In the days of yesteryear, we became accustomed to the fact that computers were gradually managing to imitate everything we possessed: they copied our logic, outdid us in memory, multiplied their processing capacity in place of our intelligence; they acquired cameras in place of eyes, microphones in place of ears, speakers in place of mouths… It could be said that man has served as a model for many technological inventions, and that their engineers in turn, have also tried to replicate almost all human activities with information technology.
Gradually, computers – which were initially an esoteric and expensive luxury reserved for a select few – became something important, then commonplace, and finally inseparable from human behaviour. Today we no longer do anything without them, and perhaps we do not even know how to live without them; they have become an extension of our being.
First called a “rational animal”, man was successively considered a “political animal”, a “free animal”… and now he is a “digital animal”. It remains to be seen whether he will continue as an animal or something else. In fact, in this “evolution” there has been a reversal.
Unlike in ancient times, we – as a society – no longer control technology. During a certain period of time, the reins of control were still in the hands of an “elite” of lunatics who communicated in a language that only they understood. Today, however, we find ourselves on the verge of technology taking its development into its own “hands” via artificial intelligence.
While this is happening, our psychology is moulding itself – somewhat compulsorily, although still without our sensing it at times – to the influence of the digital world. It shapes us so much – not just our actions, but even the mysterious mechanisms of psychology that govern our way of judging or reacting, in other words, our mentality – that the real world begins to resent it.
Let us consider one aspect, by way of example…
When you are working on the computer and you make a mistake, isn’t it true that you instinctively reach out to press Ctrl+Z – or Command+Z ?
Did you mistakenly delete a paragraph from your work? Ctrl+Z.
Did you accidentally blemish an image you were retouching? Ctrl+Z.
Did you invert the position, change the format or colour? … Ctrl+Z.
Bumped into the mouse or touchpad with your coffee cup and disaster struck? Ctrl+Z.
Did you press some key, without even being sure which one, and just want to “undo” what you have done, without really caring how you did it? Ctrl+Z.
Ctrl+Z is often our saviour. It always works. We never – or almost never – do something that cannot be undone with a simple click. It is like a time machine, allowing us to return to the safety of the past, as if we had not even run into the unpleasant shock of the present. Ctrl+Z is magic; it is almost a god.
It just has one drawback: like so many other things, these prodigious keystrokes work on our psychology. Repetition tends to create habits. By the same token, when our brain finds a solution, it tends to apply it to other areas by analogy. Habits and analogies combined end up giving a certain absolute connotation, even subconsciously, to frequently used solutions.
And here we run into problems. In our real lives – lived in flesh, bone and soul – there is no time machine or Ctrl+Z. Our actions are irremediable and definitive. A broken vase can be glued back together, spilt milk can be replaced, an insult can be forgiven and redressed; but the concrete fact cannot be undone or cancelled.
Despite this, the indiscriminate use of digital media seems to be creating a “Ctrl+Z generation”: people with a warped mentality who are increasingly irresponsible. They expose themselves to absurd risks – like taking selfies in extremely dangerous places – they do not weigh the consequences of their actions and manifest aberrant behaviour, almost as if they had no self-preservation instinct. They squander, they steal, they kill, they transgress… and then they suffer an enormous shock when they have to face the penalties of the law.
And that is the inversion: first we model technology, then we are modelled by it.
Now, just as there is no Ctrl+Z in real life, there is even less in the moral life. We can undoubtedly endeavour to turn back from a bad path we have set out on, we can even completely overcome the deleterious effects of this error; however, we will never change history, which has recorded that deviation we would have liked to have avoided. The Sacrament of Confession itself forgives the guilt of sin, but it does not “undo” the act committed: if I have killed someone, they will not come back to life.
Sin exists, and virtue also exists; both are within our reach, but there is only one decision, and it can be a wrong one. Every decision, and every act of free will, will be judged by God, who will reward virtue and punish vice. And before the august Judgement of the Most High, there is no Ctrl+Z. ◊
