Preface
Over the first few months of 2025, I read a lot on the philosophy of technology and critiques of technology. From my reading, I arrived at this list of questions to ask myself when I am thinking about the implications of what I build.
I initially created this list for my own reference, and it is still meant as such. Each of the writers I referenced has a lot more to say, and I recommend looking into them to get a fuller picture of their thoughts and research.
Does it alleviate the right troubles?
Albert Borgmann believes there are two kinds of troubles. Some we reject in principle and yet accept in practice: car accidents or cancer. These troubles we ought to alleviate and overcome. But there are other troubles we accept both in principle and in practice: the labor of preparing a meal or a strenuous hike. These offer us the richness of life.
Does the thing you are making relieve the right troubles?
Does it promise control or allow serendipity?
Hartmut Rosa remarks that modernity is geared toward control over the world. The modern world seeks to make all things controllable—our schedules, our friends, even our feelings. But despite all the things we try to control, we find ourselves in a world that seems to be spinning out of control.
Does the thing you are building promise control over the world or does it allow serendipity?
Does it help us become somebody?
John Vervaeke observed that we have needs that are met not by having something, but by becoming someone. We should consider not just what our tools deliver, but what kind of person they quietly form.
Does the thing you are making help people become somebody, or will it stunt them with ease?
Does it help us grow roots?
Simone Weil wrote that to be rooted is one of the least recognized needs of the soul, and one of the hardest to define. What we build either deepens our roots, or it pulls us into novelty, noise, and isolation.
Does the thing you are building cultivate rootedness or does it estrange us from ourselves and each other?
Does it invite people into a larger story?
Patrick Miller and Paul Ann Leitner observed that ours is a time where “you feel that you are living outside of any meaningful story.” A useful tool serves only the self. A thoughtful one invites us to a story greater than the self—a story with a beginning, a telos, and a place for all.
Does the thing you are making invite people into a bigger story, or does it cut them off from any meaningful story?
Does it enclose the human psyche?
The great temptation of our time is to see human beings not as sacred but as units of attention to be harvested. L.M. Sacasas wrote that the human psyche is slowly being enclosed, viewed as "in need of better management, and… a source of potential value that must be cultivated and extracted.."
Does the thing you are building enclose the human psyche, or does it give access to a world freely chosen?
Does it serve primary satisfiers or substitute them with secondary ones?
There are goods we are meant to enjoy: communal meals, shared songs, meaningful work, collective trials. These are primary satisfiers, as Nate Hagens and Francis Weller describe them. They fulfill us not because they entertain, but because they bind us to one another and to creation. Most modern tools offer secondary satisfiers—dopamine hits divorced from meaning.
Does the thing you are making deepen our intimacy with the real or does it sell us illusions?
Does it keep faith with your neighbor?
Faith is not only for God. It is also the bond we owe each other. To make something that knowingly harms your neighbor—addicts their child, cheapens their loves, fractures their attention—is to break that faith. Simone Weil wrote that "the notion of obligations comes before that of rights, which is subordinate and relative to the former." Every right we claim as builders must be weighed against the obligations we bear to our neighbors.
Does the thing you are building keep faith with your neighbor?