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July 20 - August 8, 2020
As Thomas Allen summarizes the insight of Bruno Latour, “The meaning of a technology is neither contained within the technology itself nor determined by the human being making use of that technology, but emerges out of the interaction between the two. . . . Human
Recently, philosopher Shannon Vallor has recognized this idea from a secular perspective. She uses the virtue tradition in philosophical ethics to engage these topics. Her Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting provides three helpful concepts for us at this stage.
Our use of the tools that humans make in turn shapes us as humans; these tools can make us into something else through our interaction with them.
This idea disturbs us, as Harari puts well: “We like the idea of shaping stone knives, but we don’t like the idea of being stone knives ourselves.”
There is nothing wrong with technology per se. But there is something wrong with technological people. The difference between the two is that “technology” is merely a tool used to pursue substantial human ends, whereas technological people abandon human ends in favor of exclusively technological ones. The former view is classical, the latter that of Silicon Valley dataists and transhumanists for whom human beings are themselves merely “obsolete algorithms” soon to be replaced by synthetic ones far superior to them in every way.
Being Christian isn’t simply about shaping our thinking in a certain way; if we’re going to love the right things, we have to take what we do seriously, because it shapes our loves over time.
True flourishing is not found in a technological worldview but in subordinating our tools to truly human ends.
As one Anabaptist thinker explains, “The technologies we use always have an effect on us, and that effect is both burden and blessing. Importantly, the outcome of a given form of technology depends less on our intent than on the structure of that technology. Once introduced, it plays its hand. Our task is to keep our eyes open and understand what is happening.”76 Or,
Homo sapiens is likely to upgrade itself step by step, merging with robots and computers in the process, until our descendants look back and realise that they are no longer the kind of animal that wrote the Bible, built the Great Wall of China and laughed at Charlie Chaplin’s antics. This will not happen in a day, or a year. Indeed it is already happening right now, through innumerable mundane actions. Every day millions of people decide to grant their smartphone a bit more control over their lives or try a new and more effective antidepressant drug. In pursuit of health, happiness and power,
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“We are all centaurs now, our aesthetics continuously enhanced by computation. Every photograph I take on my smartphone is silently improved by algorithms the second after I take it. Every document autocorrected, every digital file optimised.”
Yuval Noah Harari, whose futurist writing bends to no tradition, draws similarly serious conclusions: Devices such as Google Glass and games such as Pokémon Go are designed to erase the distinction between online and offline, merging them into a single augmented reality. On an even deeper level, biometric sensors and direct brain-to-computer interfaces aim to erode the border between electronic machines and organic bodies and to literally get under our skin. Once the tech giants come to terms with the human body, they might end up manipulating our entire bodies in the same way they currently
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If our minds now encompass our phones, we are essentially cyborgs: part-biology, part-technology. Given how our smartphones have taken over what were once functions of our brains—remembering dates, phone numbers, addresses—perhaps the data they contain should be treated on a par with the information we hold in our heads. So if the law aims to protect mental privacy, its boundaries would need to be pushed outwards to give our cyborg anatomy the same protections as our brains.33
Rothblatt is confident that they are near: “Given the exciting work on artificial intelligence that’s already been accomplished, it’s only a matter of time before brains made entirely of computer software express the complexities of the human psyche, sentience, and soul.”29
In fact, Rothblatt goes so far as to say the mindclone is identical to the original person. In her vision, When the body of a person with a mindclone dies, the mindclone will not feel that they have personally died, although the body will be missed in the same ways amputees miss their limbs but acclimate when given an artificial replacement. In fact, the comparison suggests an apt metaphor: The mindclone is to the consciousness and spirit as the prosthetic is to an arm that has lost its hand.32
Unnecessary people might spend increasing amounts of time within 3D virtual-reality worlds, which would provide them with far more excitement and emotional engagement than the drab reality outside. Yet such a development would deal a mortal blow to the liberal belief in the sacredness of human life and of human experiences. What’s so sacred in useless bums who pass their days devouring artificial experiences in La La Land?
theologian Tara Owens says, Why would our bodies matter? Why would my flabby arms or bony knees or acne-prone skin matter to the Creator of the universe? Our bodies matter because without them we aren’t human. Without our bodies, we might be angels or demons, but we wouldn’t be people. Without our bodies, we simply wouldn’t exist. Just like Thomas insisted on touching Jesus, Christianity insists on the importance of our particular bodies, insists on our individuality and the redemption of each of us in particular.22
As Michael Harris puts it, Human memory was never meant to call up all things, after all, but rather to explore the richness of exclusion, of absence. It creates a meaningful, contextualized, curated assemblage particular to the brain’s singular experience and habits. Valuable memories, like great music, are as much about the things that drop away—the rests—as they are about what stays and sounds.28
Our technologies change how we experience reality, how we remember it, and what we forget, which gives shape to everything else.
“Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.”
