BOOK REVIEW: From
the Garden to the City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology by
John Dyer. Kregel Publications, 2011. ISBN: 9780825426681.
From
the Garden to the City by John Dyer is the suggested
reading assignment for the group participants of the monthly ILRC Share and
Care meetings facilitated by Associate Dean of Administration and Collection
Services Lowell Walters. The first review session was only an overview of
Dyer’s introduction and first chapter, but it was a full session of
philosophical Q&A regarding good versus evil and where technology stacks
up. Continued reading will hopefully generate as animated a group review in
future meetings.
The book’s message is wrapped up in its medium (one
learns this application by reading the book); its medium begins with its
author. John Dyer’s background is one richly mixed with information technology
and theology, and so, his insight includes both in equal measure. From the Garden to the City is an easy
read, does not require much on the part of its reader, and is logically
developed between the points he wishes to make. What are those points?
There are several points about technology which he
investigates, but two speak the loudest to me. First, that technology has been
around since the Garden of Eden and, second, that classifying technology as
neutral simply because it lacks a moral compass, or soul, is an incomplete and
inaccurate summation of its existence. Dyer offers great detail, both with
historical anecdotes and Scripture, which argue these points. For me, I
appreciate his assessment that technology is “the means by which we transform
the world as it is into the world that we desire [and] what we often fail to
notice is that it is not only the world that gets transformed by technology,”
but us as well.
