Technology is a tool.
Like all tools, it extends the space of possible action. Allowing deeds and thoughts that before remained but fantasies.
With it, we can shape the world to our liking.
But at our peril do we forget that, inevitably, we are shaped in turn.
Consider fire. Our first and most mythic creation. With it, we tamed the night and kept the beasts that dwelled within the darkness at bay. We feared no longer old flesh and the parasites that feasted within it. The cold was no longer an indomitable foe, but an enemy we had a chance to defeat. Unquestionably, we are what we are today because of fire.
Perhaps because of that, we rarely reflect on what was lost.
By keeping the night at bay, our eyes need never evolve the means to see within it on their own. By keeping out the cold, we need never develop the means to do so ourselves. Fire made us stronger, by keeping us weaker.
What of our other great early inventions? The spear allowed us to take down prey far beyond our natural abilities, and ensured we need never grow fang or claw. Agriculture gave us a steady food supply and the energy to grow complex societies, stunting our growth by doing away with the need for bodies tall and strong. In each case, something was gained and something was lost.
Over and over, in the history of technological development, we see this pattern reappear. Socrates supposedly bemoaned the advent of writing, fearing that it would lead to the degradation of his student’s memory. We may laugh at this fear. Many have, particularly at that fact that we only know of it because of the writings of his student Plato. Surely, that alone (in its own ironic manner) proves the benefit of the written word.
And yet, Socrates was right. The best of the ancients undoubtedly had stronger memories than their modern descendants. Their world required it. An aristocrat of that era was expected to be fluent in the classics, to be able to recite an appropriate quote from Homer and Hesiod, from Aeschylus and Aristophanes, in the appropriate situation. Politics, the expected profession of a gentleman, required them to perform long and complicated speeches to crowds of onlookers. They learned from an early age the techniques and strategies that gave them an edge in these tasks. Methods of rhyme and place.
Look closer to the modern era and we see the story repeat itself. Calculators have made us quicker at solving math problems by robbing us of the need to calculate ourselves. Map services have removed the need for us to know how to navigate naturally. Increasingly, the ubiquity of cells phones has removed any need for us to remember basic facts at all. Why commit the resources, when they can be stored in silica and accessed at the touch of a button?
Now, we stand at the precipice of a new era. One where the machines can replace not only our bodies, not only our skills, but our whole minds. An old saying goes, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” But it is equally true that if you give a man a hammer, he will forget how to solve problems without one. Technology enhance us by making impossible tasks difficult and difficult tasks easy, and that very convenience makes us dependent on it. Will this follow the path of all previous technologies? Are we doomed to lose ever more of ourselves to the machine?
That path is open to each of us, if we choose to walk it.
But a choice it is. For in our technological wonders may yet lie the solution to the problems that technology itself gives rise to.
For the majority of humans alive today, for the first time in the history of our species, the entirety of human knowledge is quite literally at our fingertips. The grand libraries of Alexandria, Ashurbanipal, Baghdad, and Tianyi pale in comparison. Any complex skill, any field of knowledge, any mundane and useless bit of trivia, is yours to know. Not just to find but, if you wish it, to truly know.
The same convenience that rids us of the need to grow in knowledge and ability also provides us with ways to do so better than ever before. Knowledge of techniques to grow in strength of limb and elegance of form, and of nutrition to truly nourish us. To train the mind in mathematics and logic, that we may look upon the world and see the hidden patterns that lie beneath. To build our own tools, whether they be wood or metal or code, that we may shape our lives as we so desire. To create art and beauty, and to learn to see art and beauty, both in the world as it is and as it could be. All this is ours to possess
The solution is not to abandon technology, or to abandon ourselves to it, but to learn to live with it. To resist the allure of ease and comfort and choose, with eyes and minds open, the hard path. The human path. For technology, at its worse, robs you of the need to become human. But at its best, it can give you the means to explore the farthest realms of human experience.
Republished and updated from Substack(@negentrope). The original publish date is May 9, 2025. This is the canonical article.
