Being Human in a Disembodied Age
After reading through this past week’s material, I wonder what it means to have a ‘digital community’–something many have now accepted as a given reality for those interacting online for work and play. Do these words overlap sufficiently to be relevant to one another, or are they too different? What are the costs and benefits of launching ourselves into working and collaborating online before we grasp how it affects our humanity?
This is a relevant question as I, like many, work in a global organization with colleagues and collaborators worldwide on a shared mission. In the past two weeks, I have had three conversations with people on this specific topic, which is fresh in my mind.
In the United States alone, U.S. Census Bureau statistics show growth in the number of jobs that work remotely, from 4.5% in 2014 to 13.8% in 2023 [1]. That is an increase of 207%. As organizations discover and debate the costs and benefits, where these numbers will stabilize and settle over time remains to be seen. Either way, the growth is significant. Some level of increase is seemingly here to stay.
Like many organizations, mine highly values the capability to unite our people around a common mission. Ours is defined by our Christian faith and committed to integrating faith and work. This is complicated by the diversity in work environments, including:
– Two major operating locations (hospital ships) where people live (sleep, work, eat, worship, play, etc.) in the same environment, which are the primary focus of our mission and work,
– One headquarters and sixteen national offices where people come into the office regularly, either daily or very often, and
– Remote workers across a wide range of locations and time zones.
Each group has different needs to support their growth and development, with the remote group being the most unique. Teams working together in the same location are much better equipped to develop meaningful and productive relationships with one another. Those on the hospital ships have been uprooted from their home communities and must reestablish ties in their new ‘planted’ location. However, we do not yet have a good understanding of what our remote staff need.
In Smash The Technopoly, Smyth argues that there is a difference between cultures that are “tool-using” and those that are “technopolies,” with the tool-using cultures having moral resources to constrain the use of technologies, and technopolies lacking such resources [2].
Working remotely has notable benefits. These include geographic flexibility, the elimination of commutes that feel like wasted time, a better balance between work and other activities, increased quality of life, and cost reductions. However, we should also consider the opportunity costs of remote work.
In ‘End the Phone-Based Childhood Now,’ Haidt lays out four characteristics of real-world interactions [4] :
– they are embodied,
– they are synchronous,
– they are primarily one-to-one or sometimes one-to-several, and
– they take place within communities that have a high bar for entry and exit.
By nature, remote interactions can lack these characteristics. They become disembodied, frequently asynchronous, and, with shallower relational interactions, the costs of entry and exit are lower. There are also the one-to-everyone interactions that are enabled by technologies such as collaborative messaging software: Microsoft Teams and Slack, for example. The cost of entry and exit to social groups also appear to be different for remote work. After some normalization post-COVID, rates of ‘churn’ or job turnover are higher for remote jobs than in-person jobs [5].
Like many in other organizations in our post-COVID pandemic world, I am now on a journey to discover what can be done to mitigate, offset, or reduce these costs, whether we will have to accept them as the price of the benefits, and consequently deciding where the costs are worth it and where they are not.
What will it take to set up an organization that can retain a sense of togetherness and community when our meetings are conducted via screen panels? Is it possible? Are the benefits worth the costs? Can the costs be reduced?
If you were to ask me today, I’d respond that we don’t need to be together to do our jobs. We need to be together to be human.
Some roles may be well-suited to remote work, and some should not be remote. Work that is relational in nature and reliant on embodied presence will not be well suited. Other types of work may be technically feasible to perform remotely but for which the effects of disembodiment are unclear. Because a surgeon can perform surgery over the Internet with a robot, does it mean they should? Does the physical absence significantly affect their connection to the patient? What factors would contribute to an ethical decision on the matter? I was curious, so I decided to research a little and found that according to a systematic review out of Penn State University [6], few studies described remote telesurgery in humans, and they had considerable variability in approaches. As we begin to explore these technologies, I expect we will learn much more.
I hope we move slower into them than we did with social media so there is time to test, learn, and adjust. Three years ago, I removed all social media apps from my phone, and four weeks ago, I disabled my profiles completely on some social networks. I have personally found no loss to my quality of life with either of these steps. In fact, it has created more time for me to do other things I consider more important.
How human do our interactions remain when we are not physically present? Based on the week’s readings certainly less so, but exactly how much is unclear. I think we are only just finding out.
In conclusion, I am considering updating my Need/Problem/Opportunity (NPO) to give more attention to this topic. My NPO is currently framed as meeting the needs of those working in international development settings for an authentic community that lives in (internally/thinking) and lives out (externally/behaviour) shalom. I believe it could be more useful–to my stakeholders but also beyond my specific scope–by addressing the needs for a community of shalom for those working in a connected but disembodied world.
Notes
[1] Laura Pop-Badiu, “The Evolution of WFH: A Decade of Changing Work Habits in America’s Top Metros,” Coworking Mag (blog), October 1, 2024, https://coworkingmag.com/blog/evolution-of-wfh-americas-top-metros/.
[2] Nicholas Smyth, “Smash The Technopoly!,” March 9, 2023, https://www.afterbabel.com/p/smash-the-technopoly.
[3] Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury, “Our Work-from-Anywhere Future,” Harvard Business Review, November 1, 2020, https://hbr.org/2020/11/our-work-from-anywhere-future.
