Instruments vs. Devices & Magic vs. Scaffolding
A construct to help you and your family to use technology without being used by it.
This article is an updated and expanded version of the one I first published on IHD. Enjoy!
Hello Bar-setters! Today I’ll look give you a fantastic framework to help you determine when technology use is healthy and when it isn’t. Onward!
For magic and applied science alike, the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men; the solution is a technique, and both in the practice of this technique are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious.” —C.S. Lewis
Source: The Abolition of Man
Technology as an Instrument
I took up the guitar in January 2022. If you’ve never played the guitar, you probably imagine, as I did, that it is fairly easy to learn. After all, you’ve seen thousands of videos of people singing away, smiling, and performing without seeming to give a second thought to the beautiful sound emanating from their guitar. Most assume that with a little work, playing the guitar is basically autopilot. But this is far from true.
It takes thousands of hours just to be able to string together a basic song without long, awkward pauses between every chord transition. When first learning a chord, you’ll take many seconds to place your fingers just right and somehow it still won’t sound like it is supposed to. Playing the chord well requires a matter of feel that only comes with considerable repetition.
It’s easy to get discouraged. But eventually—and far before you are anything that would resemble a decent guitar player—you feel the pure bliss of progress. You play a song or a section of a song. You make music and it feels wonderful.
Technology as Magic
In modern times, you can listen to any song you want at any time you want to. In fact, you can pick stations that learn from your likes and dislikes in order to consistently bring you better listening selections. Even without your input, the technology learns to deliver you exactly what you want to hear.
100 years ago, very few homes had a radio. The only way to listen to music on-demand was to make music or find friends who could make music. Thus, the average person was more likely to persist past the inevitable frustrations that come with learning to play an instrument and develop a level of musical competency.
Technology has made it easy to hear great music. On one hand that is wonderful. But the inevitable effect of this has been that it also reduces the incentive for people to develop their own musical competency. This skill discouraging effect is felt in many other domains as well.
100 years ago, there was no way to entertain yourself except to read, take on a hobby, or to interact with other people.
Twenty years ago you had to knock on a door or at least pick up the phone to get a friend's "status update." There was no way to get a date with someone you were attracted to other than to work up the courage to put yourself out there and persist through the awkward trial, error, and rejection that characterizes early romantic interests.
Author Andy Crouch often refers to the way modern technology effortlessly solves our problems as magic. Tech gets us what we want. Often it gives us something that we want so much that we would have worked tirelessly to be able to get it. But since we can now get it without any work, we avoid the pains of skill acquisition.
We get what we want without having to develop any capacity. That’s magic.
Google Maps. Magic.
Video games. Magic.
Social media. Magic.
Tinder. Magic.
Porn. Magic.
Door Dash. Magic.
Amazon. Magic.
Each of these magically meet our needs without requiring anything of us. By doing that, they remove the problem that would have once spurred us to grow and expand our capacity—to develop skills that would be a springboard to higher quality living. We get what we want (or at least a shell of it), but we don’t have to work to acquire the skills that were once a prerequisite to enjoying that pleasure. This feels great in the moment. But, in the long run, it leaves us as a smaller version of ourselves. We can come to feel used and as if we have never tapped our potential.
Still, technology is not evil. The guitar is a technology, as is everything from skateboards to written language. Computers, which are what we typically think of as technology, are not evil either. The computer has facilitated an incredible amount of procrastination and distraction in my life. But it has also helped me deepen and maintain important relationships and it was an indispensable medium for writing and researching my book. Like most dynamic modern technologies, the computer has been both productive and destructive in my life, depending on how I use it.
The Essential Distinction
In his book, The Life We’re Looking For, Andy Crouch makes an essential distinction that can help us discern whether our tech use is productive or whether it is basically the tech equivalent of junk food. That distinction is between instruments and devices.
Devices are magic. Devices remove or reduce the need for skill. They give us what Crouch calls “power without effort.”
Instruments, by contrast, require effort to master. They are technology that is used to assist our own personal expansion. They augment our innate abilities and allow us to do things that we could not do alone, but which still require us to engage with the world as it really is.
Think of written language and the way it has expanded human potential.
Think of a sword and the way it expanded human lethality.
Think of a basketball and the way it allowed Michael Jordan to expand his athleticism, creativity, and drive.
When technology is used as an instrument, it scaffolds humanity to greater heights.
The distinction between devices and instruments is quite helpful with technologies like the computer and smartphone, which can be both an instrument and a device, depending on how they are used. With the device-instrument distinction in mind, you can intentionally change your phone settings to reduce “device” time and discourage mindlessly slipping into scroll mode.
Intentionality is the key. I see no problem with listening to great music on Spotify. In fact, hearing this music usually serves to inspire a budding musician, provided they have already committed to learning to play. A little bit of device time is usually fine, so long as you are aware of it, you limit it, and you take steps to avoid becoming too dependent on device magic. Because, at scale, device magic is the foremost cause of human devolution.
Society has been slow to adapt to the revolutionary technology that we’ve been handed. In the modern world, it is imperative that we teach our children how to set boundaries and systems so that they can use technology without being used by it. We have not done enough to teach parents and students what technology is doing to them and how take control of their relationship with technology. This is a core subject for the 21st century.
On a related note:
Thank you for reading and sharing!
If you enjoyed this, check out this thought-provoking post from the Historian, H.W. Brands.
Carry the fire!
Shane