What Is The Life We're Looking For?

Redemptive Technological Humanism: my vision for how we should engage with technology

Oct 31, 2023

“You live in a deranged age — more deranged than usual, because despite great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.” — Walker Percy

It is with this quote that Marc Andreessen opens his latest essay, “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto.” Andreessen is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who is known for co-creating the first widely-used Internet browser, Mosaic, in the 1990s. This ultimately led to the co-founding of Netscape which was later sold to AOL for $4.2 billion. He has since co-founded the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz where he is a general partner and sits on the boards of Meta and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, among others. In addition to his work as a venture capitalist, he also writes and publishes essays on his website and Substack. The “Techno-Optimist Manifesto” is the latest.

It is clear that Andreessen has strong opinions and isn’t afraid to share them. This, I think, is a net positive trait. It’s easy to have opinions that you are unwilling to share in public. But it takes chutzpah to write it down and publish it online for everyone to read.

What’s the cost?

In his 5000-word manifesto, Andreessen lauds the power and accolades of technology. To be sure, technology has transformed the world. But the core of his argument is for technological growth at any cost. Remove anything that is restricting or limiting the speed of technological progress. It’s the same ethos motivating his essay from earlier this summer, “Why AI Will Save The World.”

As I’ve been reflecting on Andreessen’s piece over this last week and reading several responses to it, I’ve been searching for words to articulate what’s at the root of my qualms about his assertions. The question of whether or not you call yourself a techno-optimist is irrelevant if you haven’t first answered a more fundamental question: what is the life we’re looking for? This framing has resonated with me ever since I read Andy Crouch’s latest book of the same name (minus the question mark).

Until we figure out what the life we’re looking for is, we can’t know whether we should be optimistic, pessimistic, or otherwise about technology and its impact on our world.

Another way: Redemptive Technological Humanism Motivated by Humble Hope

Today I want to unpack my perspective on what I think the life we’re looking for is and how this life is best served not by techno-optimism but by a different approach: redemptive technological humanism motivated by humble hope. I’ll build my case in three main movements:

To what problem is techno-optimism the solution?
What is wrong with the world? (no big deal to address in a short blog post, I know. Hold on to your hats!)
What is redemptive technological humanism and how might it provide common ground for us to direct our use of technology to promote human flourishing?

I’ll be honest. This feels like one of the more vulnerable pieces that I’ve written. But, the conversation about technology and how we should engage with it is becoming increasingly important and valuable to me.

In writing this, I’ve been challenged to think about my own personal journey of faith as a Christian and how this worldview shapes the way I think and act toward technology. In reading, you’ll get to know me better. I hope that even if you don’t agree with the Christian convictions that lie at the root of my approach to technology, you’ll find something here that might spark your curiosity and encourage you to look more deeply. Thanks for being here.

Is material abundance the life we’re looking for?

From my reading of his manifesto, Andreessen’s answer to the life we’re looking for is clear: material abundance. That is to say, the ultimate root cause of our problems is a lack of natural resources. This becomes particularly clear in the part of his essay where he highlights problems and the technological solutions developed to address them.

We believe that there is no material problem – whether created by nature or by technology – that cannot be solved with more technology.
We had a problem of starvation, so we invented the Green Revolution.
We had a problem of darkness, so we invented electric lighting.
We had a problem of cold, so we invented indoor heating.
We had a problem of heat, so we invented air conditioning.
We had a problem of isolation, so we invented the Internet.
We had a problem of pandemics, so we invented vaccines.
We have a problem of poverty, so we invent technology to create abundance.
Give us a real world problem, and we can invent technology that will solve it.

It’s ironic that Andreessen published this in the midst of the violence happening in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine and the continuing tension in Ukraine. With the constant stream of bad news and outrage flowing through our social veins, we’re desensitized to the ever-present tragedies coming across our disinformation feeds.

For a worldview to be coherent, it needs to provide a way to understand these events. So, for techno-optimism, is the problem of war and human conflict solved by technology? Or is the technological complex only stoking the flame right now with ever more powerful tools and weapons? It’s easier to be optimistic if you restrict your field of view.

All this has got me thinking again about the importance of good questions. After pretending like I knew why 42 was a significant number in science fiction pop culture for a long time, I finally got around to reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy this past week. Without giving too much away for those of you who like last-week me may not have read it yet, there was an interesting conversation in the part of the book where the computer produces the famous “answer to life, the universe, and everything.” After several millions of years of computation, the computer spits out the answer. The question-askers are more than slightly underwhelmed by the answer. To their frustration, the computer replies, in essence, “Ask a bad question, get a bad answer.”

