um, in which uh people had these um it was the year 2040, I think, and uh they had contact lenses which were cameras, but they could also were screens, and it remembered everything. You could rewind stuff, you could rewind stuff and really actually that episode was really about memory and how it's probably a good thing that you can't remember everything.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Um, because actually our minds try to retell the story of the past just so we can cope, and because we can't actually cope with reality. Um it was really telling that story, but um, there's a dinner party in that episode in which one woman did not have the implant and everybody else did have the implant, and they sort of kind of turn on her because they feel judged by her, and and I feel like what a depressing vision for human nature that is. Black mirror. Cheer up, Charlie Brooker. Wow. But well, I'll I'll tell you about another um uh Black Mirror in a in a second, but I I think in a sense, Christians have the chance to be that woman at at the dinner party. Right hated by everyone, yeah. Um but also you can see a sort of a respect, you know, for for someone who is not completely enslaved to the machine. And another episode of Black Mirror, which I found fascinating, is called Men Against Fire, in which again there's an implant that they give to soldiers, and now the soldiers with their augmented reality see the enemy. Now the soldier doesn't realize this, but they see the enemy as a cockroach, as like these monstrous kind of subhuman scum individuals. Um, and what there's what the soldiers don't know, and what you as the viewer don't know as you're watching this, is that actually the enemy they're human too. But the implant is changing the way you see everyone else, and so and that's going to help the soldier to do his business of exterminating cockroaches because we're we have you know much fewer qualms about exterminating cockroaches than we do about people. And so it's this story about this this one soldier who kind of takes out the implant, and he then sees the human that had been his enemy the whole time. And interestingly, in the telling of the story, Charlie Brooker knows enough to know that it's actually the Catholics in this future who are the ones hiding the so-called cockroaches from the authorities, and they are harbouring the subhuman ones who are actually human because they they don't wear the implants and they see the human and they give refuge to the human. And and so interestingly, the the Catholics, the Christians are cast as those who see the human and want to get rid of the technology. And then the dystopian ending to this one with Charlie Brooker is that the soldier just can't handle what he has done to the subhuman skull. And so he puts the implant back in and lives in the fantasy um rather than live with the reality of what he's actually done. So it's all there, it's all there in Black Miracle.
SPEAKER_02And if you buy one of these Vision Pro things, that's gonna be you. Um Joe, have we got another question?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, Pete Thorne um asked a question which I thought linked in quite well with the way you said, Glenn, when uh the this isn't the first step, it will keep updating. Yeah. And he asked, are you saying these lines are more about sensible boundaries, screen time, social media, fasts, etc.? Or do we need to say I will never wear an I interface?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, there would definitely come a point where you would say I I would never wear and I would never wear an implant that makes other people look less than human, for instance. Like can we at least agree on uh the Men Against Fire uh Charlie Brooker line? Um that uh yeah, if and and I think we should be very wary of even um so you could you could wear these things so that I I I only ever look at my spouse and I can change the way she looks to me, right? And this technology is it's not just in the future, it's kind of like we can do it now, really. I can actually create a deep fake of my wife and wear that, and I never have to see my my actual wife. Christians, don't do that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, like that's there's a line that's the thing about the Snapchat filters though, isn't it? When people go on and they're like, Oh look, I'm a I'm a cow. Um if I stick my tongue out, the cow sticks his tongue out. Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02I think that was the that was the line that was when when when that was allowed, yeah. Because at that point it was just fun, but then of course, you know.
