The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas officially opened today. The emphasis is definitely on “officially” since more than a glimpse of what is being flaunted there has been showing up in the news for days.
There are bigger and sharper-than-ever televisions. Mere HD apparently is so day before yesterday. Now it’s OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) HD TV. The South Korean firm LG announced its own Ultra HD, based on a different technology, which is said to provide a screen resolution four times sharper than your current full HD set. And there are of course new doo-dads to go with these TVs. One has something called “my homescreen” that lets you organize all your digital content in one place and help you organize content for each family member. If don’t have a family, this will make you want to get one.
There’s lots more than TVs, naturally. The theme running through all the gizmos and gadgets, they say, is connectivity, with techonology embedded in the technology that feeds into your tablet and smartphone, so that you can control the devices with the tablet or smartphone.
Some of this wizardry is probably very useful. The bulk of it is no doubt entertainment. Nothing wrong with fun. And there is a time for everything, says the Bible (Ecclesiastes 3:1). But it does, in one more way, point to the huge disparity between rich and destitute in the world. While I gawk idolatrously at much of this stuff, Syrian kids are gawking at the sky watching for fighter-bombers, even while they are scavenging for food and scratching the ground with sticks to try to make a shelter from the destructive technology from the sky. Will forgoing your Ultra HD TV help them? No. But it can’t hurt the world around us, and our own well-being, at least to be mindful of our priorities and try to keep things in balance. Furthermore, many of us obtain these things with money we don’t have. And then there is the issue of what kind of content is on those screens, and how much they detract from relating to actual people – although yes, a lot of technology is meant to help us connect with one another.
In the end, the appropriateness of the technology we latch onto can be judged by the quality of life it contributes to. By quality of life I mean that which is measured by standards other than the amount and sophistication of the stuff we have. How about this:
“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law” (Galatians 5:22-23 NIV).
Or this:
“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things” (Philippians 4:8).