You probably don’t know this about me, but I’m basically blind. Probably not legally, but I don’t actually know for sure. Maybe I’m exaggerating slightly. But only slightly. With the possible exception of my father, from whom I clearly got this, I am the most near-sighted person I know. Right now I’m wearing contact lenses that are minus-8.5 and minus-10, while most of the rest of the myopic crowd hovers somewhere between 1 and 3, maybe 4 if it’s really bad. And I hate my glasses. I mean, I hate my glasses. My featherweight lenses, the absolute lightest lens available when I bought them, are still as thick as ice cubes, so that I wonder if they would actually weigh my face down if they were of the normal kind. And whenever I wear them, there’s an insecure part of me that travels right back in time to elementary and middle school, when the typical “four-eyes” and “nerd” and “geek” and all of their mean-spirited relatives were thrown at me with upsetting regularity. I got the gift of contact lenses just before my bar mitzvah and, if you’ll pardon the pun, I haven’t looked back since. I pretty much avoid wearing my glasses in public at all costs. In fact, I’m guessing that virtually no one in this room has ever seen me wearing them. And now you know why.
So you can imagine my mixed reaction when I was reading through the amNY, my free paper of choice, and I came across this article. See, Google will soon be coming out with a special pair of glasses. According to the description, it is essentially an uber-smart-phone device, and the onslaught of information it deems relevant to what you’re looking at will suddenly appear perfectly in your line of vision, perhaps overhead, perhaps on the sidewalk in front of you. Wanna know where the nearest pizza place is and how to get there? Directions, distance, and arrows will magically appear in your lens, and within minutes you’ll be folding up that perfect slice. See a book or a shirt or a pair of jeans you like and you want to compare prices before you buy it there? Miniature screens will open up, as though from the corner of your eye, and you’ll know almost instantly if you should get it there or somewhere else.
I get it. If we’re already doing some or most of these things using our phones, looking down or away from where we probably should be, this would, in theory, cover all of those bases in the periphery, so that we can still walk to where we’re going. And plus, I have to admit, the technology of the whole thing sounds pretty awesome. You think about the changes our grandparents have seen in the way the world works over the course of their lifetime, and then you think about the world our children are being born into, it absolutely boggles the mind.
But there’s a problem here. And it’s a big one.
It’s not technology itself. It’s easy to hurl the blame squarely and entirely on the “evil machines.” Because if that’s the problem, then the answer’s even easier: just turn it all off. Unplug yourself from your electronics. But deep down we know that’s just not true. A recent article in the Atlantic cut right to the heart of the matter, saying that, while we think the solution is to try to divorce ourselves completely from our devices, if only for small pockets of time, that is, at best, an avoidance tactic for the modern world. The peace of mind we may achieve is short-lived and ultimately of little significance because, for better or worse, to be a functioning member of society requires our being plugged in, even when we make the concerted effort on vacation to be “off the grid.” Rather, what we need to do is to focus ourselves, to be purposeful in our use of technology, for the mental welfare of ourselves and our families.
So technology’s not the problem. It’s a matter of what we use those advances for, what we as humanity choose to do with this newfound and seemingly infinite power we’ve discovered. And like with any measure of power, the choices we make with it ultimately reflect back on us as a society.
And I’m no different than anyone else. I won’t lie: I’m a huge fan of my iPhone. One of our friends over for the Super Bowl wonders aloud how old Madonna is or where Tom Brady went to college? I’ll ask Siri. I’m out at a bar and that Gorillaz song comes on but I’m drawing a blank on the actual title, I open Shazam, hold my phone up to the speaker, and seconds later it reminds me that, for whatever reason, the song’s called “Clint Eastwood.” I’m sitting on the couch with Tali, watching television, but trying to stay clued in to what’s “trending,” finding interesting articles, sound bites, or trivia along the way. After all, how do you think I saw that Atlantic article in the first place? I have certain text alerts from ESPN, so as I was at home today, writing this sermon, at 12:56, I get a text saying that Ryan Braun will address the media at 1:00, and that I should tune in to watch. And you know what? I did.
So what does this invention, this pair of GoogleGlasses, say about us?
It says that we, as human beings, are completely insatiable. It says we are information-hungry, to the point of starvation, and it’s all stuff we need to know right now, because pausing to prioritize, would simply be a waste of time. It says our individual curiosity, the random question that pops up in our mind that we can’t immediately let go of, has to be resolved immediately, because it trumps whatever moment, whatever personal connection, is happening, or could be happening at that point in time.
And that’s the problem. Whether it’s iPhones, Blackberrys, Droids, whatever. The issue is that we make them extensions of ourselves, rather than merely incredibly capable and helpful tools. And when we do that, we make it all about ourselves. We see the world through something like Googleglasses, so that the world is a bubble with us and our wants at the center, and everything else—most notably personal connection with other human beings—is tossed aside, x’d out like the distraction of a pop-up advertisement.
In this week’s portion, Parashat T’rumah, the Israelites are given the initial instructions for building the Mishkan, the portable synagogue for the wanderings of the desert, and the first sanctuary in our history. And in what is probably my all-time favorite piece of Torah, we read the details of how the cover of the Ark of the Pact—the front of basically the holiest chamber that has ever existed for the Jewish people—is to be made. God says, “Make one cherub at one end and another cherub at the other end, and have their wings spread out above, shielding the cover. They shall confront each other, both of them face-to-face with the other." They're not looking up, they're not looking out at you. They're looking at each other. "There, from above the cover, from the exact place right between the faces of the cherubim, there will I meet with you.”
Being with each other in the moment, meeting on a deep, intimate level with another person, looking him or her in the eye and feeling that undeniable, almost mystical sense of connection—that, my friends, is the stuff of life. That is why God created us and, ultimately, why we are here in the first place: to use our eyes, to use our glasses, not to further our individual selves, but to look deep and look hard to see what really matters. And that, at the end of the day, is our relationship, our connection, with each other.
AMEN.
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