Perhaps the most important insight is this: when we criticize our technology, we’re really criticizing ourselves. And when we try to imagine better systems, we’re really trying to imagine better ways of being human.

A technologist makes reason out of the messiness of the world, leverages their understanding to envision a different reality, and builds a pathway to make their vision happen. All three of these endeavors—to try to understand the world, to imagine something different, and to build something that fulfills that vision—are deeply human.

Indeed, philosophers of technology have argued that technology is the essential human activity. Ernst Kapp said that human existence is always and everywhere bound up in a relationship to tools.