The Purpose of Technology

“The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.”
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars (1939)

The purpose of technology, from language to airplanes to the Internet, is to bring us closer together. But if we are already "one" in our ultimate spirituality, is technology self-defeating? It seems that with the expansion of artificial intelligence, humanity’s relationship with our own technologies has reached a pivotal point. We must now evaluate if it is worth having the dream of Humanity on Earth continue to exist.

When we can connect in cyberspace, disembodied, why would we still need a body, a physical home, and a planet? When the history of our minds become one through cloud storage, retrievable by a machine, why would we need material reality?

Of course, when we connect in cyberspace this way, we still need the physical. We still need the machine, the body, and the planet. We may have disembodied our connectedness but we cannot fully let go of our materiality without collapsing the dream all together. So, the state of our digital technology is plunging us more deeply into the greatest problem of our nature: do we want to exist here in the flesh or not?

If we do, then instead of using technology (including language) as the ends to connect, let us use it as a means to bring value and appreciation to our spiritual existence with each other here on Earth in material form. What is most important about technology isn't knowing how much a machine can do but how much a human can potentially do. Technology reveals to us in symbolic form the truth of humanity: that we are all connected, we can magically manifest things into reality, and that we can be loved for who we are.

Our dependency on technology, however, can lead us into the opposite direction. This dependency isn’t about how much we use it, but about how much we believe we can be fulfilled in having our powers offloaded to a machine. Or more accurately, how much do we want to voluntarily have our machines take credit for our spiritual powers. Technology’s effect on change isn’t linear like climbing up the stairs. The progress is circular even if it doesn’t look like it on the surface in the present moment. That is because technology, in the face of our nature, will always lead us back to where we are supposed to be.