Forum 3: One Does Not Simply Use a Technology
Before class: Read One Does Not Simply Use a Technology.
In class: You’ll receive a paper with the discussion questions below. In small groups, talk through the questions, annotate the paper with your group’s thinking, and compare notes with another group. Before you leave, take a photo of your annotated paper (with everyone’s name on it) and upload it to Moodle.
Discussion Questions
- The article argues that no technology is neutral: to use one, you have to submit to its built-in “grammar” and to the vast network of infrastructure behind it. Before reading this, would you have described programming languages, IDEs, or AI coding tools as “neutral tools”? Does thinking of them as something you’re submitting to, rather than simply using, change that?
- Drawing on Langdon Winner’s idea of “reverse adaptation,” the author argues tools often reshape our goals instead of just serving them. Can you think of a time a tool you were using — an app, a template, an AI assistant — quietly changed what you were trying to accomplish, rather than just helping you accomplish it?
- The author revises the saying “guns don’t kill people; people kill people” to “people with guns kill people,” arguing a tool is never morally separate from the person and system using it. Where do you see this same logic at work in a technology you use for coursework or daily life (an AI writing assistant, a social media feed, a search algorithm)? Does the tool change the moral weight of the action?
- The article’s conclusion, echoing Jacques Ellul and classical Christian theology, is that technology is neither purely good nor purely bad but ambiguous — “the world is both good and broken.” Given how deeply (and often invisibly) we’re embedded in these networks, how do you personally hold that tension without either shrugging it off or feeling paralyzed by it?
Submission
Take a photo of your group’s annotated discussion paper — make sure every group member’s name is on it — and upload it to Moodle by the end of class.