“I am convinced the devil lives in our phones.”

Once again, I was struck by the title of an article running through my News app.

If we are tasked with discerning good and evil in the world we live in, then what might be evidence of the devil living in our phones?

Addiction.

Addiction that leads to distraction.

Distraction that leads to separation from a natural reality.

Whether it be the suspicion of something evil at work or of something more corporeal, the effects of children being exposed to screens at a young age are causing parents in Silicon Valley to freak out.

A recent article in the New York Times explains that since “technologists know how phones really work,” many have decided “they don’t want their own children anywhere near them.”

Much of this concern is centered around the addictive nature of screen activities.

In the aforementioned NYT article entitled “A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley,” Chris Anderson, the former editor of Wired, adds his expertise to defend the limitation of screen time by parents.

Mr. Anderson warns of the addictive nature of screens by saying “On the scale between candy and crack cocaine, it’s closer to crack cocaine.”

He maintains his cry of despair when addressing the difficulties of managing screen time as a parent: “This is beyond our power to control. This is going straight to the pleasure centers of the developing brain. This is beyond our capacity as regular parents to understand.”

Anderson has several hefty rules for technology use in place for his five children, including a no phone policy until his children reach the summer before high school and a call for no screens in the bedroom.

Other parents of young children are living by similar mantras, such as “the last child in the class to get a phone wins.”

The suspicion that tech developers are employing evil tactics to captivate the youth of the world has bled over to the formation of a new impression that these companies could be manufacturing a digital divide between the rich and the poor.

In a separate report by the New York Times about “The Digital Gap Between Rich and Poor Kids,” writer Nellie Bowles reveals that recent trends point to the creation of a social framework where “the children of poorer and middle-class parents will be raised by screens, while the children of Silicon Valley’s elite will be going back to wooden toys and the luxury of human interaction” (Digital Gap).

This ploy by tech giants to have children hooked on digital experiences, (which is a move supported by telling reports), carries an inherently evil quality.

If the devil is in the details of recent digital technology design, then the side-effects of addition and isolation are clearly intentional.

On the contrary, a psalm comes to mind when thinking of the parents who challenge the cultural norms of excessive screen time for their children:

Psalm 1:1-2

“1 Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers,

2 but whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and who meditates on his law day and night.”

I was ready to go to sleep, but a shocking headline on my ‘news app’ prolonged my jump into dreamland:

“Thousands Of Swedes Are Inserting Microchips Under Their Skin”

The Mark of the Beast. Could it be?

The title certainly had my attention. The content of the article did not come close to implying that the Swedish people may be the forerunners for a global movement to end all global movement. The report did, however, highlight the world’s general craving for more accessibility and ease-of-access through the means of the today’s digital network.

I look to my iPhone lock screen as a reflection of the evermore intrusive nature of the digital economy.

My first iPhone, the 5s model, was the first iPhone model that accepted fingerprint scanning technology into its design.

I was hesitant to invite the finger-scanning device to live in my pocket because I wasn’t sure what Apple could do with my fingerprint.

And it’s still not clear what Apple could do.

I have found that Apple says all the right things about storing the fingerprint data within “an advanced security architecture called the Secure Enclave” – a place where my fingerprint data is “encrypted, stored on device, and protected with a key available only to the Secure Enclave” (Apple).

Though Apple is “saying the right things,” about the encryption of fingerprint information, an article by Ray Hennessey published in 2013 on Entrpreneur.com claims that “there are a few reasons to worry” about Apple’s Touch ID technology. Hennessey argues that after the N.S.A. leaks, “saying something is encrypted now doesn’t mean it’s not accessible, just a little harder to unlock” (Entrepreneur.com). CNN adds a shout for privacy to the debate by declaring that “We need to know that backdoors won’t be built into iPhones to allow security services to retrieve fingerprint data” (CNN).

While Apple claims that the fingerprint information is kept under wraps and only stored locally, Hennessey reminds us that seeing “biometric data captured in a larger, more global database” does not take a big stretch of the imagination.

The questions of privacy invasion that arise from the data sharing capabilities of big corporations, such as Apple, should be applied to the conversation surrounding the integration of microchip technologies.

The chips are appealing.

The NPR article about Swedish microchips (that kept me awake a few nights ago) explains that the chips are “designed to speed up users’ daily routines and make their lives more convenient — accessing their homes, offices and gyms is as easy as swiping their hands against digital readers.”

Proponents of the chips claim that they are “safe and largely protected from hacking.” In the minority camp of microchip critics is scientist Ben Libberton who is “raising privacy concerns around the kind of personal health data that might be stored on the devices.” Libberton is starting a campaign for lawmakers to initiate limitations for the technology. He argues that in the future, “chips could be used to share data about our physical health and bodily functions” (NPR).

This realm of possibility is cause for grave concern, considering the data sharing practices of large governments and corporations.

In other words, a world-wide integration of the microchip lifestyle could be beastly.

Jowan Osterlund, the founder of the lead chipping firm in Sweden (Biohax International), says that he “has a hard time seeing the rest of the world” following in Europe’s footsteps of establishing privacy rules that support mass microchip production (NPR).

“But at least all of Europe — I mean one continent — it’s a good beginning,” he says.

Could it be the beginning of the end?

 

by Coleman Ott