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My household idol is better known as a cell phone. I feed it with daily infusions of electricity, and it promises me the divine freedom to talk with whomever I wish, wherever I wish. I don't really mistake my cell phone for a god. Then again, archaeologists tell us that even after the worship of YHWH was firmly established in Jerusalem, Israelites were still cherishing their Canaanite idols.

Much of what we call idolatry in "primitive" societies is simply an alternative form of technology. Idols promise some control over the world. Serve the sky god's idol properly, and he will reward you with favorable weather. Propitiate the voodoo figurine with the appropriate sacrifices, and you will have control over your enemy. Every idol is an attempt to gain an edge on the world, to have some leverage over chaos. That is, essentially, what technology—whether in the form of cell phones, central air conditioning, or missile-defense systems—promises as well.

Of course, we resist the equation of technology with idolatry. Western technology, unlike idolatry, is based on science's discoveries about the physical world. True enough—if all that cell phones promised was to faithfully harness the laws of electromagnetism, they would work all the time. But in fact they promise much more. And that's where the connection between technology and idolatry gets interesting.

For the fact is that all idols appear to work—at first. That's how they become idols.

Though the details are lost to history, at some point sky-god figurines did seem to deliver what they promised. Why else would they have become revered? We see this dynamic clearly in the case of the small-scale, personal idolatries known as addictions. Every addict knows that the habit initially delivers everything it promises and more. But over time, addictions—and gods—stop satisfying our desires. The idolater gets a bit nervous. Perhaps the idol just needs a bit more loving care. Thus begins a spiral that is all the more demonic for its subtlety. Idols, as Jeffrey Satinover has put it, "demand more and more and provide less and less, until eventually they give you nothing and demand everything."

So it is not quite enough to say that technology works—the question is whether technology will keep on working. For the answer to that question, consult anyone whose vintage-1989 personal computer is now serving as a doorstop. While it may still function in the literal sense of the term, its ability to deliver on its promises has largely vanished as it has helped to create new desires and expectations—and a more complicated, demanding piece of technology has taken its place.

The truth is that we Western idolaters already tolerate a great deal of unfulfilled promises from our technology. If we were just obsessed with battery life, perhaps it wouldn't matter. But the beloved automobile, with its promises of autonomy, mobility, and speed, takes the lives of 41,000 Americans each year (9,000 of them children and teenagers), with hardly a whimper of protest. Embryonic stem-cell research promises radical medical advances, asking only that we clone and sacrifice human embryos.

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February 19 2001, Vol. 45, No. 3