SPEAKER_05But yeah, embedding that sort of stuff into the everyday because it in a sense, like the Vision Pro looks like a lot of fun where we play, you know, and you're you're always talking about there's there's the reality in Christ, and then we are sub-creators within Christ's creation, and we can play and we can make stuff up, and you can actually make up a story about you know elves and trolls and you know whoever. And you can you can play around in that world, and we're not saying you should never play around in that world. Yeah, I I think but the danger comes when you mistake the play world for the real world, and when you actually diminish your vision for all of reality by actually just spending your time playing and getting all your enjoyment and stimulation from the realm of play rather than the realm of reality.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And that that thing about um what is a human being for? Like what's what is you know, to go back to that question that I said we discuss and then uh we go on to other topics. But so so what is what's the purpose of a human being? What is a human being designed to do? Yeah. And of course, if you're in a very um sort of tightly controlled attention economy, the purpose of a human being is to give their attention to things, to to to look and to listen to stuff that can make money. And to do that in such a way that it deadens your appreciation for, your interest in, your curiosity about the actual world. Um because so long as you're doing that, you are safe, right? You're ca you're controlled, you're you're you're not going to like that other Apple ad, you know, run up and and sm what year was that one? Um want someone to look that one up. So there's an Apple Ad which is it was very early on, I think it's like a late 80s one, maybe 89 or something like that. And there is a guy, um, there's lots of people who were all kind of conforming and doing the sort of the the right thing, and then someone some guy just kind of rushes from the back, it's such a famous avat, and I can't remember what year it was. And this guy's got this big sledgehammer and he just smashes the machine. Okay. So he just like literally destroys the system because it's enslaved all these kind of people. Okay. Um and there's something about uh the number of uh particularly kids and families films actually, which have engaged with um a kind of dystopian vision for tech. So Mitchell's versus the machines did it, Ron's Gone Wrong is a really good one on that. Um Incredibles 2, the screen slaver is the is the baddie. And arguably it's parents who are on the front line of this because not only are you responsible for your own media consumption, you're also responsible for someone else's. And you're thinking, oh, we didn't have this when I was growing up, and so but it's been interesting to see that that has been a feature of uh the kind of uh the discourse and the cultural conversation in the West in the past ten years has been a real kind of hey guys, is this uh is this screen time really a good idea? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um and of course the irony that of course they're watching on a screen kind of thing. But yeah, but that sense that in all of those stories, you have someone who's like the guy in the Apple ad from the 80s who has to go and take down the system. Yeah. And as they manage to take down the system, everyone's sort of like the scales drop from everyone's eyes or the things come out. Yeah, as you were saying the Black Mirror episode, and people look around, they're like, What did we do? Right, like what is this? It's part of Wally as well, you know. When they when Wally, because he comes in and um undermines the kind of uh the system they've got on the Axiom spaceship. So those films have been teaching us this stuff for a long time, yeah, and yet we are still inexorably descending into closer and closer screen interface.
SPEAKER_05But that's I mean that that's a profoundly Christian thing, I think, to actually um to see when the machine actually grinds the human in the gears and then let's walk away from the machine and like reunite with the human again. So Ready Player One, you know, he go he goes through all of that. And then final scene, he kisses the girl in in real life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and so having yeah, it was a lot of fun to go through all those levels and blah blah blah. But the you know, whereas the Charlie Brooker thing is in the end he sees reality and then he chooses the unreality. And we know that's dystopian, we know that's the tragic vision. And there's something about us that I think it Knows the truth that these machines are to help the human rather than to replace the human. But we only know that if we know what the human is. And we keep our you know circling around this question. And I think I think that idea of face-to-face is right at the heart of the human. When you think of Genesis chapter one, and male and female are made in the image of God, in his likeness, and image and likeness are visual words. And it's it's because we are intended for face-to-face. Yeah. You know, we're we're intended for Christ the man to stand on the earth, to be together with his bride, and the final scene is a kiss, right? And the final scene is face-to-face. And whatever takes us away from face-to-face is is what is dehumanizing. Whatever like can enable face-to-face, and sometimes tech does enable face-to-face. And and that's for the good. But I I when I when I think about augmented reality, I I often think about how Jesus is he's already augmented your reality for you. Like there is already an enchanted world out there. And with the lenses of the of the scriptures, Jesus is already telling you, hey, um, you