No wisdom has ever pushed back hunger, pain, and death the way our technologies have.

Supports

Before our tools, human life was short, exposed, weighed down by toil. The plough, the printing press, the vaccine, the engine: each technology widened what a human being can know, do, and hope for. This is the meaning of 's project, which charged knowledge with making us as masters and possessors of nature.
The feed you were scrolling tonight belongs to this lineage: never has so vast a share of knowledge, of works, of distant voices been within arm's reach. What we call distraction is the flip side of an unheard-of abundance.
And every novelty, in its day, caused fear: already dreaded that writing would ruin memory. Yet we would not trade writing for forgetfulness. The present anxiety is surely, too, the discomfort of a threshold.

Therefore So to bet on technology is not naivety: it is to recognize the lever that, alone, has kept its promises of emancipation.

How far does this reasoning convince you?

Not at all

Entirely

Deepenings

Writing and memory

In the , has King Thamus say that writing, far from strengthening memory, will let it wither: people will believe they know because they have written it down. The fear was not absurd, yet it turned into an immense gain.

How far does this reasoning convince you?

Not at all

Entirely

Put to the test