In an age where major data companies like Facebook and Google have massive databases of information on all of us, will they know we are Christians?
(This post is a bit off the “beaten path” of most of my commentary, but for my Christian readers, it is in many ways more important.)
Ours is an age in which we are increasingly known more by these companies than we are known by our own families. Facebook makes money by selling our information to other companies to help cater their advertising. But Facebook is not the only data-collection company, and perhaps not even the largest. Google—the search engine used in 75% of searches—also holds incredible amounts of information based on our internet activity, the emails we send, the searches we make, et cetera. Netflix, Amazon and others have records of the shows and movies we listen to. Pandora and Spotify know our music tastes. Though our smartphones have been doing so already, even our cars now record where we go down to exact locations. There is also some speculation that smartphones record and process audio from our day-to-day lives. Whether or not real or speculative, it is all but certain that the data companies we use (Facebook, Google, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Yahoo, Bing, Microsoft, et cetera) can paint an incredibly accurate picture of our tastes, styles, likes, dislikes and ambitions.
For many of us, we spend massive portions of our day interacting with software and programs created by these companies.
What are we looking at online? What are we liking on social media? What are we searching for? Where does our internet activity take us?
Add to this that all our credit card transactions are linked specifically with each of us, completing a picture of who we are by where we exchange our money and what we exchange it for.
What are we buying? What do we spend our money on? What are we giving our money to?
What if you add to that all of your text messages and an algorithm that used your phone calls to learn more about you? Or if these companies were obliged by the government to compile the data so that on any given day, they can pull out a file on Lukas Keagy and learn just about everything about me.
There was a day in which much of we did in life would only be known between us and the Lord. Those days are long gone.
So I pose the question again: will they know we are Christians?
Let me ask this question another way. If you could look at all the data collected about you, would you clearly recognize yourself as a Christian? Or would the vast and extraordinarily complete record cast doubt on this claim?
When I define the word “integrity” to my students, I define it as “doing the right thing all the time even if no one will ever find out about it.” But ours is a day that the last part of that definition is becoming more and more something of the past. Certainly, the motive for integrity should not purely be the accountability created by the massive data collection on us, but rather from our love for the Lord and our obedience toward him. Still, I cannot help but face the deeply challenging reality that a picture of who I am is so abundantly complete through my digital and online activity. This reality ought to be sobering.
Am I far too preoccupied with an unnecessary concern?
Consider that China recently implemented a Social Credit System, whereby the Chinese government uses digital information and the personal observation of peers and government officials to give every Chinese citizen a social credit score—a score placing them on a scale between a “good” and “bad” citizen. Or consider that the U.K. government purchased massive amounts of data from Facebook on millions of users. Or that the U.S. government keeps huge servers full of data from phone and internet companies in warehouses around the country.
Or consider that right now, Google’s Project Maven is working with the U.S. military to create artificial intelligence that would be equipped on drones to strike individuals that their computers had decided were enemy combatants based on “patterns of life.” Or that technology is being developed that would equip cameras mounted to police cars to continually scan the faces of people in the vicinity. Given all the data collected on individuals, a facial recognition system could link a face to almost an entire portrait of who that person is in the blink of an eye.
Many will react to such developments and realities with an understandable horror and knee-jerk repulsion, and certainly not without due cause! But there is no stopping this trend, and for the average person who will not drop off the “radar” to live life entirely “off the grid,” we return to the question we began with: will they know we are Christians?
The thought itself brings its own fears. In China, where public Christianity is formally outlawed, Christians who are bold about their relationship with Christ no doubt will find themselves landed with a social credit score barring nearly any profitable employment, and possible ostracism from civil society. We already see such realities confronting many in the United States, where a business owner who tweets a comment not in line with a given agenda, such as the LGBT social goals, will quickly find himself at the blunt end of expulsion from “polite society”.
Will they know we are Christians?
When a complete picture of who I am is revealed, will the record of my online and social media activity, where I go, my communication and the way I spend my money declare boldly that I am follower of Jesus Christ? Or will my complete profile look eerily similar to that of non-believer?
And I take this beyond just asking if we will have a clean record that says we avoid the sexually explicit and perverse. Will our comprehensive profiles—beyond presenting merely a “good” person—present those who follow Jesus above all else?
I want my record to, regardless of the consequences it brings. And because it will—now or in time—very likely bring consequences, makes this reality more potent, more dangerous, more crucial. It tears superficiality away. The whole of our lives are increasingly being recorded, collected and shared. Will that record present a person of the world, or a person deeply passionate about following Jesus above all else? And are we willing to accept the increasingly risky consequences that will bring?
