Wow, this really landed with me today. Feel slightly obsessed with the sort of questions you are raised in this post, especially being both a huge Wendell Berry fan AND someone who doesn't want to dismiss new ways of being in the world and interacting with it.
Thanks for reading Emily, and so great to heat it resonated. I'm somewhat obsessed with these ideas too and hope to write much more about all this. I've just been taking a look at your brilliant newsletter and see you're a poet. In a past life, quite a while ago now, I was a reviewer of fiction for newspapers. With this newsletter, I've sort of come the long way around to uniting my two great obsessions, which have always been writing and technology.
Will look forward to hearing your take on it all over the course of the year. It's definitely become a focus for my next poems/songs, though I find it hard to sit with sometimes. It's quite overwhelming!
Glad to have come across your substack, David! So many great insights here, and so well conceptualized. In my science fiction novel Exogenesis I likewise imagined two groups, equivalent to your “People of the Earth” and “People of the Machine”, a few hundred years in the future, and the conflict between them. This tidy contrast works well in fiction, and as a frame of formal analysis, yet the reality might end up being a bit more messy, as actual history tends to be. Either way we are in for an interesting upheaval. I look forward to your writing!
Thanks so much Peco, and likewise I'm thrilled to have discovered the newsletters that you and Ruth write. I'm just beginning on them now, and they're so full of insight and treading across ground that is so much on my mind right now.
We need new stories. New visions of what our future can be. and that's mine:
"I can see myself as both a machine, holding the purity of machines, devoid of emotions and based solely on ruthless logic, and as a last stronghold of remembered humanity and rebellion against the emotionlessness and pure rationality of machines. The real question here is: the only thing that will allow me to choose between the two sides is my emotions(which is ironically a human based sentiment generally led to suffer). Will I choose the world of machines, based solely on justice and rules, in the face of humanity's cruelty, or will I rely on the hope, the strongest emotion held by humans, in the ruthless and soulless world of machines? I don't know the answer to this question either. And the only thing that will reveal it is time."
With greater respect to this amazing essay... I am @cryptojokerr at Twitter and show you my respect to this piece of art.
Thanks David. I was surprised though to read the following:
'You can’t answer these questions unless you have an account of what we humans really are. And of the relationship we have, at the deepest level, to the cosmos we find ourselves in.
The old religions once supplied such an account. For many inhabitants of modernity, the scientific revolution dismantled it. Now we must build anew. That, in the end, is the demand this new world makes of us.'
It strikes me that it is more a question of 'same old, same old'. In super short - God the creator and upholder of the universe (and therefore completely outside of it) has made us in his image. We have rejected his rule and have been setting ourselves up as gods ever since. A key aspect of this is deciding for ourselves what is good and bad. Although we have made lots of educational and technological progress, the deciding what is good and bad isn't going so well. God teaches us that the only possible way is to submit to him, seek to do good and prefer others over ourselves (not our first thoughts when wanting to become gods) - he even demonstrated this for us by becoming incarnate and dying to show the true way to life and power (now lifted up above every other name). Counter-intuitively the end point of all this is actually becoming gods and reigning with Christ. The point is the moral transformation is a prerequisite, not the technological know-how. Oh, and by the way, the creator also let's us know this situation isn't going on indefinitely, he's calling time at some point. I think that account still seems exactly relevant and we are no nearer to having a robust moral position without reference to God and no nearer at all to being able to behave perfectly, especially if we have more power.
Carrie, thanks so much for this thoughtful reply. I'm as convinced as can be that the questions the technology revolution pose to us are, in the end, spiritual questions. Much more coming on all that this year.
Flashback to C.P. Snow's Two Cultures - - science and arts. He recommends building bridges as do I. As humans evolve into two behaviorally separate species, it may become important to suppress the temptation for each to regard the other as "alien". I'll keep reading your blog as long as you keep sharing this kind of insightful commentary. Thank you, Liza
Thanks so much for reading Liza. CP Snow's Two Cultures idea was quite an influence on me as a teenager fascinated by both the sciences (mainly physics and tech) and humanities. In the end I chose the humanities track when it came to higher education. But it was pretty painful to have to choose. And I've made up for it, in part, by winding up writing about technology. Thanks for reading, and much more coming soon.
Here’s my riff on “technology” which you are welcome to quote if you like it. (I haven’t read all of your stuff so maybe you’ve already worked this angle…) ‘Techne’ is both art and craft (in ancient Greek). It’s how we do things - ‘technique’ in modern English. It can refer to the style of brush strokes in an oil painting just as legitimately as to the design of gates in an integrated circuit chip or a block of computer code. The use of a digging stick is technique as is the use of a huge, multi-function threshing machine or a tablet computer for long distance teaching. ‘-ology’ means ‘study of’. Put together, ‘technology’ is the study of the way someone does things. It is not only a digital device. Although I don’t expect to be able to have much influence over the use of the term ‘technology’ in modern English, perhaps I can encourage folks to think a little more deeply about what they mean to say when they claim to love or hate ‘technology’.
