How technology will change Christmas in the next decade

If Jesus were born during the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), how would the story of His birth be told? Would the Three Wise Men from the East be three drones delivering gifts to baby Jesus?

This question highlights how technology has changed the way Christians celebrated Christmas in the past decade and, as 2020 begins, these changes will get even more advanced.

For the millennials, carrying a Bible to church is old school as they can access the Scriptures from a smartphone, eliminating their phobia of carrying the Holy Book.

Over the years, gift shopping has been hectic for most Christians, but think of self-driving cars with their own highway carrying commands to gifts stores to buy particular presents for loved ones!

What we have now is the booming of e-commerce, where you place your Christmas order online, pay for it and wait for a few days for delivery by humans. That will change. In the next decade, we will witness technology eliminating the need to hire delivery agents and their place taken by drones with new jobs in drone traffic control being created.

Since Google and Facebook already know more about what our friends, family and colleagues prefer as gifts, humans could tap into the Big Data advantage and use algorithms to generate automated present lists, on a pre-set budget, ensuring there is variety and nobody gets the same gift twice. 

As humans keep relying on technology for most solutions to their problems, people could stop going to church altogether! In the next few years, for instance, hologram technology will be so popular that a Christmas church service that is widely attended right now will be held through hologram technology.

Think of a hologram landing in your living room on Christmas Day to deliver the church sermon. Think of yourself experiencing attending the church through Virtual Reality as though you were there and giving offering or tithe as crypto tokens.

Buying the right clothing and footwear for family and friends will be easier through the accuracy of 5G technology.

Using height, waist and shoulder measurements, it will suggest the best-fitting clothing for them, allowing you to order from the comfort of your home through the hyper connectivity of the Internet of Things (IoT).

With Artificial Intelligence (AI) advancing in a rapid trajectory and being one of the technologies widely used in 2019, next year, don’t be astonished when you see social robots assisting in food preparation, cooking and serving the Christmas dinner and drinks, and washing the utensils afterwards.

They will measure your calorie, protein and vitamin requirements to prepare only that food that can be finished by your guests to reduce food wastage and automatically restock your fridge contents through teleportation.

After dinner every Boxing Day, football enthusiasts can catch live English Premier League matches at the King Power Stadium via VR headsets as other family members play a live interactive table tennis game, instead of watching regular TV shows. At present, most middle- and high-class families spend time decorating the Christmas tree. As we approach 2030, expect this to involve the use of Augmented Reality (AR), so revellers can see Santa flying around with jubilation.

But despite all the promises of how technology will affect Christmas in Industry 4.0, don’t forget that the most effective communication will still be face-to-face. Most emotions and feelings cannot be expressed through AI or VR and priests still find it appalling to give offering in cryptocurrency.

In most Third World economies, not everyone can afford to access these technologies as tech leaders call for inclusivity and affordability in their adoption. But when technology is used in accordance with God’s moral will, it is an example of man’s obedience to the divine command to be a steward of creation and to honour Him.

AI, for instance, should be designed and used in such ways that treat all human beings — regardless of race, gender, religion, economic status and age — as having equal worth and dignity, a Protestant denomination statement published earlier this year says.

4G network, which has only been laid out in urban centres in Kenya, should penetrate to rural villages as 5G is upgraded on it.  As caring Christians, it will be selfish to leave out those who live in remote areas in the adoption of the IoT in the next decade.

Christians must, therefore, prepare for a future that embeds all these technologies, which will be inevitable, in the inclusive celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.