The Hubris of Technology

As tool-making animals, we take our brainpower and freedoms to transform nature, which in turn transforms us. Technology, much of which we think we cannot live well without, can be a perverse conduit toward making ourselves unhappy. We are proud of these accomplishments even as we wish to free ourselves from their burdens – led by, I think, a displacement of flesh and blood bonding. Many have been skeptical of the dogma of an essentially uncritical acceptance of the goodness of such promised liberation, finding it to be a minimization of the discipline and manual work which are helps to moral virtue. Is not the perpetuation of individual life, an inherent characteristic of many modern technological projects, harmful in some way to our existence as social, sacramental beings? If culture is, among other definitions, the locus of ethics and morality, a conduit of norms to succeeding generations and embedded in the fabric of everyday life, we should talk and think about this a lot more than we do. Rod Dreher’s post today (at the risk of irony) is a good place to start. Should we view technology, especially that which distracts, as a product of hubris?