‘I checked it very thoroughly,’ said the computer, ‘and [42] quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.’ [emphasis added]

How poignant. Techno-Optimism is the answer. But to what question?

If you believe that a lack of material resources is the problem, then it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that technology is the solution. But, if this is the wrong understanding of the root of the problem, and I believe it is, then it’s not so clear that techno-optimism is the answer. In fact, such a perspective might ultimately make the problem worse.

Redemptive Technological Humanism

You’ve probably figured out by now that Andreessen and I are on different pages in our philosophy of technology. Ultimately, I think our perspectives differ not because of a disagreement about the power of technology but rather a vision of the telos, or end goal, of technology.

Technology has had significant positive impacts on our world. This is indisputable and Marc provides many examples to highlight this in his essay. However, these impacts have not been uniformly positive. We’ve got to keep an eye on the flip side, the ways that technology can harm us, our communities, and our societies.

If not Techno-Optimism, then what?

As I’ve been pondering this over the recent days and weeks I’ve landed on a phrase that I think helps to capture my thinking about how we ought to engage with technology: Redemptive Technological Humanism.

In the next sections, I’ll explain what I mean when I say Redemptive Technological Humanism and draw out the points of conflict with the worldview of Techno-Optimism. If the problem is just material scarcity then technology is the answer. But the problems in our world run much deeper than material scarcity. There are fundamental problems deep in each one of us and those flaws propagate through us to the institutions we create.

What’s wrong with the world?

My first stop in thinking about Andreessen’s piece was to dig a bit deeper into the source of the Percy Walker quote in the subtitle. After doing some digging on the web, I found that the quote was part of Walker’s book Lost in the Cosmos. Of course, if you pull a quote out of context you can make it say almost anything you want. So, what is the context?

The first level of context is the book. Lost in the Cosmos is satire. The full title is Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book. It’s filled with a selection of essays interspersed with multiple-choice quizzes like the following:

Question (1) Check one or more.
Are people depressed despite unprecedented opportunities for education, vocations, self-growth, cultural enrichment, travel, and recreation…
Because modern life is more difficult, complex, and stressful than it has ever been before?
Because, for men, competition in the marketplace is fiercer than ever?
Because, for women, life as a housewife is lonelier than ever, what with the vanishing of the traditional community of women around the well, sitting on stoops, gossiping over back fences?
Because, for young people, education is more inferior than ever, leaving one unprepared to face the real world?
Because belief in God and religion has declined and with it man's confidence in the place of the self in the Cosmos, in the Chain of Being, and in its relation to others?
Because the self nowadays is other-directed rather than inner-directed and depends for its self-esteem on its perception of how others evaluate it-something like a beggar in a crowd with his hand out?
Because the self, despite an embarrassment of riches, is in fact impoverished and deprived, like Lazarus at the feast, having suffered a radical deprivation and loss of sovereignty? With the multiplication of technologies and the ascendance of experts and expertise in all fields, the self has consented to the expropriation of every sector of life by its appropriate expert —even the expropriation of its, the selfs, own life. "I'm depressed, Doctor. What's wrong with me? If you are not an expert in the field, a doctor of depression, can you refer me to one?" Thus, the rightful legatee of the greatest of fortunes, the cultural heritage of the entire Western World, its art, science, technology, literature, philosophy, religion, becomes a second-class consumer of these wares and as such disenfranchises itself and sits in the ashes like Cinderella yielding up ownership of its own dwelling to the true princes of the age, the experts. They know about science, they know about medicine, they know about government, they know about my needs, they know about everything in the Cosmos, even me. They know why I am fat and they know secrets of my soul which not even I know. There is an expert for everything that ails me, a doctor of my depression, a seer of my sadness.
Because modern life is enough to depress anybody? Any person, man, woman, or child, who is not depressed by the nuclear arms race, by the modern city, by family life in the exurb, suburb, apartment, villa, and later in a retirement home, is himself deranged.

This quiz is found just a page before the quote that Andreessen lifted from the book, in a chapter titled “The Depressed Self: Whether the Self is Depressed because there is Something Wrong with it or whether Depression is a Normal Response to a Deranged World.”

A deranged age indeed

With the context of the book and chapter in mind, I don’t read the quote that Andreessen lifts from Percy’s book as a statement of triumph. When Percy says that it’s inexplicable why man hasn’t “the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing,” I read this in the same sense as Nietzche’s madman shouting in the street about the death of God. In section 125 of The Gay Science Nietzche writes:

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

When Percy writes “despite great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing,” I hear them coming from a place of lament, not celebration. They’re connected to the same human experience from which Lady Macbeth’s fruitless handwashing emerges—“out damned spot!”

