Is bigger always better?

Americans (and especially Texans) love boasting that bigger is better. We can see it in our businesses and in our churches. But is it?

A story on NPR today asked some challenging questions about business growth. Charles Handy, the founder of London Business School, asked why business is different than orchestras, schools, or hospitals. Once an orchestra reaches a certain size, if you asked the conductor about growth, he would likely discuss their expanding repertoire, not adding more violins.

I heard an environmental scientist address this issue once, drawing the distinction between growth and development. Biologically, once we have eyes, ears, limbs and organs, we are done growing. The rest is development:

For our own bodies, and our communities, development is getting the right things in the right places in the right amounts at the right times in the right relationships. Just like there is no advantage for our brain to grow out of proportion with our stomach or vice versa, so there is no advantage to adding house to house at the expense of the farms and gardens that sustain our food supply, or at the expense of clean air and water that sustain our health.

Growth freed from the constraints of true development is cancer, as we all know.

For those of us working for public companies, we are complicit in a system that unashamedly pursues growth as a fundamental tenet of delivering shareholder value. But public companies are just the easiest example. I wonder if most business and even most churches aren't pursuing the same "growth imperative" without regard to the consequences.

Cells that get too large either burst or split to form new life. Why doesn't business/church heed wisdom from the basic building block of all life? How can we ensure the growth we are pursuing isn't cancerous?

Is technology that mimics Creation any better?

I don't know about you guys, but I'm starting to get worn out with the technology discussion. But I have to dedicate one more post to it (for now) because I was pleasantly surprised recently by an article that I think offers some semblance of redemption to this debate.

This article in American Way (American Airlines' illustrious magazine) may not win a Pulitzer, but its topic is very cool: biomimicry, or biologically inspired design. Some examples of technology highlighted in the article:

• Removing blood from hospital linens without using bleach by studying insects like mosquitoes
• Self-cleaning paint, roof shingles, and fabric modeled after the lotus plant's leaves
• Buildings in Zimbabwe that don't need air conditioning because they are designed to mimic a termite mound

Of course biomimicry doesn't necessarily address some of the deeper spiritual issues we've discussed like the way technology distracts us from or encourages us not to rely upon God. But it does clearly reflect Him and His creativity. So with all the problems technology presents, should we encourage/pursue this kind of invention? Just because it is based on Creation, does that make it any better?

Is technology a surrogate for God?

Two comments last week essentially said "technology's not the problem, it's our hearts." We had a great discussion almost a year ago about whether it's really "all about the heart" -- if you haven't seen that thread, check it out.

Rather than rehash that debate, I want to push on this idea that "technology is neutral, it's our hearts that screw it up." I both agree and disagree with that statement. I agree that it is neutral if we are talking about lifeless circuits and chemicals. But adding human intention to the invention and utilization of technology gives life to otherwise lifeless technology. Technology is created by humans to fulfill a human desire. So the very existence of a specific form of technology is much more than a lifeless gadget, pill, or instrument. It represents a specific intent, an end it is intended to satisfy.

I think most technology could be at least loosely associated with one of a handful of ends: saving money, saving time, minimizing pain/inconvenience, or prolonging life. So my question: are these Godly pursuits?

There are certainly a number of scriptures that suggest a lack of money, the necessity of patience, suffering, and death are powerful agents in pointing us toward Christ. So why do we continue to invent and use new technology that dilutes these potentially significant spiritual experiences?

I think Broun's comment a couple weeks ago began to answer this question:

Traditionally the goal of medicine from a Christian perspective has been redemptive. Disease isn’t simply a biological problem; it is a moral one, the result of sin. So for the same reason we preach the gospel, we also fight the Asian Bird Flu epidemic, recognizing in it yet another facet of the curse sin has brought on the world...However you say it, under the old paradigm the goal of medicine was to fix what is broken.

[There is now] demand for a new paradigm. We want [medicine] to do more
than merely repair what’s broken. We want it to make us better.

Is the iPhone fixing what is broken or is it something we hope will make our lives magically better? Did the printing press? Or the car? Will cloning cattle? Or chemotherapy?