Be mind­ful of how we speak to objects as much as one anoth­er. How we work togeth­er, share space, and even devel­op iden­ti­ty is increas­ing­ly influ­enced by how we inter­act with mechan­i­cal technologies.

“The dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion began when stored-pro­gram com­put­ers broke the dis­tinc­tion between num­bers that mean things and num­bers that do things. Num­bers that do things now rule the world. But who rules over the machines?” — George Dyson

“The new sys­tem lis­tens to you, observes you, under­stands you, and gives you what it knows you want.” — Adam Curtis

In their best ver­sions, tech­nolo­gies help humans become more empow­ered. In their worst ver­sions, tech­nolo­gies are coer­cive, addic­tive, and oppres­sive. Our rela­tion­ships with the machines we make are shaped by how we intend to incor­po­rate those machines and tech­no­log­i­cal abilities

into our lives. If the impe­tus is con­trol, then pow­er becomes abused. If the impe­tus is co-cre­ation, then we can make any­thing we imagine.

The dig­i­tal abil­i­ty to tran­scend bor­ders and lim­i­ta­tions makes tech an ide­al force for change. Yet, the pop­u­lar notion of tech­nol­o­gy as a dis­rup­tive force needs to be realigned as a cre­ative force for good. So don’t yell at your dig­i­tal assis­tant. Don’t yell at any assis­tant. If you want some­thing, ask for it nice­ly. Offer grat­i­tude in return. Con­tribute to a cul­ture of kind­ness. We can think of the machines we involve in our lives as exten­sions of our­selves, and act accordingly.

When it comes to the role of tech­nol­o­gy in our lives, we have to con­tin­u­al­ly ask our­selves: Is the tech­nol­o­gy we’re using help­ful or harm­ful? The more we come to rely on our phones to be our cam­eras, gro­cery deliv­ery ser­vice, remote home ther­mostats, match­mak­ers, or sleep mon­i­tors, the more our atten­tion is absorbed by these devices and the more we become exposed to the poten­tial for influ­ence and exploitation.

We are not well served by tech­nol­o­gy becom­ing a syn­thet­ic replace­ment for nat­ur­al sys­tems like com­mu­ni­ty. We have become painful­ly aware these last few years of how tech­nol­o­gy can exac­er­bate alien­ation and how that can lead to social net­works becom­ing hotbeds for extrem­ism.²⁵ Rad­i­cal­iza­tion notwith­stand­ing, since the incep­tion of smart phones, thir­teen years of hyper engage­ment has led to a pub­lic health cri­sis of screen-based addic­tion. The cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of young adults raised with phones in their faces since birth is also the gen­er­a­tion fea­tur­ing the most pro­nounced rates of anx­i­ety and burnout. The cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of teens expe­ri­enc­ing addic­tion to the dopamine kick of phone activ­i­ty, has been com­pared to teenagers in the 1960s who suf­fered a pub­lic health cri­sis of smok­ing-relat­ed addic­tions and ill­ness­es.²⁶ We must ensure that if chil­dren are going to receive rec­om­men­da­tions for what they should have or uti­lize, that those prod­ucts and ser­vices are help­ful and healthy.

Tech­nol­o­gy is a tool, but when it con­trols us, then we become the tools. As users of tech­nol­o­gy, we must have agency to choose when and where we decide to use the tools of our trades. We need to not have the con­di­tions of involve­ment dic­tat­ed by the com­pa­nies which cre­ate those tech­nolo­gies and prof­it from our use.

A new set of stan­dards must evolve in which tech­nol­o­gy is not encour­aged to cre­ate co-depen­den­cy for its adopters. The tech­nolo­gies we incor­po­rate in our lives must ascribe to bet­ter eth­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions. As we con­nect more of our every­day objects to each oth­er and the Inter­net, we need to ensure that the flow of infor­ma­tion stream­ing between us, the objects, and envi­ron­ment is in the best inter­ests of human­i­ty and the plan­et, and not the inter­ests of one com­pa­ny or anoth­er. We believe that learn­ing to bet­ter use cer­tain tech­nolo­gies, like our phones, actu­al­ly means using those tech­nolo­gies with more con­scious intention.

The inter­ac­tions we have with tech­nolo­gies that enable and empow­er us will con­tin­ue to help us move toward a future of greater abil­i­ty. Along the way, we must con­tin­u­al­ly remem­ber that the val­ues we hold will con­tin­ue to guide the way we inter­act and the expe­ri­ences we have.