One of the most harmful delusions that many Christians operate under is that technology is neutral. The fence-sitter posits that most, if not all, technology is neutral. As long as we exercise authentic prudence in its use, then it acts as an unquestionable good. The problem with this approach is that it seems to consistently lead us into a technological Catch-22 where some sort of calculus must be invented to make sure that the good outweighs the bad. A moment’s reflection will lead us to understand that this leads us into a moral pitfall. The will itself can never be the sole determiner of the moral worth of a given object. There must be some objective standard by which we can measure the worth of a technology a priori. But in order to develop such a standard we must first be willing to challenge this belief in technological agnosticism.
Technology and the Perception of Reality
In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates tells the story of King Thamus who is talking to the god Theuth about his invention of writing. Thamus thinks the technological advance of writing is actually harmful because it will eliminate the need for memorization. Man’s memory will atrophy such that he longer needs memory but reminding. The point here is not whether or not this is true, but that even a crude technology like writing is not neutral. Writing changes not only how we describe reality but also changes the person himself. No one would dispute that writing acts as an “external hard-drive” to document things to be remembered, but it can never be as rich as memory itself. Writing then, like all technologies, affects not only how men interact with reality but the perception of reality itself.
Pope Francis in Laudato Si (107) says something similar:
“It can be said that many problems of today’s world stem from the tendency, at times unconscious, to make the method and aims of science and technology an epistemological paradigm which shapes the lives of individuals and the workings of society. The effects of imposing this model on reality as a whole, human and social, are seen in the deterioration of the environment, but this is just one sign of a reductionism which affects every aspect of human and social life. We have to accept that technological products are not neutral…”
Developing a Rule
Once we recognize the relationship between technology and our perception of reality, we can develop a rule by which to evaluate its worth. To start, we can draw on an insight from Fr. Romano Guardini which compares sailboats and ocean liners:
“Take a vessel sailing on Lake Como. Though it is of considerable weight, the masses of wood and linen, along with the force of the wind, combine so perfectly that it has become light. When it sails before the wind, my heart laughs to see how something of this sort has become so light and bright of itself by reason of its perfect form…Do you not see what a remarkable fact of culture is present when human beings become masters of wind and wave by fashioning wood and fitting it together and spanning linen sails? In my very blood I have a sense of creation here, of a primal work of human creativity. It is full of mind and spirit, this perfectly fashioned movement in which we master the force of nature…let the remoteness from nature become greater! It grieves me when I see built into one of these vessels, these noble creations, a gasoline engine, so that with upright mast but no sails the vessel clatters through the waves like a ghost of itself Go even further and the sailing vessel becomes a steamer, a great ocean liner – culture indeed, a brilliant technological achievement! And yet a colossus of this type presses on through the sea regardless of wind and waves. It is so large that nature no longer has power over it…Mark you, something decisive has been lost here.”
In the case of the sailboat, you must cooperate with both the waves and the wind and when you do, the boat is powered by them. The potency of the wind to move a boat equipped with a sail is made actual by man’s effort. There is something beautiful that happens when the sail fills with wind and the boat glides across the waves and for that reason it is lovely. With the ocean liner, it is no longer about capturing the power of the wind but overcoming it. Potency and act are separated and this aspect of reality is abstracted away. The point is not that the sailboat is better than the ocean liner, but that something has been lost without us even realizing it. By harnessing the wind, the sailor is better able to grasp the meaning of the wind and its symbolic (or even sacramental) meaning. Seeing the wind merely as a nuisance parameter to factored out, the captain of the ocean liner stands in an abstract reality. He merely needs to calculate how much it will speed or slow his pace. This changes how he not only interacts with reality but also how he views it.
The sailor on the sailboat is also freer than the captain of the ocean liner. The former needs only to adjust his sails, while the latter depends upon his engine. The wind does not break down the way engines do. Moving from sailboats to ocean liners means a natural competence is traded for a technological one. The cost of acquiring power over nature is the diminishment of one of man’s natural powers and becomes something less than he would otherwise have been. Homo sapiens is reduced because he is no longer also homo nauta. The sailor knows how to use the wind not only on the sea but on land. The captain knows only how to factor it into an equation.
Once we drop the myth of neutrality and realize that technology shapes the subject using it just as much as it does the object we apply it to, we can proceed with a greater sense of caution. Specifically, we must begin to accurately calculate the tradeoffs we are making when we use technology. Not only are we losing competence in many areas, we are also becoming less virtuous. A man may not choose to take a cruise on a sailboat, but he may choose to buy a sailboat (instead of a motorboat) so as to become more human by becoming a sailor.