[4] Jonathan Haidt, “End the Phone-Based Childhood Now,” The Atlantic (blog), March 13, 2024, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/03/teen-childhood-smartphone-use-mental-health-effects/677722/.
[5] “Dandi Insights: In-Person vs. Remote Work,” accessed February 9, 2025, https://www.itsdandi.com/blog/in-person-vs-remote-work/.
[6] Patrick Barba et al., “Remote Telesurgery in Humans: A Systematic Review,” Surgical Endoscopy 36, no. 5 (May 2022): 2771–77, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00464-022-09074-4.
About the Author
Joff Williams
I help communities and people discover their identity and purpose by discovering the identity and intent of their Creator. I am a follower of Jesus, husband, father, son, sibling, music nerd, recovering IT nerd, just an all-around nerd nerd, and mediocre but happy runner. My work involves leading and loving the communities of Mercy Ships, an international hospital ship mission deeply rooted in the love of Jesus.10 responses to “Being Human in a Disembodied Age”
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Joff, after reading your post, I have a question: Can a disembodied and shalom community exist? As a follow-up for however you answer, what does that mean for your NPO?
Thanks, always enjoy your work!
Robert, these are the right questions. My current answers: “I don’t know” and “Probably changes”!
I’m seriously considering adjusting my NPO to take more of this dynamic into account. It is not only applicable in my setting, but in many others, and I think a key global issue where I’m not finding a lot of leading Christian thought. That could indicate an area to explore.
Joff, as I think about this, I don’t know either. I have two thoughts. Haidts book, Anxious Generation, expounds on everything we read this week. Also, ny mind runs to Bonhoeffer. Was Bonhoeffer less a part of his church when he was imprisoned – forced into disembodied relationships? Perhaps his work on community and his letters from prison may have insight for you.
I love Haidt’s work. Anxious Generation is on my bookshelf and ready to be read – perhaps at Spring Break!
Prison is a brilliant suggestion for getting some context for disembodied relationships. Thanks, Robert!
Joff –
I really appreciated your statement, “We don’t need to be together to do our jobs. We need to be together to be human.”
I wonder if a consequence of remote or disconnected work is that we treat one another more as drones than full-value members of a shared humanity. Have you seen effective ways of inviting one another to see/appreciate each other’s value from a distance without employing some kind of an ersatz community?
Hey Jeremiah,
I’ve certainly seen attempts to do so, with a mixture of success. The better ones involve being very intentional in remembering people who aren’t there. Some people are very good at facilitating online-only or mixed groups. The mixed meeting formats are the most challenging, but the people who do it best put a *lot* of effort and intention into making sure those online are not left out.
And the best ones are still inferior to being together. I’ve seen situations where even just a single in-person meeting transformed remote interactions from tense and wary to life-giving and mutually joyful. Our cohort came alive for me when we spent a week together in-person. I expect we will see that grow at our next shared advance.
I suspect there’s something that will always be at least a little ersatz about ‘online’ community.
Thanks for a great reply, Joff.
I had the same experience with our Cohort and am grateful for our shared time together. The best remote experiences I’ve had are those where I also get some time in-person with those team members, even if such opportunities are few and far between. Your post is a good reminder that strengths of online interaction can be really well-leveraged for positive outcomes; while there may be nothing to eradicate the weaknesses or threats of that kind of “community,” I think we can mitigate many of them by “humanizing” the experience as much as possible through story, vulnerability, and focused engagement.
Thanks again!
Joff,
I appreciate the thoughts you shared in this post. One question resonated with me, especially in the context of remote workers: How human do our interactions remain when we are not physically present?
I joined our company just over 24 months ago. They had already established a work-from-home policy, and when I walked into the office area adjoining the warehouse, it was a sea of empty cubes. I was involved in a series of Zoom calls with faces I had never seen, and I spent hours scrolling through Microsoft Outlook emails, looking at job titles and org charts, and trying to understand the organizational landscape. We were purchased eight months into my journey, and it started all over.
We can’t quite span the divide created in the remote work environment. Our remote work environment is substantially different than the one you are presented. Many of our team members working in staff positions live within a 25-mile radius of our facility. While I think employees would agree they might enjoy working collectively as a team in a centralized location, I don’t see them banging down the door wanting to return to the office. Even when there are no barriers to entry, these team members view their individual time, cost, and value as more significant than what can be gained by the collective community combined. I firmly believe that the in-person community is a much better multiplier overall.
Great reflection Joff. I do agree that there are things that online presence and engagement can’t replace and one of those is the human connection. During COVID days, my team mainly worked from home and we were so efficient. We got things done on time and with high quality. For me working remotely saves time, is labor efficient and arguably good for the environment. However, during “work from home” days, we could have been growing apart and did not know as much. Is it possible to find ways of being fully human and yet still creating environments (such as remote working) to encourage efficiency?
Hi Alex,
My observation is that personal character plays a significant part in this. Those who demonstrate conscientiousness will be more productive when barriers to work are removed, while those who do not can become subject to skepticism and scrutiny when working remotely. The in-person workplace simply keeps those prone to laziness under (supervisory, peer and social) scrutiny as an effective control.
Ecclesiastes 3 describes “a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing”. I believe a key tension for us to manage as leaders is that between human relationship and work. Clearly, work is more productive with more positive relationships, which requires a commitment of time, but work will also not get done unless we commit time to it.