Out of sight, out of mind: Good Samaritan confronts new technology

In Jesus’ parable good samaritanA traveler encounters a man beaten by robbers and left for dead on the roadside. The pitying traveler stopped to help, unlike the others passing by.

In Jesus’ telling, this is a story dating back to the first century: The traveler rode a donkey, poured oil and wine into the wounded man’s wounds, and paid an innkeeper a handful of money to tend to him.

The 21st century version will have different details. The traveler may be zipping by on an e-bike. When she saw the beaten man, she could call 911 on her cell phone, use GPS to determine their location, and warn others on social media about the dangers on that road. Payment to the innkeeper can be made through Venmo, a crowdfunding platform set up to help the long-term needs of crime victims. The Good Samaritan’s compassion would be complemented by new technology.

But whether his listeners live in the first century or the 21st century, Jesus calls all who follow him to imitate the good Samaritan and respond with compassion and mercy to the human suffering they encounter along life’s journey. Modern technologies can help a lot in this regard. However, there is a growing danger that some new technologies will do the exact opposite.

Consider headphones and earbuds. a survey 47% of users admit to wearing it “to avoid their surroundings.” An English writer, Ella Shaw, was convinced He said his always-on headphones help him focus and make him happy. But after giving them up for a month, he realized he was using them to hide “the ugliness of the world” — including the homeless on the street, “my own auditory utopia in which he got completely lost, with a spring in my step.”

Thanks to his technology-enabled cocoon, Shaw suggests that some philosophersmoral distance” – we feel less empathy for those we cannot see, as opposed to those we encounter face to face. People who are distant may seem abstract – less real – which leads us to conclude that their needs have less of a claim on our moral responsibility. Historically, this has meant that they are separated in time and space. He meant separated people. However, thanks to headphones and earbuds, we can now get away from what is right under our noses.

This is actually a selling point for these devices. Consider Apple’s AirPods, which have 150 million pairs sold Since 2016. Apple introducing the new AirPods Pro 2 boasts That they eliminate “unwanted noise” while prioritizing “sounds you need to pay attention to as you navigate the world.”

This has some benefits. Although women have long been warned not to wear headphones to hear approaching threats, some can now make their voices heard by wearing AirPods. drown out the talkers. Not hearing or pretending not to hear deprives sexual harassers of the attention they seek and makes these women feel safer in society.

But this trust has a price. The safe feelings that come from AirPods are tied to a machine that distances users from the vast majority of people who pose no danger. Including those who need our attention.

But even deafened by AirPods, the good Samaritan couldn’t ignore a crime victim in need of help. Although Jesus did not say that he was crying or groaning in pain, a half-dead man lying on the roadside in the empty desert would have been impossible to miss. Maybe that’s a “smart” headset, unless the good Samaritan has paired his AirPods with the Apple Vision Pro. in words The product, from Commonweal’s Alexander Stern, is essentially a “noise-canceling headphone for your eyes.”

Vision Pro’s outward-facing cameras convey the real world to users on a screen that can be covered with applications. “Digital content blends seamlessly with your physical space.” boasts about Apple. What’s more, a simple turn of the dial can replace this augmented reality view with a completely virtual one. “I can shape reality to my own specifications,” Stern laments, “and live in a world that is mine alone.” With the Vision Pro, a potential good Samaritan can miss a beaten and bloody body, get distracted by a TikTok video as he walks by, or dismiss it as a hologram.

For now, VisionPro’s hardware is bulky and expensive, but as Stern warns, it points to a “dark future” where the lines between real and virtual are forever blurred in private techno-bubbles. In addition to Apple, Snap, Google and Microsoft are also competing with each other to develop rival products; or even “smart” contact lenses they are at work. And Facebook’s parent company, Meta, has invested billions of dollars to create what CEO Mark Zuckerberg will create. calls The “holy grail” of smart glasses will “redefine our relationship with technology.”

Meta and its partner Microsoft hope It is stated that these glasses will be a portal to the “metaverse”, that is, an immersive 3D alternative reality dream world where there is a lot of buying and selling and people can meet and hang out. Remote friends can play games together or attend a digitally life-like virtual concert as if they were in the same room. Meta’s marketing hype insists it’s the “next evolution in social connection.” Other than that, not everyone in the community will be there to connect.

Metaveren is an escape from the real world that only people on one side of the digital divide can enter, and where residents can spend large amounts of cryptocurrency to buy virtual “properties” and collect digital coins.art“While there are people living on the margins in the real world, there are no margins to be lived in in the metaverse; there are no people pushed into the digital periphery for a potential good Samaritan to see. For this to happen, virtual poverty and suffering must be deliberately placed to prevent real poverty and suffering from being forgotten.” .

That’s exactly what a French non-profit organization is doing. Environment “a network that aims to find solutions to people’s social exclusion”unstable situations,” created a metaverse avatar named”Will” to represent a person experiencing homelessness. “Will” raises awareness about people sleeping rough and reflects real-world concerns. inside the metadata So, in the words of Entourage Jean-Marc PotdevinWe can “regain our own dignity by experiencing a real relationship of unity” with those who are “invisible and lonely, ignored”.

Time will tell whether the metaverse will be what all evangelists dream of. But even now other new technologies leave people feeling overlooked; not just those on the margins of society, but also workers whose interactions with other people are minimized by tablets, kiosks, apps, algorithms and robots. According to a Johns Hopkins University sociologist Allison PughExamining the impact of technology on relationships, Dr.

Given such trends, the US surgeon general insists We need to “critically evaluate our relationship with technology” to confront “the public health crisis of loneliness, isolation, and lack of connection.”

Even tech experts were alarmed. Augmented reality (AR) pioneer Louis Rosenberg warns He imagines that “the metaverse can obliterate reality” and “a dystopian walk through the neighborhood” with “virtual blinders” on a headset that deliberately obscure “soup kitchens and homeless shelters.”

Such a bleak prospect troubles Pope Francis. Fratelli Tutti He fears that we have become “prisoners of (p)virtual reality” who have “lost the taste and taste of real reality.” In this encyclical he also meditates on the good Samaritan and laments the “growing gulf between ourselves and the world around us” where “contempt for the poor” and “one looks the other way”. But now we are walking towards a future where we won’t need to look away. Because with our new technology, our vision will already be blocked.

“Christ has no body other than yours” to start St. Teresa of Avila, in a poem commonly attributed to her. “The eyes with which He looks at this world with compassion are yours… Your hands are yours, your feet are yours.”

Teresa seems to be saying that being a good Samaritan means carrying on the ministry of Jesus. This was true in his time as well; It is true for us too. And this may continue to be true tomorrow, as long as our technology allows our eyes to see and our ears to hear.