I have not posted anything on this site in quite a while. I could explain why, but that is another post altogether. Why am I posting today? The quick answer is I listened to Andy Crouch’s The Tech-Wise Family for the third time.
The Tech-Wise Family, if you’ve never heard of it, is a book on technology in its proper place. But it’s much more than that. Andy and his wife have raised a family using many of these principles that he offers in the book. These principles, ranging from not having a TV in your house till your oldest is ten to ensuring you and/or your spouse make it to any wedding or funeral you are invited to, attempt to craft a life of experience in the things beyond our screens.
The underlying principle is everything in its proper place. This first goes for technology. After all, it is the tech-wise family. Crouch offers the easy to remember rule: no phone for one hour per day, one day per week, and one week per year. With this is easy to remember, I am sure many–and honestly even me now–think “one day per week?!” or “one week per year?!” For us modern folk, this response is unsurprising. Yet doesn’t it also show how dependent we are on these devices? I am currently picturing myself like the Dave Chappelle character who with white crack laced lips constantly scratches his neck waiting and searching for the next hit. If that picture is anywhere close to true for me though, it would behoove me to begin those practices.
The Tech-Wise Family is more than just a treatise against using too much technology. Crouch regularly reminds his readers that he is not anti-tech. He is quite the tech nerd himself. Instead of an anti-tech treatise, he reminds us that we are human. We were meant to live and work in the world face-to-face and side-by-side with each other. Not side-by-side or face-to-face on Zoom, but in flesh and blood. This is what the book does best for me. Crouch implores us to learn to sing, create, discuss, laugh, cry, work, learn, and all of the actions we as humans are meant to do. We are meant to put the phones down, yes. Putting the phones down won’t matter, however, unless we engage with one another in life together. If could write up a synopsis that would do justice to the feelings and desires that is conjured up by Crouch’s moving chapters, I would. However, I am not capable. Fortunately, there is the Tech-Wise Family readily available for purchase or at your library.
Read the Tech-Wise Family, and come join and help me live as a human in our technological age.
