Last week was -- according to Apple and the press -- a watershed day for Apple Inc. These days, most of us fully expect Apple to change the world for the better every few years or so, and this time was approximately the fourth highly anticipated iteration of Apple as tech mini-Messiah.
There is a kind of formula: The chief executive officer does a keynote. Apple makes some incredible videos -- see the 10-minute iWatch video, for example, which is actually worth your time to get a sense of what Apple believes about itself and its products. (And does anyone remember the iconic old-school advertisement "1984" that Apple ran during the Superbowl to introduce the original Macintosh personal computer?)
Next, the company rolls out the products it is launching for the year and reminds everyone watching the keynote of Apple's values, mission and cultural position. Then, periodically, it also surprises with something special -- which, this year, included the free surprise release of U2's new album for everyone who has iTunes (500 million people) immediately and live, as U2 took the stage at the keynote. The fallout from the free U2 album has been especially interesting because U2 and Apple learned more people do, in fact, look a gift horse in the mouth. Apple had to create a special website to help people remove the free album from iTunes.
A couple of confessions: I am Apple's demographic, clearly. I grew up on U2, own all their albums, know the names of all the band members and have read more than one biography of the band. And I have always used Apple products. I'm typing on one right now, and another one is periodically buzzing in my pocket as new messages arrive.
So, I am Apple's target audience. Yet, I'm also surprised by their roll-out this year because, if I'm getting this right, Apple is attempting to get me to start doing two things I stopped doing about six years ago: wearing a watch and listening to U2. Not that I have anything against U2, per se. They're a gifted band who has written a lot of great -- and frequently Christian -- music. I've just moved on, and other bands have gotten into heavy rotation more frequently. And, honestly, I never really did like wearing a watch, and I was quite happy to abandon wearing one when everyone started carrying cell phones (which are also clocks) in their pockets and purses.
Nevertheless, at this point, Apple is in a cycle, a cycle reinforced by our culture and the tech industry. It's a cycle that has a specific rhetoric. The rhetoric is simple: This new device, this new advance in technology, is going to completely change the (your) world. In the case of the new watch, it is supposed to attach itself to your body in such a way that you and the device become "one," synchronous. It knows your heart beat. It anticipates your every move. And it lets you reach out and "touch" others by touching it.
The other rhetoric of our tech era is the rhetoric of immediacy. Time is always time NOW. Through the Apple video, the company spends a good amount of time telling viewers experts consulted horological experts the world over to make sure the clock on this watch is -- well, it's not exactly clear what the clock does that is horologically sound other than be super precise, but nevertheless, Apple has consulted these experts, because time ... really ... matters.
All of us -- at least those of us who write columns -- have begun to buy into this mindset. As soon as I heard about the Apple keynote, I immediately thought to myself, "Do I need to write a column about this? How fast do I need to get it written? How quickly can I get something out there in order to ride the wave of attention this release will attract?"
I'm not the only one who thinks this way. Notice, Rolling Stone rolled out an analysis of the lyrics of U2's new album within hours of its release on stage at Cupertino, Calif. Many magazines have followed suit -- one of the more interesting being the one from Wired magazine by Vijith Assar, who observes, that as much as Apple wants it to be, the release of the U2 album is nothing like the release of Radiohead's "In Rainbows," which was released with variable pricing (including for free) and which is like the gold standard for music industry innovation in a digital era.
Interestingly, almost all the songs on the U2 album are retrospectives, meditations on the influence of the Clash and the Ramones and the band's early life in Northern Ireland. It's almost as if songs -- if they are going to be precisely in the moment -- need to be of the past. Or, perhaps, because the biggest release for Apple this year is a clock, the soundtrack to accompany such a release are songs that roll back time.
There are a couple of other newsworthy items from Apple's keynote: They now have phones that are bigger, and they are introducing Apple Pay. However, it is the new product -- the watch -- that is going to capture our imaginations. It makes me wonder, is everything we are doing, that is touted as new, increasingly an exercise in nostalgia? Everything old is new again. There's nothing new under the sun. A watch that is so much more than a watch. A band that is, for all intents and purposes, now merged with a tech company.
Does this always-now nostalgia offer opportunity or challenge for the life of faith? I think both. Faith has always been uncomfortable with the demands of an urgent now -- even while it envisions and trusts a coming future and curates a sacred past. In an Apple iWatch era, it likely behooves the faith community to think more intentionally about its relationship -- once again -- to time and our embodidness in time. And, as always, we are reminded by U2 that the songs that accompany us along this way really matter. We are anthemic people.
NAN Religion on 09/20/2014