Technology has always been about amplifying our power, blowing ourselves up so that with the squeeze of a hot finger on cold metal we could snuff out a life 100 yards away, with the pressing of a foot on a pedal we could accelerate ourselves and two tonnes of internal combustion to 100mph in a city side-street.
So what to do? Go back? Impossible? Seek some Luddite golden age? Foolish. We took raw creation, thought we had tamed it, and realize that it has bridled us. Technology has been used, like religion, to draw power to ourselves. We must now, like religion, channel it to benefit ‘the other’. Turn it round. Turn it upside down. Get out of the ‘command centre’ surrounded by screens and power and switches, and get to the node: facilitating, passing on, feeding, sharing.
We’re getting there. As our technology becomes more ‘complex’, so the centres of power can only begin to distribute, dissolve and work better for the ‘others.’ We’re on a ‘stages of faith’ cycle with it: starting with innocent dreams and wildly optimistic predictions about its power to save, working through our self-centred enjoyment, our struggles and doubts, and hopefully coming to a conjunctive place where we can see the good, even while we appreciate the potential for great harm.