At our January Advisory Board meeting, we explored the question of whether we live in a technological age. You can find Part 1 of our conversation in this post. In Part 2 below, we discuss a new telos of technology.
Elias: I think we established, for the most part, that this is a technological age. Maybe we always have been in a technological age, but technology is definitely part of our lives now. Some of you started hinting at the idea that technology is pointing towards something. It is teleological, from the Greek word telos, meaning goal. Technology leads toward something. And I think Chardin saw technology leading into the Omega point, while Ellul saw it more as a perversion of a Christian eschaton. In his view, the Christian position was to resist and subvert it.
The question I have now is very broad. How do we forge a new vision, a new telos, for technology? Or maybe even, what would that telos be? We talked earlier about technology for the sake of capitalism or consumption. What would be a new telos for technology, and how would we forge this new vision?
No Overall Goal for Technology
František: I have a great colleague with a technical background and a longtime friend. I studied with him in Amsterdam. He’s now sort of an important person in a company developing AI. He’s a member of the team which programmed the AI to play poker. So he’s quite skillful in programming, and actually working on the development of AI. He’s developing amazing things.
I spoke with him about this telos question, “What is the aim of technology?” He said, “Well, there is no such thing as an overall goal.” The goal is to improve our program to be able to fight more sophisticated threats to our system. That’s what we are developing. So basically, there is no general telos of technology. There is only a narrow focus. There is just the goal to improve technology, that it gets better, and serves better the concrete purpose for which is built. It’s a very particular focus.
A Clash of Mentalities
I was very unhappy with this answer. After all, there must be some goal. And he said, “Well, that’s the business of theologians.” My friend said he doesn’t believe in anything. Not in theism, not even in atheism, he just doesn’t bother discussing it. So for him, there is no God, no goal, nothing. We’re just living our life. And we’re improving it. We are improving it step by step. He’s a well-studied, learned person, and he sees it like that. I’ve experienced the same thing during conversations with many of my friends who are working in technology on the technical or the business side.
So they would say, perhaps, there is no goal. That’s a clash of mentalities. We are trying to build a bridge between this technological type of thinking and the theological, philosophical perspective which intends to see the higher goal.
I don’t have a good argument. You can try to convince him that there is a higher goal, but he doesn’t believe in a higher goal. So I’m afraid that a lot of people developing technology do not see further than the next step of a particular piece of technology. And I’m afraid that here we are, getting close to the vision of the Brave New World, you know, the novel. People are improving technology on a particular stage, but they do not see the full picture. It is all about improving technology to the next step. There is no long-term thinking. Perhaps there are some visionaries, but this is at least my experience, which I’m afraid is quite broad in the field of technology.
The Human Telos of Technology
Maggie: I feel like that happens a lot from the developer side of technology. But at least the import within technology should be that you have some sort of product owner or product manager, that’s supposed to be supplying a vision. That person could start thinking about the goal of technology. I know a lot of times within technology, the product manager draws out the user story. So, “I’m a user. I want to ______, so that ______.” And it’s the so that which becomes the bigger element that’s drawn out. But that’s still at a very microscopic level. So yeah, there might be an intersection with the larger goal of technology, but I don’t think it really is used there very well.
Elias: Some of you who have known me for a long time know how much I have struggled with my job and finding meaning in what I do. And a lot of times it was exactly like you described, František. It was like, What am I doing here? What is this for? And I found, at least recently, this sweet spot where I found a lot of meaning in what I was doing. It wasn’t like I was changing people’s lives. But I found this passion to make things better and more efficient. When you are in a large corporation things can be so bureaucratic. And we were able to come in and say, I don’t care how you do it, we’re gonna accomplish this thing. And then you actually get it done. There is a sense of purpose and satisfaction in that alone.
The Creative Value of Work
I would venture to say that your friend, František, is actually doing creative work, co-creative work with God. He may not call it that. But there is something about bringing order out of chaos. I think even in a situation where the user or the developer is not aware, there might be goals happening there that we could appreciate and describe theologically.
For instance, going back to my experience, it might just be the phase that I’m in at work. But I’m feeling a lot of satisfaction in getting things done nowadays. Just simply getting things done. How can I put that theologically? I don’t know. Is that how God felt after creation? But there is something about accomplishing things. Now, if that’s all you do, obviously, eventually it just becomes meaningless. But there is something meaningful in the act of accomplishing a task.
Maggie: And just the sanctity of work too. Your friend, he’s working, he’s doing something. And in that type of work, even though it’s labor, I think it’s still a part of the human telos.
František: Yeah, I think so, even though he thinks that there is no human telos as such. And we keep having conversations, and he still sees something important in the conversations. So that means he still keeps coming to the conversation with philosophers and theologians, even though he sort of disregards their work because he sees it as not relevant to his work. But I think that’s a sign of hope in his heart.