know, when you could go and visit that guy in prison, you'll see me. You'll see me if you actually go and engage with that imprisoned person. And you know that person who needs clothing. Go and clothe them. Have your eyes or pay attention to the least and the last and the last. And and you'll get to see something really cool. Yeah, yeah. And as you serve that person, and then he does this beautiful thing at the end of the transfiguration, and all the disciples are saying, you know, who is the greatest in the kingdom? And Jesus looks around and he not and he spots like the least impressive person of the bunch, a little toddler, like a kid, a small child. He puts the boy in the middle and he says, Whoever receives this child receives me, and whoever receives me receives the father. So again, he's like, pay attention to what is there. And as you pay attention to the things that most people actually overlook, because you've been trained by the way of Jesus and the and the way of outpoured love, you'll have your attention trained on not the most stimulating, fun thing, the glorious, what the adults are bickering about. You'll have your eyes trained on the the boy, and then Jesus is like, now do you see? You see me. Yeah. Like, like, and that's augmented reality. You know, better better than anything that you know the Apple Vision Pro can can give to you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think that augmented reality or the the Jesus or being a Christian is about seeing the whole of life through a kind of Jesus perspective, through the spectacles of scripture, as you know, Calvin famously used that as the way that the scriptures have been given to us, not just to be something to look at, but some vision of looking at everything within the world. Yes. Um, but it's interesting too, going back to that sort of idea of the attention economy trying to grab your attention, keep your attention. What is a human being? A human being is something that's supposed to be looking and listening, according to the you know, capitalist media corporations, but also uh a human being is someone who is supposed to be watching and listening because that is the means of our salvation. So John chapter 1, John the Baptist says of Jesus, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. So Jesus in John chapter 3 says, like, I will be like the bronze snake that Moses lifted up in the desert, and they looked and they lived. And then he says, you know, there's John 3 16. Yeah. John 19, as Jesus is with Pilate, and Pilate says, Behold the man, right? And then not just behold this man who's battered and bruised and covered in other people's spit, but behold your king. So, like, if you are someone who's feeling like overwhelmed by and like spent by the world, and you're very conscious of your sin and and shame, and you just feel like an empty vessel. Well, behold this man, he is the man for you, and this is the means of your salvation. And if I may, if I may, a C.S. Lewis quote uh from a little book called Uh The Magician's Nephew, and it's a wonderful one because it's it involves the the birth uh or the creation of Narnia's Aslan uh with uh Polly and degree and uh Uncle Andrew's there, and I think Jadis is there as well, and the cabbie and his wife and strawberry the horse, and they're all standing and they're watching and listening as Aslan kind of walks through and sings creation, sings Narnia into being. And Uncle Andrew, who's awful, uh he says, Um, what's all this nonsense? Can't uh well, he's gonna attack us, he's getting very upset about it. Um in fact, he probably sounded a bit more like sort of uh Douglas Murray or something, maybe I was gonna be too high pitched, um, or Boris Johnson or something. But um the point is that the cabbie then says to him he says basically shut up.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, in a Dick Van Dyke voice, I would imagine.
SPEAKER_02Uh we see he actually says Stow it. Stow it Governor. Governor. Do stow it. I know mistake. And then he says, uh watching and listening to the thing at present. And that's actually one of the things that's most essential to what it means to be human is you're supposed to be paying attention to the spectacle of the gospel. Like that's the thing you've been made to do, is to witness the wonder and beauty of Jesus as he you know is creating the world, as like that's a pointer to Aslan in uh the magician's nephew. But then also he's the way he's gonna redeem the world, and the way that we're gonna be saved is you are going to behold the man. You are gonna behold your king.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah. And we can't complain that we're in a disenchanted age if we're constantly just distracting ourselves by watching and listening to the bleepy bleepy kind of intense kind of dopamine hits. Like, no wonder people feel that this age is, you know, in the same way that we can't see the stars at night anymore because of light pollution. Yeah, yeah. Like in the same way, this is a kind of a light pollution, isn't it? You know, we've got the the lights are always on, yeah, and we can't really see the heavens. Um so I would not draw the line at a Vision Pro, but I if you cannot put it down, then absolutely I would draw a line at that. And I would say we already need to be drawing very thick lines between work and play and worship, yeah. And making sure we have and prioritize that face-to-face thing. And we don't need to be afraid of technology. Um, I think technology can serve the human, but as long as it's serving the human, yeah, then it's something that can be embraced and even used, and here we are on a YouTube live, kind of using such technology.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_05But um are there any any final questions?
