Eric R. Severson
April 29, 2021
The handle of my axe, gripped by my hands all winter to split wood to warm my house, is barely changed by my hands. My palms, on the other hand, are transformed by the axe. Hard callouses form across my palm after hours of gripping and swinging. The muscles in my shoulders and arms, too, are reshaped across the cool months of our Pacific Northwest winter. The technology that is "axe" has its impact on me—the work we do together shapes us both, alongside the logs reshaped by this labor. Humans have long known that tool and user exist in a relationship of mutual impact. Not just my hands, but my ears and eyes are shaped by this tool, by this work. I learn to recognize the sound of a chop that opens the wood to be split, or the thick thud that indicates resistance. My eyes see the grain of a log, the spots made nearly impenetrable by knots and branches, the spaces where I might best strike.
Though modern technology, digital technology included, is radically different than lumberjack implements, we find ourselves changed by these tools as well. My argument here is modest: to think well about the ethics of technology requires attunement to the way modern technology shapes the communities and persons that use it. My suspicion is that digital technology and artificial intelligence represent tools that do a great deal of unseen "work" on the people who use them. Tools influence the world in two directions—toward the log and toward the hands that grip the axe. Sometimes the callouses we develop from modern technology are less obvious, but this does not make them any less real. The invisible ways that technology shapes those who wield it are perhaps more dangerous.
Before analyzing what I deem to be an impoverished understanding of technology's backflow into human lives and relationships, it is important to clarify that this essay is not some luddite rejection of modern tools. My thesis is not that we should reject the use of artificial intelligence, or digital technology, but that we use these better and more ethically when we attend to the complexity of their work. How do our tools shape the way we relate to our bodies, our neighbors, and the systemic injustices that plague humanity?
There are obvious examples of the ways that our bodies are changed by the interface with modern technology. We bend over keyboards, strain and damage our eyes, compress our spines from prolonged sitting, and impede our ability to rest from the digitalized light from tiny screens. These are real problems, but not new problems by any means. All of the tools that humans have ever wielded have presented similar threats; needles, hammers, plows, clubs, swords, spatulas, all change the bodies that use them. To test this, use any physical technology, repeatedly, for hours on end. The tool begins to shape the body that wields it, and this reshaping often is detrimental. Across the hundreds of thousands of years since humans first took up tools, we have sought to mitigate the negative impact of our instruments. The tools sometimes do good work on our bodies as well, particularly when the use of the tool improves the health of our muscles, our lungs, our joints, sharpening our minds and bodies. But the logic of modern economies, with the elevation of capital and efficient production, has sought to minimize work. The problem I am identifying here is not automation, or efficiency, or any one piece of the technology built for these. I am concerned about the way the logic of efficiency changes the people who use these tools built for speed. Ironically, we take up these tools—from smartphones to algorithms—in order to rescue time for more important endeavors; but using them may reshape our minds in such a way that we cannot find, or figure out how to use, the time we think we’ve saved.
All tools shape those who use them, a little or a lot. The hands made nimble with chopsticks are strengthened for other tasks too, shaped not just on the surface but in muscle, reactivity, and steadiness. Some tools require vigilant attention to detail; using them trains eyes and ears and minds into higher capacities for awareness. Tools are usually not designed for this secondary work; they shape their users in serendipitous ways. Similarly, tools are not usually designed to create medical problems in their users. The intentions of the tool-makers can matter, but often the way a tool shapes its user is unanticipated. We should not be surprised when new technologies do this work on our bodies, our minds, our relationships. All tools have done this, always, but modern technology often disguises or obscures this aspect of toolmaking and tool-using.
Close analysis of modern technology and tools reveals an alarming problem: when first deployed, seemingly “colorblind” or “genderblind” technologies seem to favor people who are white and male. Sexism and racism appear seemingly ex nihilo. Apparently neutral algorithms somehow wind up reinforcing racism and sexism. What we know about racism and sexism, though, is that they are endemic; these scourges have disseminated their spores into every crevice of human society today. Long ago, manufacturers of desks and scissors and guitars realized the absurdity of repeatedly acting surprised that left-handed people struggled to use their products. In a society with endemic racism and sexism, technology that isn’t explicitly anti-sexist and anti-racist is seemingly doomed to repeat this pattern.
My modest proposal here is that users of modern technology pay close attention to its quiet work. Modern technology opens us to vast opportunities for modern medicine, transportation, communication, education, and countless other avenues of improvement. The pressure to improve these aspects of human life is tremendous, and it presses us headlong into the use of tools whose impact on their users is rarely considered. People who develop and use these tools should stop being surprised that they wind up creating problems for the people who use them, and the world shaped by these instruments. My invitation is to a rich perspective on technology that accounts for multiple directions of causation that take place when people use tools. It is possible to develop technologies that turn us toward our humanity, that strengthen our bodies and minds, that move in opposition to racism and sexism. This challenge, issued to all who make and wield modern tech, may be the most important of our time.