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.

John von Neumann, neo-Luddite: (von Neumann was, of course, one of the arch-technologists of all human history - contributing to the creation of everything from the digital computer to the hydrogen bomb to weather forecasting...) https://t.co/vwTqHNamjo

In ordinary language, we frequently speak of machinery or ideas ‘doing’ things in our lives. But they do nothing. People – human persons – produce, operate and apply their creations. The problem with assigning agency, even informally, to the nonhuman is that this disguises the strength of human control, limited though it is in other respects. It... See more

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.