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Technology and Humanity

April 15, 2021 2 min read
Virtual reality headsets in an art museum

With the rise of technology that has marked the last decades, science fiction warnings of a bleak future controlled by artificial intelligence began to break into the mainstream: the pandora’s box was just starting to crack open. Recently, fears of what machines could do to us have begun to recede, as humanity begins to recognize the damage (including social damage) we ourselves are capable of inflicting with machines. Did it turn out that the greatest threat was within us all along? Could it be that we have seen the enemy, and the enemy is us? St. James wrote of this long ago: “What causes wars, and what causes fightings among you? Is it not your passions that are at war in your members? You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. Unfaithful creatures! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

Technology is a tool. As with any tool, we need to get clear on what the tool enables us to do, how it operates, and whether it contributes to (or impedes) true human flourishing. These questions become all the more urgent when it begins to appear that the tool is operating the purported master.


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