Human Being & Human Acting After Technology

To be human is to be designed to make a meaningful difference in the world as men and women bearing the image of the God. But as we pursue that quest, in ways both intended and unintended by ourselves and our Creator, humans have ushered in the technological era, where more and more activity is undertaken and overtaken by our own sub-creations, from the machines and factories of the Industrial Revolution to artificial intelligences in the era of ChatGPT. What is meaningful human action in a world where our physical, mental and emotional capabilities may not just be supplemented by, but superseded and supplanted by, devices and systems that operate at superhuman speed, complexity, and scale? Using the fourfold schema of the Greatest Commandment and anchoring our discussion in frameworks from figures like Karl Marx and Martin Heidegger, Ivan Illich and Erazim Kohák, and Willie Jennings, Paul Kingsnorth, and Mary Harrington, we will examine how our design as "heart-soul-mind-strength complexes designed for love" is challenged by technological developments, and seek to articulate the distinctive calling of human beings, along with the practices that preserve room for that calling in the post-technological world.