Technology has dominated our cultural moment. Its abstract and specific, tangible, ephemeral, and pervasive. Its what were both afraid of and in awe of. Despite our misgivings, we put a lot of faith in technology. It isn’t just the device in our pocket. Its the mechanism that shapes our knowing and learning. It’s the system we unwittingly trust and rely upon in the most basic daily decisions.
So it’s no surprise that we’re obsessed with the tools we invent. Yet often lost in our grand impressions is this: technology exists for humanity. And not the other way around. The central question we ask of technology ends up sounding a lot like a spiritual one: who is ruling whom?
This fall’s Faith & Work Conference will be a small attempt to reorder what we’ve disordered, to realign invention with hope. We’ll explore some difficult questions: How does technology square with tradition? What has been coded into humans that we now so often greet technology with fear? Is humankind’s future bending towards doom or promise?
Our hope is to develop new thought on the intersection of faith and technology, to wisely examine the future of work, and to replace current normative models that spawn fear with a fuller notion of the divine signature that has authored us all.