Technology's price:
Crosman speaker examines morality of efficiency

Clifford G. Christians. Photo by Rachel Berns.

By Joanie Kindblade

Aletheia. It's a Greek word that means openness and disclosure, which should be at the center of digital convergence and the information revolution, said Clifford G. Christians, research professor from the University of Illinois.

Christians' talk, "Truth in a Technological Age," addressed the relevance of truth as a central component to communication ethics by asking if technology undermines the ability to make moral judgments. Christians came to the CU campus to speak as part of the Ralph L. Crosman lecture series, which is sponsored by the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

"Journalists need to be agents of truth," Christians said. "We need to articulate truth as the masterful concept."

Using the allegory of the evolution of tomato growing and harvesting in San Joaquin County, Calif., Christians described the human interest in mechanical efficiency. "Tomatoes adapt to machine efficiency as humans adapt to digital technology," he said.

Christians used the philosophical theory of Jacque Ellul to illustrate that humans are buried under technology, which can allow them to eliminate the natural world.

"Ellul's 'La Technique' explains that technology progressively wears away two existing environments: nature and society," Christians said. "Today, nature and society have little power. The everyday world has a technological cadence."

Instead of technology being subservient to humanity, human beings must adapt to it, he said.

But what is lost in the process? According to Ellul's theories, technological efficiency is so powerful a force that all other values are sacrificed, Christians said.

"We've become so enamored of machines that life has become amoral," he said.

Christians used examples of Wounded Knee, Al Jazeera and the Elephant Man to show how important it is for journalists to penetrate through to the issues to uncover the truth.

"Seeing beneath the surface is like striking gold," Christians said. "Go beyond the dimensions and disclose the fundamentals."

At Wounded Knee in 1973, television captured a standoff between Native American activists and FBI agents. Using television to tell the story, viewers got to see the battles and the drama, but not necessarily the truth, Christians said.

"Did the television cameras tell the stories of broken treaties or the history of tribal governments? At issue at Wounded Knee was the politics of identity or recognition.

"The issue isn't objectivity, but truth as authentic disclosure," Christians said. "Truth is deeper." Journalists seem to struggle with the difficulty of getting to the heart of the issue in the midst of a technological age, he said.

"Humans seem to be more satisfied with means rather than the ends," Christians said. "By letting the truth emerge, the authentic meaning is revealed."

Christians is the Charles H. Sandage Distinguished Professor and a research professor of communications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He's the former director of the Institute of Communications Research and chair of Illinois' doctoral program in communications. He is the author of many books, including "Media Ethics: Cases and Moral Reasoning."

The lecture series is named for Ralph L. Crosman, who joined the CU faculty in 1921, the year before the journalism program became a formal department. His work as a teacher and industry critic during the next 27 years was central in helping to build and establish the quality of the journalism curriculum, laying the groundwork for the broad-ranging media and communication program it has become.