In so many ways the deranged age in which we live isn’t deranged despite our technology but because of it.

What is the meaning of life?

This comes to a head later in Andreessen’s piece where he writes about how Techno-Optimism addresses the meaning of life. He writes:

We are materially focused, for a reason – to open the aperture on how we may choose to live amid material abundance.
A common critique of technology is that it removes choice from our lives as machines make decisions for us. This is undoubtedly true, yet more than offset by the freedom to create our lives that flows from the material abundance created by our use of machines.

This loss of choice that Andreessen writes about is the exact point that Dr. Ursula Franklin made in her 1989 CBC Massey lectures, The Real World of Technology, when she talks about prescriptive vs. holistic technologies. She might beg to differ about whether this tradeoff is “more than offset by the freedom to create our lives.” More than offset for who?

In a nutshell, the contrast between holistic and prescriptive technologies is a shift between using technology and being used by technology. Holistic technologies are, as Dr. Franklin writes, those that “leave the doer in total control of the process.” Prescriptive technologies on the other hand are patterned in the form of the assembly production line. Now instead of the human being controlling the process, the human is reduced to a cog within a larger system with control over only a small part of it. Sound familiar?

The great deception of our current technological age is that our technologies are marketed as holistic but are, in reality, prescriptive. The smartphone is lauded as a tool that puts the internet in your pocket and allows you to connect with anyone across the globe at the touch of a button. When it works as promised it is wonderful. The Internet can be a wonderful place to build community with those far from you. But all too often the Internet connection in our pockets becomes a tool that uses us, keeping us glued to our glowing rectangles instead of being present with the ones we love.

The conversations about the impact of AI on our life and work follow similar patterns. AI tools promise to give us greater creativity and the ability to be more efficient and productive, creating more with less. But in reality, when applied without care and careful consideration, AI tools may often serve to disconnect us from the work that we are doing and rob us of the joy of work well done.

Technology may in principle give us freedom to create our lives, but in practice, the situation is more complicated. For those who create or profit from the technology, the benefit is clear. But for the individual end user, the cost-benefit analysis is trickier. Look no further than the number of Silicon Valley tech executives who put significant guardrails up to restrict their kids from using the technology they create. They realize that the technology they create is often a prescriptive technology marketed as a holistic one.

So…what is the meaning of life?

Maybe I should just say the answer to the meaning of life is 42 and leave it at that. It’s obvious that trying to address this question in any meaningful depth or nuance is impossible in a few thousand words. But what I can say is that regardless of whether you believe meaning is discovered, created, or otherwise, we as humans are meaning-making machines. As countless cultural observers from Moses to Bob Dylan to David Foster Wallace have observed over the years: you gotta serve somebody.

My own perspective on the meaning of life is deeply shaped my by Christian faith. If you’re looking for a succinct description of the meaning of life from a Christian worldview, you need look no further than the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism.

1. What is the chief end of man?
Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.

Viewed through this lens, the role of humankind in the world is to act in a way that brings glory to God and enjoys being in relationship with him. Jesus gives a concise but poignant description of what this means in response to a question from the religious leaders of his day. From Matthew 22:34-40:

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Love God and love your neighbor. Contrast this with Andreessen. In another part of his manifesto Andreessen, soundly dismisses love as a motivational force worth considering in the span of a few sentences.

David Friedman points out that people only do things for other people for three reasons – love, money, or force. Love doesn’t scale, so the economy can only run on money or force. The force experiment has been run and found wanting. Let’s stick with money.

What use is it if it don’t scale, right?

Just because love is a high-energy state, doesn’t mean that it’s not what we need. If you wonder what Jesus has to say about love, money, and human flourishing, look no further than the Sermon on the Mount.

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

The cross is the ultimate expression of redemptive technological humanism

Instead of Techno-Optimism, I approach technology through the lens of what I’ve coined redemptive technological humanism. Instead of building and using technology to create material abundance, we should use technology redemptively to support human flourishing. Through this perspective, we can evaluate the ways in which technology is working for and against our good.

As I’ve been thinking about redemptive technologies for the good of humanity, I couldn’t escape the most clear example from the Biblical story: the cross. The cross is the archetypal example of redemptive technological humanism.

At the beginning of the Bible, all is well. God lives in harmony with humankind in the Garden of Eden. But before long things take a turn when humans exercise their free will and disobey God. This puts them in a position of opposition to God, and the perfectly harmonious relationship is fractured. This, in the Biblical understanding, is what’s wrong with the world. It’s us and ultimately our own desire to be our own god.