SPEAKER_07Should we should we have a go at one more? Um we've got a so uh SB McCollum. What a name. Uh said the 1984 ad, Nate. The 1984 adopt with a slash advanced. Oh, because it I don't that's that's what the comments are saying.
SPEAKER_05Um yet what we have is not a 1984 dystopia. We've got we've got a brave new world dystopia. Don't we absolutely it's drugs and computer games, as as Yval Noah Harari has said. Anyway, what's the question?
SPEAKER_07We've got two questions. Um one is from Mark Gilmore. Have you seen Paul Kingsnorth Kings North's work on articulating what he calls the machine?
SPEAKER_05The machine. Everybody should go and read The Cross and the Machine. It's uh an amazing article that Paul Kings North wrote, probably in 2021, 22, something like that. Um but yeah, absolutely. And he doesn't, again, he doesn't just identify this with 2008 or with the 19th century, or he he says right back, right back in the garden was this we are not going to hear the word from God. We are going to, through technique, kind of manipulate the world. And we there's a strange part of us that prefers the machine. And then what does Christ do? He you like he comes and naked is ground in the gears of the machine to to like be on full display face to face with us, saying, Do you want the human or not? And um, yeah, no, everyone should go and read Walking's North, The Cross and the Machine.
SPEAKER_07Uh, and finally from Harry Weller, will there be Vision Pros in Heaven?
SPEAKER_05Will there be Vision Pros in Heaven? There will be scrolls, so that there is going to be technology.
SPEAKER_02Be thou my vision pro.
SPEAKER_05I think that's enough. And we're done. That'll do for all of us. It's a Friday afternoon. Um, if you want to see life according to Jesus, we would love you to do our course called 321. You can go to 321course.com. And it's really about putting on those spectacles and seeing who Jesus is, and then through Jesus, seeing what God is like, what the world is like, and what we are like. And you can do that absolutely free. Just give in your email, make up a password. We're not going to spam you. There's no in-app purchases, it's entirely free. Go and binge it in two hours, or you can do it over eight different sessions. But we'd love to give you an augmented vision of reality, or reality as it really is, uh, a very much enchanted place.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's even better than Pokemon Go.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that's what we reckon.
SPEAKER_04So there we are. That order to us. Thank you so much for joining us, Nate. Thank you so much for joining us, Glenn. We're glad you were here.
SPEAKER_02Cheerio.
SPEAKER_06Bye-bye.
SPEAKER_03I hope you enjoyed that conversation. We've got this very helpful comment from Morcus J777. He says, a small pedantic correction, but the goggles are in fact virtual reality, not augmented reality. They are fully opaque. He says augmented reality is an overlay on top of the real world. But since the goggles are opaque, they have to virtually recreate your environment on the internal screen so that you can see what's around you. The eyes you see on the front are another virtual recreation of your eyes put onto an outward facing screen to deepen the illusion. And he says, in my opinion, the whole simulated augmented reality is somehow more disturbing than if it was open about being virtual reality. And then he's just said, for clarification, you are looking at a video feed of the outside world, but that doesn't count for being true augmented reality. And there's some debate about that. But that's fascinating. When I watch the advert, it really does look like people who are wearing these things, these Apple Vision Pros, it really does look like you can see their eyes through them. When you're wearing one of these things, everything you see is is mediated through Apple technology. And if you're wearing this for a substantial proportion proportion of the day, which might well be the case in the future for lots of people, that's just worth thinking about, isn't it? Well, there we go. Hope you enjoyed this episode. Let us know if you have any thoughts or comments. You can email info at speaklife.org.uk. Thank you very much for listening, and we will be back soon.