What technology wants

I am not a techno-optimist. I’m a techno-curiost. And what a time to be alive and curious.

Large language models are redefining work and creativity. The lines between billionaire and politician are blurring. All while we build infrastructure that marks the earth as much as the era.

To no surprise, the biggest wave of technology since the industrial revolution is a source of hostile debate. There is nothing new under the sun.

Yet, no matter our opinion, we all bargain with technology. Every decision we make has a trade-off; we negotiate deals with our tech hundreds of times a day, and get on with our lives.

Lately however, for whatever reason, people seem to be scrutinizing the terms and conditions. Prophetic voices have been crying out for decades, and finally, a critical mass of techno-curiosts is forming. Perhaps this happens when we feel, at a fundamental level, that our humanity is at stake. There is now a “crisis of meaning” in place of “business as usual.”

According to a not-so-distant future for some, and an all-too-present reality for others, our humanity is in question. So I find myself asking, along with many other humans in ages past and ages to come, what does technology want with us?

Early technology made its presence known in the human act — warm, bright, and beautiful — fire greets us with an energetic dance.

Making its way through the ages, technology assumed the form of a hammer, a wheel, a pen, a plow, a printing press, a combustion engine, a telephone, a computer, the internet.

Apart from the spirit of the age or government or profit, technology seems to want diversity, efficiency, emergence, ubiquity.

Yet, Paul Kingsnorth in his Tale of the Machine, suggests that the West has made a dirty deal with technology. Science, sex, and self is now inextricably tied to progress and innovation.

So what does technology want? Generally speaking — something for you, and something from you. It is a force multiplier, but also a force of gravity. A tool for you, but also a tool for someone else. We are wise to be aware of the tradeoffs, but scarcely will we have the full picture.

Should we choose to participate in modernity, the complex system that is modern economics and culture, it helps to compare technology to a tool, a neutral means to a practical end.

That is only partially true.

What we call “technology” today — the smartphone, the computer, software — is several tools working together.

Each technology has its own end, different from the next, and they are organized to achieve something beyond its individual counterparts. From the ball point pen to the automobile to globalization, this has increasingly been the case over time. So if anything can be said about technology through the ages, it’s that it compounds. It’s generative. It’s evolving.

To put it optimistically, this is a testament to human ingenuity. The image of God imprinted on human nature to create and collaborate. But to put it personally for us humans, “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.” And thinks. And designs. And builds.

Along with Kingsnorth, I am interested in the surrounding forces at play, namely, the human ones. What a time to be alive and curious. The question isn’t what technology wants with us, it’s what we want with technology. And when technology delivers, the question becomes what we want with ourselves.

We scarcely have the full picture, and the human act will continue to evolve into an increasingly complex system. Such is the nature of this play. Such is the play of nature. Perhaps our participation is not to manipulate the outcomes, but to participate fully, without knowing how it ends.