The Unholy City

Part II

Prologue

    In the first part of The Unholy City, we discussed the “what” insofar as it was visible twenty-five years ago. In this second part, we explore the “how” of a mechanism already built and operating. We will also describe the incentive structure, the scale, and the stakes involved in the operation and growth of the City.
    It is not my intention to point fingers or assess blame to any businesses or products. Therefore, I will avoid mentioning specific companies or enterprises. Indeed, I have great respect for much of what the industry has built, and as a (retired) professional in the system development industry, I have some appreciation for the obstacles that the successful ones have met and overcome. While I will get very specific about the mechanisms and techniques that pose the dangers, the readers will have to connect the dots themselves. After all, a few years from now, the corporate landscape may be completely different. If the last twenty-five years’ experience is any guide, it would be no surprise to discover, ten years from now, that three or four of the dominant companies do not yet even exist. This is how fast the business is moving.
    For our purposes, those changes are less significant. What matters more is the effect that the changes in technology are having on culture, society, and the inner life, and the risks that they pose.
    The City is functional today, constantly adding features and improvements, and welcoming new players to the game. A snapshot of the table as it is currently set will be obsolete before these words are printed. But the rules by which the players, current or new, play the game will not have changed much. Advertising, sales, user fees, and subscriptions provide the incentives; they are the engines of the City. No new participant that does not expand at least one of those will last long.
    From this, we can infer that, whatever technical marvels tomorrow brings, they will function in an economic incentive structure that is little different from the present one. Thus we can safely predict that the captivity will increase, and that there will be new paths to captivity, but the captivity itself will be little different in consequences and significance.
    I will try to keep the introduction of theological ideas to an accessible level—not because the truths we cite are shallow, but because they must be seen clearly to be understood at all. The Christian worldview is an essential part of this critique. Materialism can only take one so far; humanism only a small distance further. Only Christian theology provides the bandwidth and intellectual and moral tools to comprehend the entire picture in any very complete way. It is required by the recognition that the human heart and the human world are contested spaces.
    Further, I want to make it clear from the outset that the machines are not evil. Even though the degree to which machines mediate human interaction will likely increase, as it has markedly over the last twenty-five years, those machines and the ones that shall come after them are not evil in themselves. They have no moral agency, any more than my desk calculator has, and never will.
    But we do.

© Copyright, 2001, 2003, 2026, by Robert McAnally Adams.
The Unholy City is licensed in its entirety under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
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