Reflecting back on C.P. Snow, technology, the study of how we do things and use tools, is just as relevant in humanities as in the hard sciences and engineering.
I like to include ‘social techniques’ in my study of how we do things as well. Many people accept the arrangements of their birth culture as just the way things have to be. It can be difficult for those of us born into an industrialized cultural context to view brushing your teeth or the use of money or paper as a social technique that is an appropriate topic for study and change. While we may see the use of an automated teller machine to withdraw cash from our bank account as a use of ‘technology’, it can be a stretch to see money itself as a social technique to facilitate the exchange of goods and services - a technique that can be studied and changed - in other words, a ‘technology’. Without this view of social technologies, it is difficult to address both personal and political issues such as the institution of a basic minimum income, whether to volunteer at your local community food bank, or even to offer financial support to your favorite open source software organization.
I’ll wind up this rant by congratulating you on “winding up writing about technology”, by which I take you to mean focusing on the impact of digital devices and AIs on our personal, physical, financial, and social lives. We all need to consider the potential unintended consequences when we decide whether to build and use the techniques and devices we can imagine. Before we turn over responsibility for highly impactful decisions to an LLM or other entity created by matching learning techniques, we need to find a way to distinguish between a great piece of art or social innovation and an hallucination to will take us down the garden path to disaster.
Good article but I think humans are purposely being massively undervalued. I think we are the ultimate tech..why downgrade when we can rediscover who we ACTUALLY are, that is who we were and can become again...
"The old religions once supplied such an account. For many inhabitants of modernity, the scientific revolution dismantled it."
This statement seems accurate on the surface but for anyone who really wants to dig into it there is much to be debated. It astonishes me that year after year, decade after decade, the entirety of western civilization casually dismisses thousands of years of civilization by framing it in a reductive materialist perspective and dismissing anything that doesn't fit this perspective as "myth". This, in spite of countless human experiences that happen on a daily basis that utterly defy explanation by this materialist perspective. Everyone is so sure, so convinced that they don't even give it a second thought without the slightest understanding of what they are dismissing- no one wants to be inconvenienced. Well, if you're up for some inconvenience, might I suggest looking into the works of Dr. Jeffrey J. Kripal or check out a few podcasts on Youtube where he is interviewed.
Wow, this really landed with me today. Feel slightly obsessed with the sort of questions you are raised in this post, especially being both a huge Wendell Berry fan AND someone who doesn't want to dismiss new ways of being in the world and interacting with it.
Thanks for reading Emily, and so great to heat it resonated. I'm somewhat obsessed with these ideas too and hope to write much more about all this. I've just been taking a look at your brilliant newsletter and see you're a poet. In a past life, quite a while ago now, I was a reviewer of fiction for newspapers. With this newsletter, I've sort of come the long way around to uniting my two great obsessions, which have always been writing and technology.
Will look forward to hearing your take on it all over the course of the year. It's definitely become a focus for my next poems/songs, though I find it hard to sit with sometimes. It's quite overwhelming!
Glad to have come across your substack, David! So many great insights here, and so well conceptualized. In my science fiction novel Exogenesis I likewise imagined two groups, equivalent to your “People of the Earth” and “People of the Machine”, a few hundred years in the future, and the conflict between them. This tidy contrast works well in fiction, and as a frame of formal analysis, yet the reality might end up being a bit more messy, as actual history tends to be. Either way we are in for an interesting upheaval. I look forward to your writing!
Thanks so much Peco, and likewise I'm thrilled to have discovered the newsletters that you and Ruth write. I'm just beginning on them now, and they're so full of insight and treading across ground that is so much on my mind right now.
I'm going to order a copy of Exogenesis!
We need new stories. New visions of what our future can be. and that's mine:
"I can see myself as both a machine, holding the purity of machines, devoid of emotions and based solely on ruthless logic, and as a last stronghold of remembered humanity and rebellion against the emotionlessness and pure rationality of machines. The real question here is: the only thing that will allow me to choose between the two sides is my emotions(which is ironically a human based sentiment generally led to suffer). Will I choose the world of machines, based solely on justice and rules, in the face of humanity's cruelty, or will I rely on the hope, the strongest emotion held by humans, in the ruthless and soulless world of machines? I don't know the answer to this question either. And the only thing that will reveal it is time."
With greater respect to this amazing essay... I am @cryptojokerr at Twitter and show you my respect to this piece of art.
Gratitude from Met.
Thanks David. I was surprised though to read the following:
'You can’t answer these questions unless you have an account of what we humans really are. And of the relationship we have, at the deepest level, to the cosmos we find ourselves in.
The old religions once supplied such an account. For many inhabitants of modernity, the scientific revolution dismantled it. Now we must build anew. That, in the end, is the demand this new world makes of us.'
