In my second year of undergraduate study at university the computer science lecturer forgot about one of the lectures. He was lost in some algorithm that caught his fancy the night before and made him forget to go to bed at all. He arrived at the lecture hall twenty minutes too late, in reverse and upside down, still dressed in the pyjamas that never served their purpose. And somehow, we still completed the day’s curriculum and had a novel new sorting algorithm as an added bonus.
Institutions don’t suffer the eccentric anymore. Only a few years later this scene is unthinkable at such an elite university. Today there would have been at least a few formal complaints from the student cohort. The lecturer would have failed to provide one second of attendance for which the students pay such high tuition. Someone would feel violated at the sight of the lecturer’s bedroom wear and someone else would have had their separation anxiety triggered by the memory of their divorced dad owning the same robe.
Massive, impersonal bureaucracies have become a common aspect of life. We complete numerous forms and deal with either automated systems or individuals who are conditioned to act like machines. The immense scale of human organizations greatly hinders personal interactions. Bureaucratic entities seek replaceable individuals and predictable results to function effectively at a large scale, yet natural human interactions are inherently disorderly and unpredictable. The system favours the nomadic global citizen, the generic man from no specific place, adaptable to any role, where learning to navigate bureaucracy is more important than understanding how to connect on a human level.
In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis cautioned about the dangers of using social engineering to alter essential human traits. He perceived the contemporary fixation on applying science to measure and demystify the world as a path leading to catastrophe. If humanity or its synthetic creations succeed in erasing basic human behaviours, there would be no one left to pass these qualities to future generations. This would signify the end of humanity as we know it, replacing it with something entirely synthetic. Lewis warns that unless people consciously manage their engagement with technology and the formation of their social structures, the resulting entity might not retain any recognizable human characteristics.
Jacques Ellul, a renowned French philosopher and sociologist, wrote his The Technological Society, a seminal work first published in French in 1954 as Technique – the wager of the century. Here he delved into the complexities of technological advancement in modern society. Ellul’s journey towards Christianity began at the age of eighteen while translating Goethe’s “Faust,” marking a significant turning point in his intellectual and spiritual life. Professionally, he practiced law and, after World War II, served in the French government. This period of his career was crucial in shaping his perspectives on political and social action. Ellul observed the limitations inherent in government roles, noting that a public official’s influence on government policies was often minimal due to the bureaucratic nature of these institutions. He recognized that these governmental bodies functioned like machines, driven by procedures and lacking emotional connection with the populace.
This realization led him to the belief that meaningful political change is more effectively achieved through societal engagement than through the formal structures of government. He argued that influencing people’s perspectives and emotions could yield greater impact than the rigid, impersonal procedures of bureaucratic systems. His analysis of technology and society, emphasizing the influence of individual actions, remains profoundly relevant, offering insightful perspectives on our technology-centric world.
Ellul argued that the essence of technology lies not in the devices themselves, like televisions or computers, but in a specific mode of technical thinking he termed “technique.” A good example is the technique of teaching. Suppose there exists a person in a classroom teaching by means of their natural talent. Someone appreciates it and realises that the ability to teach is variable leading to an unpredictable distribution of good and bad teachers. And they wonder how we can make the outcomes more consistent and predictable. So they begin to analyse the teaching, study good teachers, and record what the good teachers do. They deconstruct the practice of teaching into a series of processes and they publish a number of methods. They develop a training program and a series of programs. So they abstract the process of teaching out of its natural embedded context in the person of the teacher or the classroom to develop a plan for a procedure, a set of techniques, and tools that people can use to plug anyone back into this system. To train new teachers not so much to use their own gifts and abilities (although some will inevitably do that) but to train them into the system This standardisation is what we call best practices today.
KRUX’s relationship with method and technique has been especially important to consider during 2023. A group of friends gather semiregularly to discuss their hopes and fears and thoughts and questions. Enough friends accumulate to warrant a name for this gathering, and KRUX is born. A name leads to a vision and a mission, which in turn leads to activities. A benefactor requests a deposit destination for a donation to advance these activities, necessitating KRUX’s registration as a non-profit organisation so as to apply for a corporate bank account. The existence of the bank account necessitates taxation compliance. Taxation compliance requires the formalisation of directorship and an executive committee. A valid executive committee must be elected from a body of members subject to the stipulations of a formal constitution to which these members submit themselves. The classification of members requires some application process, and here we are at the end of a seven year journey from spontaneity to bureaucracy.
The question we hold before us now is how KRUX can exist functionally in this late-stage dystopia of soulless systems while maintaining the spirit of freedom, eccentricity, comfort, and humanity that makes it so special. How do we manage the growth from ten close friends to ninety participants on the Whatsapp group who might have never met? How do we market membership without alienating visitors? How do we manage our communication platforms with the necessary awareness of potential accusation of harm?
In his KRUX Thursday talk, Jonathan Griffiths recounted the decisions he had to make while preparing to host the children at Holiday Club in 2023. Faced with the abundance of screens and computers and artificial intelligence, Jonathan was forced to sort between the whimsy of the physical and the ease of the digital. His solution was well placed integration. He found a way to combine the scent and sensation of powder paint on cardboard boxes around the LEDs and computer screens contained within them to build a fantasy super sleuth’s headquarters. He found a way to combine clues in paper envelopes with voice recordings of fake phone calls generated on the internet. When faced with the false dichotomy of an analogue sentimentality at war with a digital modernity, he found a third, higher option: Wisdom.
The answer, it seems, is the ability to place well and be well placed. It is fitting then that Placed was also the theme for this year’s Artists’ Gathering. The answer is to place technique well so as to not become enslaved by it, to order rightly between the formal and the informal, and to understand the need for and role of well-placed custodians of this community we’ve cultivated for so many years.
We end 2023 as we have done every year – with an imprecise, chaotic Thanksgiving potluck. Uncertain as to the exact number of diners, we set a place on any surface with whichever utensils we can find. Unplanned as to which dishes arrive we’re excited for an eccentric plate of imperfectly matched flavours. We’ll clink mismatched glasses filled with random servings of mystery drinks, and thank the Lord for another year together. And we’ll pray for wisdom for a new year in which we traverse annual general meetings, and financial statements, and meeting minutes while we paint and dance and hike and learn together in freedom with faith, hope, and love.