And yet, even in the midst of the curse pronounced on Adam, Eve, and the world for their disobedience, we hear God’s plan of redemption. The phrase, known as the proto-evangelium or “first Gospel” says that one day a man will crush the head of the serpent who deceived them.

This prophecy points to the ultimate act of redemption: Jesus’ death on the cross. The cross, of course, is a technology, engineered by the Romans to inflict as much suffering as possible in the process. If ever there was a humane way to die, the cross is its antithesis.

It is poignant that the cross is at the center of the Biblical story of God’s redemption of humanity. Jesus’ crucifixion is the ultimate act of redemptive technological humanism. In his death on the cross, Jesus transformed what was designed as a weapon of oppression into an object of liberation, paving the way for a restored relationship between God and man.

It’s important to notice that the heart of the redemptive act was to restore a relationship. In the cross, Christians believe that God has created a way for us to be in right relationship, not only with him, but also with each other. In the same way, our use of technology should be focused on how we can restore relationships.

The cross is the example we should have in mind as we look at our tech-centric world today. Technologies are all around us. We may or may not have played a part in creating them, but we all have a part to play in how they influence our lives and the lives of our neighbors, both around the corner and around the world. In the same way that God subverted the original design of the technology of the cross and turned it from an object of terror and oppression to an object of redemption, we too should look for opportunities to use technology to redeem.

Beginning in a garden, ending in a city

When thinking about the role of technology in the Biblical story of the world, many theologians have noted that creation begins in a garden but ends in a city. This vision captures the nature of humans as creative beings, a significant part of the Biblical concept of Imago Dei or the image of God. Revelation chapter 22 paints a picture of this city, the new Eden:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.

As a Christian, I feel called to engage in culture-making as a technologist and engineer. I believe that we are each called to be a part of creating a world that is redeeming creation while we look forward to the ultimate restoration of our world in the city described in Revelation.

Common ground: human flourishing

Of course, I’m know that many of you don’t share my Christian faith. What then? I still think there is something here for you, even if you don’t see the world through the lens of the Biblical narrative. Over the past few years I have found the concept of human flourishing to be a space that helps me to find common ground across ideological or theological disagreement.

One definition of human flourishing that I have found helpful is from Yale theologian and philosopher Miroslav Volf. In his book Flourishing, he writes about three main components of human flourishing:

Peace: Life is going well.
Righteousness: Life is being led well
Joy: Life feels good.

These three aspects help to map out a vision of what the good life looks like for us as individuals and in the world. If you’re looking for a gentle introduction, this interview with Dr. Volf from 2021 might interest you. In the meantime, here’s a bit more on each of those three components and what they mean.

Peace more holistically addresses what seems to be the central point of Andreessen’s manifesto on technology. In short, we need some level of material goods to flourish. If we are in a situation where we are experiencing scarcity around what we need to support our existence like food, water, shelter, and clothing, then it is obvious that we are not flourishing. This element of human flourishing, more than the other two is the one that technology is most readily able to address. Technology, as Andreessen points out, paves the way for material abundance and can create material abundance. But, peace, or material abundance for that matter, is not sufficient to create human flourishing.

Righteousness turns our perspective inward to the way that we are leading our lives. This connects to the idea of stewardship: how do we make wise use of the time, talents, and resources at our disposal? When we are flourishing we feel that we are exercising our agency, however limited, in a way that is making the world a better place. With respect to technology, this means that we are using technological artifacts in ways that help ourselves and those around us to flourish. This covers the gamut from the way that we interact online with social media to the way we drive our cars. Are we making decisions that love our neighbors, and even more radically, our enemies? The lens of stewardship also helps us to broaden our perspective beyond humankind to the rest of the natural world. As stewards, we are called to be responsible caretakers of the other life that lives alongside us on the earth and the natural world.

Joy recognizes that there is an emotive aspect to our lives. Having a positive feeling about the way life is going is an important part of what it means to flourish. We’re not flourishing if life is just “going fine.” Again, this facet of human flourishing extends beyond our own experience to the experiences of those around us. If we are not supporting the joy of the people around us, then we ourselves are not fully flourishing.

Redemptive Technological Humanism in Action: Praxis Labs

What does it look like to view technology in this way? One organization that inspires me in the way that they think about technology is Praxis Labs. Praxis is a venture-building ecosystem geared toward advancing redemptive entrepreneurship. Their mission and the companies illustrate the type of innovation that I think is aligned with human flourishing. Here are just a few examples from their venture portfolio.

