Leadership in a Tech-Shaped Culture: Three Book Recommendations to Ignite Your Year

Sam Bankman-Fried doesn't read.

Before his fraud trial, Bankman-Fried suggested that anyone who has written a book has "expletive upped," suggesting that they should have instead written a blog post. Perhaps the recently convicted king of crypto will change his mind on literacy as he awaits a maximum sentence of 110 years. And while the literary world enjoys a schadenfreude moment, it's worrisome that his sentiments are becoming increasingly widespread.

Americans are reading 20% fewer books than they read in the 1990s. They are also spending less time reading for pleasure. The average American reads just 16 minutes per day. By contrast, the average teen now spends 4.8 hours per day on social media, mostly on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. If Donald Trump captures the presidency this November, the country will be led by a non-reader who can't be troubled to read daily intelligence briefings, let alone books.

The decline of pleasure reading in our tech-shaped culture is a complex trend exacerbated by the explosion of algorithmic digital content, the constant acceleration of technology, and the proliferation of click-bait summaries in the news media. Too many of us lack the time, patience, and focus to read long-form writing.

Still, I was raised in an elementary school that taught that "readers are leaders" (or maybe it was the other way around). I developed a love of reading because I sensed how it contributed to an ongoing process of reflection and formation - and also because I earned a PizzaHut Personal Pan Pizza for each book report I completed. So with the conviction that focused, intentional reading advances the development of leadership skills, here are three book recommendations for harried, overworked, worried leaders who are navigating this tech-shaped culture.

Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology by Neil Postman

Neil Postman is best known for his 1985 work Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. While his 1985 book remains as relevant as ever, it analysis primarily focuses on the influence of entertainment.

"Technopoly" emerged eight years later, when Postman could see the emergence of electronic communication and personal computing. Postman argues that mankind has changed from a society that uses technology, to a society that is shaped by technology. For Postman, the invention of a hammer means that there is no such thing as "man with hammer." There is only "hammer man" - whose views of education, politics, and art are inextricably filtered through the unremovable lens of new technologies.

Technopoly is written with greater urgency and moral clarity than its predecessor. It is an essential read in a year where AI will continue its rapid advance, and where short form digital media will continue to redefine communication.

For the leader in a tech-shaped culture, Technopoly poses an urgent question: how might I protect communities and institutions from mindlessly succumbing to the worst impulses of this technological moment? Postman also challenges us to recognize that the answer to this question is far more complicated than simply deactivating one's Twitter profile.

Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley by Carolyn Chen

Technology is not the only juggernaut affecting meaning-making. While Postman writes about the influence of technology, sociologist Carolyn Chen writes about the pervasive influence of the workplace on knowledge, belief, and meaning. While the case studies reflect on religion and spirituality, the book revolves around the core question of how we derive meaning in a growth-obsessed culture.

By tracing the stories of once-religious tech workers who relocated to Silicon Valley, Chen demonstrates the encroachment of the workplace into spheres once occupied by tradition. The mechanisms of this encroachment are often described by Silicon Valley corporations as amenities, or enhancements to workplace culture. From meditation programs that teach "scientific Buddhism" to coaching offerings that promise "inner transformation," the tech industry has used these cultural offerings to displace the role once held by pastors, rabbis, and spiritual directors. Not every workplace has such amenities. But our work is increasingly becoming a personal quest for meaning and purpose.

When work becomes a spiritual journey, it comes to define our sense of purpose. We work harder, we produce more deliverables, we work longer hours. One wonders, while reading Chen's work, what will happen to the Google engineer or the Facebook account manager upon the next round of layoffs.

Chen beckons today's leader to consider how the drive to innovate replaces deeply held values and identities with the demands of late capitalism. It reminds today's leader that if we fail to define values and vision for our organizations, the marketplace will step in to do so on our behalf.

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doer

Our final recommendation is the fantastical story of how one particular narrative survived centuries of acceleration to sustain and inspire across the ages. In a world that is turning its back on literacy, Cloud Cuckoo Land mounts a vigorous defense of the long-form narrative.

