Technology
This theme runs through several big questions. Here are the ones where it plays out.
The questions that illuminate it
Does technological progress improve the human condition?
Each new tool frees us from old burdens, but breeds dependencies and powers we barely control; does technology serve our ends, or silently transform our desires and even who we are? To take a position is to say whether technical progress is a promise to seize or a hold to keep watch over.
Is diverting oneself a flight from what matters, or an art of living?
We spend a growing share of our lives diverting ourselves, and whole industries now compete for every minute of our attention. A flight from what matters, or the art of inhabiting a life no one can spend forever face to face with the essential? To take a position is to say what the hours we give to nothing important are worth.
Should we use technology to enhance human nature beyond healing?
Healing repairs what falters, but should we go further, and make ourselves stronger, smarter, all but immortal? To refuse is perhaps to accept limits and sufferings we could lift; to accept is to risk dissolving what makes us human and opening a gulf between enhanced human beings and ordinary ones. To take a position is to say what, in us, must remain untouchable.
Does work fulfill us, alienate us, or is it merely a necessity?
Is work the place where we realize ourselves and find our place among others, or what wears us down and dispossesses us, time taken from the rest of our existence? Seeing it as fulfilment can reduce us to our jobs; seeing it as mere drudgery can drain a huge part of our days of meaning. To take a position is to say what place work deserves in a good life.
Could a machine ever truly think?
If thinking is only a matter of organization, a machine could genuinely think, and we might owe it something. If running a program is not enough, our machines merely imitate, though an artifact of another kind might one day succeed. And if thought is inseparable from life, the most brilliant machine will remain a thing. To take a position is to say what makes a mind.