Nenagh priest's book challenges us to consider our relationship with technology

The formal launch of Nenagh environmentalist Fr Seán McDonagh's latest work, a thought-provoking study of how society should respond to our increasing reliance on automation and artificial intelligence, took place recently.

Described by Mary McAleese as a “hugely informative book [that] shakes us out of our massage armchairs”, ‘Robots, Ethics and the Future of Jobs’ is Fr Seán's 13th publication. In many ways it represents a full circle revolution for the Columban priest, who published his first book - ‘To Care for the Earth’ - in 1986 at a time when few were writing about the threat to our environment, fewer still from a theological perspective.

“Who's interested in the environment?,” he was asked after writing about his experience of life in the Phillipines, where Fr Seán first travelled as a missionary in 1969. He struggled to find a means of airing his work until he returned home and was introduced to a London-based publisher after delivering a lecture in Maynooth.

“The Catholic Church wasn't really interested in the environment back then,” he said. “‘Biodiversity? What's all that about?’ And I used to say: ‘Do you ever read the Bible?’ The first line of Genesis reads: ‘God created the Heavens and the Earth’; that's exactly what biodiversity is!”

Environmental matters have of course become a hot topic in the years since and Fr Seán McDonagh has remained at the forefront of that discourse with his writings. But he finds that the subject matter of his latest work is meeting a similar reaction to his ‘80s endeavours. Many observers struggle to see how it fits with his previous writings on the environment.

A POIGNANT CALL

But ‘Robots, Ethics and the Future of Jobs’ is a timely and poignant call for people to take a step back and take stock of where the rapid technological advances of the last few decades have brought us, and where they are taking us next. While these advances might have helped to connect, protect and support us in a fast-moving world, they can also pose a negative impact in terms of our privacy, our freedom and our life choices.

“This is an area that's going to challenge us and the speed at which it's going to challenge us is gargantuan,” Fr Seán said. “The reality is, as a society, we need to talk about this.”

A topical example of what he is driving at is our relationship with social media. Fr Seán raises ethical questions over people being able to write just about anything they want in the new medium of Facebook without impunity, whereby legal action is often taken when someone is libeled in the established print media. He raises similar questions over access to personal information.

Citing the recent row between Facebook and the Australian Government, the Nenagh priest wants to see governments standing up to the moneyed social media industry with regulatory legislation.

“Facebook, Twitter and Google have 68% of advertising revenue globally!” he exclaimed. “We can't allow 60 years of this technology being promoted by people like Google and Twitter without challenging it because the damage would be just extraordinary. And they don't want to talk about it. They have decided they are going to make the laws. When are we going to decide that?”

EXPLOITATION OF WORKERS

Fr Seán likens the situation to the nineteenth century industrial revolution and exploitation of workers before society responded with the formation of unions and laws around workers' rights.

Indeed, the changing world of work forms perhaps the central thrust of the book, in which Fr Seán takes a practical look at how transferring to automation and using robotic technology to make things is depriving human workers of jobs and wages, and challenging their ability to contribute to society. Again, this brings him somewhat back to his starting point and causes Fr Seán to ponder his younger days when work was scarce.

“I was walking around Nenagh last week and I met Noel Morrissey and asked him how many of us are left in the class that went to my mother's school in 1948? And he said there was about six. Almost everyone else left.

“That was the Ireland I grew up in; the vast majority of people I grew up with felt there was no future for them in Nenagh. And there wasn't; that's the tragedy.”

An even darker scenario is depicted in his chapter on warfare, in which Fr Seán warns of a world where governments and terrorists attempt to harness the military potential of our rapidly advancing technology, using robots and drones to replace the human action of killing and destroying.

“The use of autonomous weapons is immoral,” Fr Seán argues. But this is just one aspect of our technological advance that he says we need to check before it is too late.

“These are the kinds of decisions that need to be made because if you get down the road - and we're doing all this - it's very difficult to pull back.”

Having experienced a backward, almost primitive way of life during his two decades in the Philippines, Fr Seán also speaks at length about the many benefits he has seen technology used for in his time.

“I'm not against technology,” he is quick to assert. “I think it's great. But I think we need to see the good side of it, and the negative side of it.”

Fr Seán dedicated his new book to Nenagh's Sr Patricia Greene - “an extraordinary, decent, kind woman” - who cared for his mother - St Mary's Boys NS schoolteacher Eileen - in the ‘90s. He is presently working on another book titled ‘Single-use plastic: Disaster for Humans and the Planet’.