Set in three different timelines (the Siege of Constantinople, a modern day library, and a futuristic space ship), Doer traces how an obscure Greek drama provides coherence and inspiration on a timeless scale.

Anthony Doer reminds us of the enduring connection between meaning making and stories. Though it is a long book, Cloud Cuckoo Land cautions us about a world in which there are no more stories - only fragments.

For the leader in a tech-shaped culture, Cloud Cuckoo Land invites us to reflect upon and to share the stories that are most significant in our own formation. For even when our work has been lost to the eons, our stories will remain.

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@ryanpanzer is moving his social media activity from Twitter to GoodReads.

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2024 in a Tech-Shaped Culture: 5 New Year's Resolution for The Church

Happy New Year!

As we turn the page to another year, here are five resolutions that I hope the church can keep in the months ahead. Each of these resolutions addresses or aligns with the values that shape our tech-shaped culture (values that I wrote about in "Grace and Gigabytes").

Resolution 1: Preach More Lived Stories and Fewer Theological Abstractions

Secularization has accelerated. Church attendance has plummetted. Belief in the trasncendent, let alone the dogma of organized religion, is constantly contested. In this default context of fragmentation and disbelief, the church cannot afford to preach the language of abstraction.

What is abstraction?

Abstraction is a claim about God that is made without a supporting story, example, or illustration.

In the year ahead, let's resolve to tilt the balance in our preaching towards to the lived stories of God's work in our contexts. Let's resolve to proclaim so many lived stories in our context that we discern a common "watch word," or statement of how God shows up in the particulars of our time and place.

Resolution 2: Enrich In-Person Conversations through Digital Content

As we continue to move beyond the pandemic, live streaming has become less appealing as a regular worship habit. According to Gallup, only 5% of Americans are attending services remotely.

Still, digital ministry will continue to serve as the front door to visitors and guests, necessitating that we continue to offer online worship.

What will happen to digital ministry? We might shift to a content-supported model of digital ministry, in which we create and distribute digital content in service to furthering the dialogues started through our liturgies. We might move from events (streaming worship, for example) to posts and stories that enrich our understanding of a topic and expand our theological imagination. This is the model we've tested at Good Shepherd with "Conversation Sundays" - discussions that start in worship and are furthered through digital content in the week ahead.

Resolution 3: Make Space for AI Experimentation

AI is a once-in-a-generation technological leap. AI will shape our culture, and how our culture makes meaning, in ways that we can only begin to imagine. This new technology will inevitably change not just how we execute tasks but how we process information - how we come to learn something, how we come to believe in something.

It's no exaggeration. AI will change what it means to have faith.

The church cannot sit by idly and observe the AI disruption. We must be active experimenters. From creating digital content based on sermon manuscripts to writing newsletters with chatbots, from using ChatGPT to help us articulate personal faith stories to using text to image generators for our newsletter and website, we must resolve to voraciously experiment with these new tools.

Resolution 4: Teach Tech Sabbath as a Spiritual Practice

Just as AI has the potential to be used for purposeful ministry, it can also create a vicious cycle that further retrenches us in digital isolation. As AI creates better content it will command more of our focus. As it consumes more of our attention, we become more enmeshed in the content of our screens.

Tech Sabbath, whether practiced regularly for an hour or for an entire day of the week, is the defiant claim that these vicious cycles do not have ultimate power over my being. To practice a Tech Sabbath is to remember that we are created for much more than digital consumption.

Resolution 5: Model Gratitude as a Leadership Practice

I recently heard Professor Tom Thibodeau define servant leadership in three parts. Prof. Thibodeau suggested that the first job of a leader is to define reality. The second job of a leader is to say thank you. Everything in between is service.

