Wendell Berry’s essay “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer” outlines a checklist for his standard of technological innovation:

If one should not compromise on technological innovations, I believe this checklist would indeed be the gold standard. 

Cheaper, smaller, more energy efficient, self-repairable, and better quality results for the product. Who would not want these qualities in a technological device? If one would go through this checklist and evaluate most electronic devices on the market, they would only find these qualities in relation to last year’s iteration, but will be sorely disappointed by comparing electronic devices of our day to that of the pencil.

Gaming laptops have become portable desktops, sucking up so much energy that they can barely last a few hours on their own battery. Phones extend their battery life with larger-sized screens, and offset more and more computing to arena-sized server farms dispersed throughout the world. A smartphone is truly only as small as the largest device that powers its features. 

The closest electronic device that I can think of that pretty well attains a few of these standards is the e-reader, whose batteries are tiny but last for good periods of time, can help enhance the legibility of text for readers with disabilities, allows one to sip from the internet without needing always-on connectivity, and is smaller than most novellas. Repairability is a no-go however.

Standard number nine provides a social context for technology, which is almost entirely ignored by technologists over the past century. Technologists believe that considering the effect of tech on people is “moralizing” and uncouth to the conversation of industrial society. Techno-futurists only think about two things in the relationship between humans and their devices: How convenient is it? And how much control does it give the subject? Convenience of technology always trumps the inconvenience of social and ecological turmoil that a technology may pose. Create the problem and figure out a technological solution for that later on.

A supposedly innovative technology promises how much control a person may have over whatever utility that device provides. For a smartphone, the more settings the better—so long as there is more control. Being able to manage a whole company with a laptop—control. The catch of this promise is the implication that relinquishing the smartphone, the laptop is relinquishing this control—losing control over one’s life. The unfortunate curse of integrating tech into one’s life is that giving it up appears to be giving up part one’s life. But it’s just a device, it’s just a machine that stood by to replace aspects of your life. You can maintain control without the machines; you might even have more control when you’re not working on the terms of proprietary software.

The accelerationists of techno-futurism celebrate the social turmoil caused by modern technological innovations: The political extremism-turned-domestic-terrorism caused by the internet is championed by those seeking a “shake up” in our society. They believe that internet-instigated extremism will finally allow people to find their true selves in the face of governmental and societal subjugation. Conflict is an inherent standard of technological innovation for these particular technologists. 

On the more moderate side of techno-futurism, “disruption” is the term for a technological innovation to powerful that it transcends or bankrupts previously established tech corporations because they could not think of such an innovative technology first. With lightly capitalist, anti-establishment overtones, market volatility is the goal for “disruption” enthusiasts. Never mind the masses of workers displaced by this disruption; they are just ants dancing around the feet of giants. The new normal for modern work is to never be tied to the people or business you work for; limit compassion to your family and friend life, and prepare to re-employment, relocation, re-education. The modern work life is about restarting from nothing in terms of social connection, over and over and over again.

The effects of modern, so-called innovative technology are inherently detrimental to social stability, but we are educated to be okay with that because these are given as facts from early on and then championed by the movers of industrial society. We are taught to be excited by our own dissolution.

Perhaps we’ve always included humanity into the technological equation: Are we thus masochists?

In the academic world, anthropology has been the field of study that considers the effect of technology on human beings and their social fiber. Anthropologists since the 1960s have been the only ones to inquire on whether people are truly benefiting from technology, or whether primitive societies were actually greater in relative wealth compared to modern times, despite a lack of deference to technology.

Of course, even anthropologists, academics as they are, shy away from moralizing—the shoulds and oughts are hidden under supposed “methodological observations”. However, they are interrogating the role of technology in our lives for a reason: There is something just beneath our cultural surface that is shown in full view of other cultures that live so differently, and we tease it out each year with the dirty conclusion that perhaps we have set the standards for technological innovation too low for ourselves, and have compromised our principles, values and relationships because of it.

Despite what technologists and academics and scientists say, people believe in good and bad and will sooner or later apply morality back to what they consume; we’ve just been misled to think that our actions don’t have moral consequences. The evidence to the contrary has been growing for the past half century and I believe it will expand outside of niche circles before long.

There is at least one truth about technological innovation: It transcends the previous technology so much that people don’t even consider its use anymore. Like the telegram: There would be no practical reason to move back to such communication when the same cables can carry a phone call. If we are to raise our standards, the next true innovation in technology is going to minimize our reliance on server farms, screened devices, gas and electrical vehicles, jet planes, and whatever else we consider to be facts of life, just as we moved on from the train and telegram years ago. Before then, every other so-called innovation will just be a distraction from the real deal. You’ll know that we’ve begun to adopt this technology when people default to talking, working, and enjoying together—in person, without distraction, without intermediaries.