COMMUNITY SENSE

LOVE, COMMUNITY, AND COMPUTERS

Mark R. Wenger

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." I regaled my wife at our wedding reception by reciting this poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I wanted to surprise and honor her—and did. That will be 23 years ago in December 2007. During the intervening years, the ways of loving her have multiplied. And so have, I’m sorry to say, the ways of hurting her.

It was during the year when Kathy and I married that I made use of a personal computer for the first time. Before that time, the computers I knew were big machines, housed in special rooms, instructed by punch cards and operated by a specialist of electronic esotericity (wizardry). My first personal computer task: prepare a job resume on a friend’s machine. It was a frustrating experience; I could have done it much faster on my manual typewriter.

All that has changed, of course. A few years after our marriage, we bought our first computer, a Toshiba T1000SE. We’ve gone through six or seven machines since then. Last month I ordered a green laptop for a daughter going off to college. No, the iPod or iPhone bug has not bit me, but I write while connected to the computer universe with high-speed WiFi.

"How do I love thee, dear computer? Let me count the ways." There are almost too many ways to count. But let’s try, for just the last week. There’s the national and international news; I’m an online news junkie. I located a replacement car radio/cassette player—cheap—on eBay for our 1995 Honda Accord; my daughters are happy again, happy to take the car to college. I do a lot of our banking and family finances with a computer—spreadsheets, making deposits and paying bills, tracking investments.

How do I love thee, computer? The list goes on and on: listening to music; swimming through floods of email; looking at photos of a family trip to Israel and Palestine; getting a map and directions for driving somewhere; searching for the words of an old hymn; checking out videos of Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton on YouTube; researching a new battery for an old mower. And that’s just off the top of my head. What would the list look like if I’d actually tracked the activities for seven days? How many hours have I spent "on the computer?" Probably too many.

Here’s the question: After 23 years of both, what do loving my wife and loving my computer have to do with each other? Answer: Not much. Almost nothing, in fact. Which is just the point. Too often loving the computer competes with and sometimes erodes loving my wife. Oh sure, we exchange romantic email notes and occasional e-cards. But love between people, friendships that really count over time, is rarely cultivated through the medium of a computer.

I can almost hear howls of protest; my college-age daughters would probably join the chorus of complaint. What about the social networking sites like Facebook? They build friendships and community! What about instant messaging? It’s a great way to stay in touch at all hours of the day! What about online games where you can compete with people all over the world?

Think of all the communities of similarly interested persons who can link up with each other online, like parents of autistic children or friends who enjoy hopping freight trains. How about those dating services that introduce potential mates to each other? The computer is a wonderful tool for building community, learning to love people, bringing people together! Isn’t it?

I don’t think so. You want love, you want community? Turn off the computer and get out. See people, spend some face-to-face time, rub shoulders, go hiking, discuss a book across a table, coffee mug in hand.

A Newsweek cover story (Aug. 27, 2007) features Facebook and its creator Mark Zuckerberg all of 23 (born the same year of my wedding and first computer foray). Facebook works with the concept of a social graph—the people-connections with those you care about. These are your "friends" who can post status reports, photos, videos, and comments you can see. If they are your "friend," they see what you post. It’s an ingenious way to stay in touch with acquaintances and colleagues; Zuckerberg hopes its appeal will reach far beyond high school and college students.

But I’m still not convinced that a computer connection does much to develop real community, lasting and vital human relationships. One testimonial in the Newsweek article sings Facebook’s praises: "As Facebook grew up alongside of us, it improved our collective social lives—all 1,042 friends of mine and counting."

Curmudgeon that I am, this sounds like an echo hall for informational promiscuity. Friendship an inch deep and a mile wide.

Then there’s the website called Second Life I came across in the news. In this 3-D virtual world, "residents" create their own digital self—an avatar. These avatars can explore a vast digital continent, interacting with other virtual residents. Residents can build homes, create digital objects whose rights they retain and can buy, sell and trade with other residents. Your avatar can fall in love with another, have sex, and raise a family. Since 2003, over 8 million people have become residents. Not me.

Turn the computer off. Call up some real friends. Go out shopping, go bowling, go to church. Hanging out at the health club or even the local pub will have more genuine flesh and blood potential for authentic and lasting relationships than trying to figure out the best chin angle and hair style for your Second Life avatar or the music to greet your friends on Facebook.

Get to know the real residents in your community; attend your local municipal events. There are more than enough real people to fight, love, visit, and serve without escaping into a narcissistic digital universe filled with thousands more.

Since I’m in deep, let me keep digging. Just today I heard Lee Snyder, a seasoned former university president (see her article earlier in this issue of DSM) warn the faculty and staff at another university about email. "With email, it is so easy to fire off a sharp note and copy a bunch of people in the process. That kind of thing created more hard feelings among co-workers during my tenure than just about anything else." What has happened to the telephone, to being a good conversationalist, and to working through a disagreement while breathing the same air?

And I haven’t even said anything about computers and pornography, or gambling or anything more poisonous to relational trust and truth.

Computers expand productivity and enhance power. They really do. But I don’t believe they contribute much to enhancing love or building community. Someone once observed that there is an inverse relationship between power and love. I agree. Where power dynamics are amplified, love tends to disappear. Where love is fostered and put into practice in relationships, power issues recede.

So you want love in the real world? You long for community of people, for lasting friendships where you can laugh and cry together? A place to belong? Turn off the computer, look around, get out of the house, hang out with people you can look in the eye. You just might find who and what you are looking for.

—Mark R. Wenger, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, is Director of Pastoral Studies for Eastern Mennonite Seminary at Lancaster. He wrote this column before he turned off his computer.