We live in a world where gratitude is missing - or where it is so shallow and superficial that it loses all meaning. When our technology accelerates our communication, we tend to jettison that which is most essential: expressions of thanks, and articulations of our stories. Each is fundamental to the formation of trust. Yet both become increasingly absent the faster we move.

In the year ahead, let's resolve to model how to set aside the drive towards productivity to give meaningful thanks for the service we receive, and to give thanks for those who serve at our side.

In all contexts, in any forums, we are called to partake in the spiritual practice of gratitude in ways that are deep, meaningful, and enriching.

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@ryanpanzer would like to wish everyone a Blessed 2024!

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Servant Leadership Lessons from Open AI's Firing and Re-Hiring of Sam Altman

When OpenAI's board of directors fired CEO Sam Altman, they unwittingly torpedoed the company's founding principle: the independent development of AI. OpenAI was formed to create AI for the benefit of humanity, rather than the benefit of corporate shareholders. This explains in part why OpenAI remained governed by a nonprofit board.

At the time, it looked as though OpenAI's charter, which promised "broadly distributed benefits" and opposed "unduly concentrate(d) power," had failed. It looked as though the most poweful AI minds in the world would work for the unequivocally concentrated power that is Microsoft. Within 48 hours, Satya Nadella recruited Altman to form an AI research lab within Microsoft. Shortly thereafter, the vast majority of OpenAI employees began to threaten defections to the world's second-richest company.

Eventually, OpenAI reversed course and re-hired Sam Altman as CEO. But in the process, they parted ways with the three board members initially responsible for firing Altman. While their votes to oust Altman now appears nonsensical, their departure means that OpenAI loses the voices most likely to question the unchecked development of this technology. They were the voices most likely to see the risks in AI's development, to raise concerns over AI falling intot he wrong hands.

While details remain sparse, Microsoft may take one of their board seats. Other board seats are likely to be filled with directors committed to acceleration and adoption, rather than ethics and prudence.

The development of generative AI, it seems, will now be controlled by companies opearting under the default corporate charter: that of short term returns to shareholders. Kevin Roose perfectly summarized this development in his column titled: A.I. Belongs to the Capitalists Now.

The circus that consumed OpenAI in recent weeks reveals something of the nature of organizational life. All organizations, nonprofit and for-profit alike, are beholden to the inevitable powers of entropy.

Chaos and disorder are inevitable outcomes in any organization's lifecycle. Even if we create innovative governance structures, even if we write an altruistic charter, even if we staff our board with directors inclined towards ethical reflection - disorder finds a way. And as the development of technology accelerates, entropy arrives faster and faster. Organizational successes plant the seeds of future disorder.

The practice of servant leadership (really, all effective leadership) requires an awareness of how all organizations trend towards entropy. But recognizing the inevitability of chaos, he or she also affirms the potential for positive impact that is vested in organizational life. After all, Robert Greenleaf, the founder of servant leadership, didn't work for a small NGO, but was committed to "creating change from within a large institution."

Servant leadership is thus a balancing act: the ability to drive positive change within an organization, even with the foresight that things will tend to fall apart.

Disorder is inevitable. It is thus the task of the servant leader to prepare their organization for the inevitability of chaos. The servant leader has a repsonbility to their communities to buffer them agains the worst effects of disruption, teaching and solidifying habits of resilience. Even if the organiziation fails, servant leaders prepare their people to continue working towards the realization of their values.

The single most effective practice in preparing for the inevitability of chaos may be to discern core values - at the individual and team level. As individuals and as small, functional teams, core values can keep us anchored to our principles when everything else becomes unmoored. Our values keep us facing outwards when circumstances threaten to turn us inward. They instill a capacity for creativity when a situation pushes us towards reaction and passivity. They perpetuate our impact even if the broader organization crumbles.

In a time of accelerating chaos, servant leadership looks like a coach who accompanies their team on a perpetual process of discernment. Leadership is thus no longer just about showing the way - it's about returning us to our starting line, reminding us of our foundations. When chaos inevitably emerges, the servant leader reminds us what really matters.