Preface
I created this as my own reference list after spending a lot of my free time reading theological and sociological analyses of technology. Each of the writers I reference has a lot more to offer, and I recommend looking into them. One way to quickly understand a writer is to look up their name in your podcast app and listen to their interviews.
Does it alleviate the right troubles?
Albert Borgmann believed 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 allow serendipity or promise control?
Hartmut Rosa remarks that the modern world seeks to make all things controllable. But despite all the things we try to control, we find ourselves in a world that seems to leaving us out of control.
Does the thing you are building allow serendipity or does it tempt us with control?
Does it help us become somebody?
John Vervaeke observes 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 form.
Does the thing you are making help people become somebody?
Does it help us grow roots?
Simone Weil wrote that to be rooted is one of the least recognized needs of the soul. What we build either deepens our roots, or it pulls us into ephemerality and noise.
Does the thing you are building cultivate rootedness or does it cut off people's roots?
Does it invite people into a larger story?
Patrick Miller and Paul Ann Leitner observe that ours is a time where “you feel that you are living outside of any meaningful story.” A thoughtful tool invites us into a story greater than the self.
Does the thing you are making invite people into a meaningful story, or does it cut them off from one?
Does it offer free choice or does it enclose the human psyche?
L.M. Sacasas writes 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 give access to a world freely chosen or does it enclose the human psyche?
Does it serve primary satisfiers or substitute them with secondary satisficers?
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. They fulfill us not because they entertain, but because they bind us to one another and to creation.
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 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?