What Technology Means
What are the key elements of a Christian understanding of the human being? When listed, they seem obvious. We are at once made in the image of God and originally sinful, capable of creativity and harm. We are embodied souls, our thinking and acting circumscribed by our limits. We are at once individuals and social beings. We are clever at devising means, but are ourselves made for ends, goals. We have private and public aspects, ‘insides’ and ‘outsides,’ and must decide how to negotiate both. We act, and yet in so doing cannot save ourselves. We are made to work, and to rest and celebrate too. We live in families, tribes, nations, though ‘nothing human is ultimately alien to us’. (Terence) Throughout all this we have an inherent dignity, born of our ‘imago’ status, that exceeds merely our functions. Dissection alone loses this x-factor of dignity easily. You can also see the importance of the ‘on the one hand, on the other’ shape of this description.
No need to answer questions as you enter the country- you are already surveilled. IVF a boon for those hoping for a family, but the technique of designing that baby lies close at hand too. Old fashioned narcotics obsolete with the advent of the new, synthetic, more deadly one. Political deepfakes mature. AI tells me products aligned with my profile, and now has a program to teach me empathy. In Canada depressed young adults could be approved for assisted suicide- over the internet. Close the borders? Consider the port that lies in your hand. The billionaire in Silicon Valley dreams of the technocrat few remaking the world, free of the constraints of us the many. University labs much closer than Wuhan manipulate viruses. AI’s titans have thrown their prior reticence to the wind. Yet, within a decade, Alzheimer’s will be eradicated. And these are just news items I have read, or things I have experienced, in the past few months!
I have come to believe that today every question includes technology as a factor, often the decisive one. The mendacity of our politics, the anxiety of our youth, the ubiquitous illusion of choice, all can be traced to technology. But is technology a thing which can be distinguished from ourselves? Well, at once, yes and no! Frankenstein made his monster, but then the monster turned on him. We are at once agents and victims- this too is implied by the Christian doctrine of the human person. Since Adam we have tried to hide, from God, and from ourselves too.
So to what does that call us? Christians must recall what a human being before God is. We have something specific to say, though at the same time we find common cause with humanists, adherents of other religions. This calling will be required of us, on every side, like technology itself, in what lies before us.