It strikes me that it is more a question of 'same old, same old'. In super short - God the creator and upholder of the universe (and therefore completely outside of it) has made us in his image. We have rejected his rule and have been setting ourselves up as gods ever since. A key aspect of this is deciding for ourselves what is good and bad. Although we have made lots of educational and technological progress, the deciding what is good and bad isn't going so well. God teaches us that the only possible way is to submit to him, seek to do good and prefer others over ourselves (not our first thoughts when wanting to become gods) - he even demonstrated this for us by becoming incarnate and dying to show the true way to life and power (now lifted up above every other name). Counter-intuitively the end point of all this is actually becoming gods and reigning with Christ. The point is the moral transformation is a prerequisite, not the technological know-how. Oh, and by the way, the creator also let's us know this situation isn't going on indefinitely, he's calling time at some point. I think that account still seems exactly relevant and we are no nearer to having a robust moral position without reference to God and no nearer at all to being able to behave perfectly, especially if we have more power.
Carrie, thanks so much for this thoughtful reply. I'm as convinced as can be that the questions the technology revolution pose to us are, in the end, spiritual questions. Much more coming on all that this year.
Flashback to C.P. Snow's Two Cultures - - science and arts. He recommends building bridges as do I. As humans evolve into two behaviorally separate species, it may become important to suppress the temptation for each to regard the other as "alien". I'll keep reading your blog as long as you keep sharing this kind of insightful commentary. Thank you, Liza
Thanks so much for reading Liza. CP Snow's Two Cultures idea was quite an influence on me as a teenager fascinated by both the sciences (mainly physics and tech) and humanities. In the end I chose the humanities track when it came to higher education. But it was pretty painful to have to choose. And I've made up for it, in part, by winding up writing about technology. Thanks for reading, and much more coming soon.
Here’s my riff on “technology” which you are welcome to quote if you like it. (I haven’t read all of your stuff so maybe you’ve already worked this angle…) ‘Techne’ is both art and craft (in ancient Greek). It’s how we do things - ‘technique’ in modern English. It can refer to the style of brush strokes in an oil painting just as legitimately as to the design of gates in an integrated circuit chip or a block of computer code. The use of a digging stick is technique as is the use of a huge, multi-function threshing machine or a tablet computer for long distance teaching. ‘-ology’ means ‘study of’. Put together, ‘technology’ is the study of the way someone does things. It is not only a digital device. Although I don’t expect to be able to have much influence over the use of the term ‘technology’ in modern English, perhaps I can encourage folks to think a little more deeply about what they mean to say when they claim to love or hate ‘technology’.
Reflecting back on C.P. Snow, technology, the study of how we do things and use tools, is just as relevant in humanities as in the hard sciences and engineering.
I like to include ‘social techniques’ in my study of how we do things as well. Many people accept the arrangements of their birth culture as just the way things have to be. It can be difficult for those of us born into an industrialized cultural context to view brushing your teeth or the use of money or paper as a social technique that is an appropriate topic for study and change. While we may see the use of an automated teller machine to withdraw cash from our bank account as a use of ‘technology’, it can be a stretch to see money itself as a social technique to facilitate the exchange of goods and services - a technique that can be studied and changed - in other words, a ‘technology’. Without this view of social technologies, it is difficult to address both personal and political issues such as the institution of a basic minimum income, whether to volunteer at your local community food bank, or even to offer financial support to your favorite open source software organization.
I’ll wind up this rant by congratulating you on “winding up writing about technology”, by which I take you to mean focusing on the impact of digital devices and AIs on our personal, physical, financial, and social lives. We all need to consider the potential unintended consequences when we decide whether to build and use the techniques and devices we can imagine. Before we turn over responsibility for highly impactful decisions to an LLM or other entity created by matching learning techniques, we need to find a way to distinguish between a great piece of art or social innovation and an hallucination to will take us down the garden path to disaster.
Brilliant David. Looking forward to reading it all.
Thanks so much Sam; more coming very soon!
Good article but I think humans are purposely being massively undervalued. I think we are the ultimate tech..why downgrade when we can rediscover who we ACTUALLY are, that is who we were and can become again...
"The old religions once supplied such an account. For many inhabitants of modernity, the scientific revolution dismantled it."
This statement seems accurate on the surface but for anyone who really wants to dig into it there is much to be debated. It astonishes me that year after year, decade after decade, the entirety of western civilization casually dismisses thousands of years of civilization by framing it in a reductive materialist perspective and dismissing anything that doesn't fit this perspective as "myth". This, in spite of countless human experiences that happen on a daily basis that utterly defy explanation by this materialist perspective. Everyone is so sure, so convinced that they don't even give it a second thought without the slightest understanding of what they are dismissing- no one wants to be inconvenienced. Well, if you're up for some inconvenience, might I suggest looking into the works of Dr. Jeffrey J. Kripal or check out a few podcasts on Youtube where he is interviewed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_J._Kripal