Lesson 8: Technology and International Corporations

One of the goals of the Christian voice is to uncover the truth that society ignores. For instance, it should acknowledge the role modern technology and international corporations play in monetary wealth becoming the only standard of our culture. The public conversation overlooks how both have very quietly and perhaps even unconsciously so disarmed traditional values that only financial profit motivates anymore. The technology study group in which my son and I participate has extensively examined how just about every public spokesperson throughout the 20th century promised that technology would solve all human problems. Most, in one way or another, claimed that the efficiency of modern problem solving made traditional caring values irrelevant. Consequently, the common good became inherently bound up with the growth of the market economy and dependent on the next technological advance or invention. Our group predicted well over 50 years ago that this reliance on technology alone would eventually lead to our present situation: news programs becoming entertainment, science reduced to fundable research, sports adopting professional rather than recreational standards, the environment sacrificed for financial profit, money controlling politics, families subordinated to jobs, and industry replacing people with machines. I worked up to the last, because public conversation steadfastly refuses to acknowledge that industry’s goal has long been darkened factories where the problems of human labor are minimized or eradicated. Just about every public figure still mouths the silliness that technology creates new and better paying jobs for which all people can train themselves. That brings up the second major factor, the international corporation that has utilized the power of modern technology to the fullest. These companies that have amassed great power operate within a global economic system whose efficiency depends on overriding the ethical concerns of all local communities. An economic system only works if all parties accept the rules. Cultural varietals must be set aside. Consequently, traditional values are irrelevant. Public conversation sometimes observes the capital of these corporations exceeds that of most small nations, but it seldom goes on to acknowledge that means they also have great influence on large nations. Public conversation often laments that money controls modern national politics, but it usually fails to mention most of this is the money of international corporations. Public conversation recently has warned that foreign nations interfere with our elections, but still seldom acknowledges we, too, have long been interfering in the elections of other nations and usually refuses to see the threat of international corporations interfering with ours. Ironically, most of those currently mouthing slogans about putting the nation first are shareholders in international corporations. Although they talk against globalization, they obviously know they profit from it. The Christian voice must first acknowledge the role played by technology and international corporations, but it then must participate in the discussion of how we might deal with them.