1. Lasting: Self-guided therapy for individuals, couples, and families

Lasting is an app that helps to make therapy more accessible. Their mission is to help people love better. In addition to synchronous live workshops, Lasting also gives you access to a library of content and educational materials across a range of topics. Each series is broken into bite-sized segments with quizzes and surveys to help you engage with the content. It is thoughtfully designed to help spark conversations in your relationships by comparing your answers and responses alongside your spouses.

Lasting leverages the smartphone in your pocket to bring you closer together with your loved ones. My wife and I have used Lasting and found it to be very helpful. A great example of a technology which leverages the screen to get you off of it and interacting in the real world with those you care about.

2. Launch Capital Partners: Creating housing for refugees

I first learned about Launch Capital Partners in an interview on Curtis Chang’s Good Faith podcast. Launch Capital Partners is a real estate and property management company geared toward serving refugees and immigrants. Essentially, what they have done is found an opportunity where the market is undervaluing refugees and immigrants as tenants. Instead of buying a property that a traditional developer would go in and perhaps renovate into a luxury unit, they'll purchase these quality units and rent them to refugee and immigrant families.

By playing the long game and being willing to take a slightly longer horizon on their returns, they are able to offer housing to these refugee and immigrant families while still generating a return for their investors. It's just a really brilliant and redemptive investing strategy that I think we need more of today.

3. Techless: Smartphones designed to cut out unnecessary distraction

The last company to highlight is Techless. The core product from Techless is the wisephone. It’s a smartphone with all the essential tools that you’d expect in a modern smartphone like camera, phone, messaging, maps, notes, music, and photos but without a browser, social media, or an app store. The idea here is to leverage the power of the smartphone without the addictive side effects which often are not designed for our flourishing.

The manifesto we need is rooted in humble hope, not optimism

Now you know why I don’t call myself a Techno-Optimist. Fundamentally, I don’t see technology as the solution to the root of our problems. Our problems are much deeper than a scarcity of material resources. It’s not hard to look around and see the marks of sin and brokenness throughout our world and recognize that, at least in some small way, that brokenness runs right through each one of us.

The life we are looking for is not one of material abundance. Human flourishing is much more than that. But that doesn’t mean that technology doesn’t have a role to play in our collective pursuit of human flourishing. The power of technology is significant and can help us to alleviate suffering and pain even though it is not, in itself, a solution to the root of the problem.

Right now I’m in the middle of reading Arthur Brooks and Oprah Winfrey’s new book Build the Life You Want. As I was reading this last week, I was struck by the way that they differentiate optimism and hope:

[O]ptimism is the belief that things will turn out all right; hope makes no such assumption but is a conviction that one can act to make things better in some way.

In parallel with this, I was reminded of the passage in Matthew 7:3-5 where Jesus cautions us against arrogance.

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

At its core, redemptive technological humanism is rooted in humble hope. Not an optimism that says everything will be okay or an arrogance that assumes we can use the superpowers of technology to save ourselves. No, the path to foster human flourishing with technology is one of humility; recognizing the many ways that our tools solve some problems but create others, help some of our neighbors prosper but neglect or harm others, and create the potential to shape our world in ways both positive and negative. We must always be aware of the planks in our own eyes.

The solution to our problem is not a technological one—although I believe the ultimate solution is wrought by technological means in the cross of Jesus Christ. But even if you don’t hold to that core belief, the Biblical narrative still offers you a picture of how to develop and use technology for human flourishing, emulating the way God himself redeems the world by turning a technology meant to oppress and harm into a tool for restoring relationships. May we learn to do the same.

If you’ve got a comment, I’d love to hear it. You can leave it below, or shoot me an email.

Appendix: Recommended Reading

Here is a list of other thoughtful responses to Andreessen’s manifesto that I’ve learned from. Ordered only in chronological order (roughly) based on when I read them.

The Book Nook

I’d been familiar with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for a long time, but never gotten around to reading it. No more. This last week I finally grabbed a copy and worked my way through. It’s a worthwhile read especially if you’re in tech-related fields since it will help you to make sense of some cultural references.

The Professor Is In

In short, the professor was out. With the arrival of kiddo #3, I’ve been grateful for the flexibility to take some time away from campus. I’m easing back into campus this week and looking forward to re-engaging with my students!

Leisure Line

Wanna know my weakness of late? These mini ice cream cones from Trader Joes. One is a treat, two is a splurge, and three, believe it or not, is a serving!

Still Life

With family in town to visit and help out with the arrival of baby #3 we took another trip to the LA Zoo this last week. Lo and behold this time we caught a glimpse of the new rhinoceros, Marshall. Just a beautiful animal.