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A review by ben_smitty
God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning by Meghan O'Gieblyn
5.0
I recently got a job as a software developer at a university which is mired in a lot of nasty scandals right now. I don't mind the job too much because it's 100% remote so it allows me to detach what I'm doing from who I'm doing it for. Whenever I strike up a conversation with someone and tell them what I do for a living, they either tell me, "Wow! You taught yourself how to do that. Super cool!" which makes me proud, or "Oh... you work at [university name?] well, we all start somewhere I guess" which makes me want to die in a hole.
Which is why I began reading more about tech stuff. I have a fairly pessimistic view of technology (thanks to all my English lit professors who are pro-physical books only and print-everything because the internet ruined our ability to think etc) but if I'm going to work in IT for the foreseeable future, I should at least try to make sure some good comes out of it, right?
Well O'Gieblyn did absolutely nothing to help me assuage my fears of technology. What she did illustrate is how the blind ascent of technological metaphysics (super trendy now) borrows entirely from the language of classical Christianity. O'Gieblyn's exploration into the field of AI, Quantum Mechanics, and Multiverse theory leads inevitably to a dead-end every time she thinks she's out of the maze of religion. The narrative of her departure from Christianity constantly interrupts her foray into the dizzying world of technology: what she thought she left behind is still there to haunt her because the analogy of classical metaphysics (Being, Consciousness, Bliss as DB Hart puts it) has implanted itself deeply in all of our metaphors. As these scientists use metaphysical language to analogize technology, biology, and physics, O'Gieblyn is, similarly, analogizing science's own use of religious language by using her story as the source of her metaphors.
So this book is so much more than a book about technology. It's a book about language, metaphysics, and metaphors, disrupted by stories of Calvin's god, alcoholism, and the failed attempt at leaving religion all together. It didn't convince me to leave my job, however, but it did convince me that our relationship with technology is so, so complicated.
Which is why I began reading more about tech stuff. I have a fairly pessimistic view of technology (thanks to all my English lit professors who are pro-physical books only and print-everything because the internet ruined our ability to think etc) but if I'm going to work in IT for the foreseeable future, I should at least try to make sure some good comes out of it, right?
Well O'Gieblyn did absolutely nothing to help me assuage my fears of technology. What she did illustrate is how the blind ascent of technological metaphysics (super trendy now) borrows entirely from the language of classical Christianity. O'Gieblyn's exploration into the field of AI, Quantum Mechanics, and Multiverse theory leads inevitably to a dead-end every time she thinks she's out of the maze of religion. The narrative of her departure from Christianity constantly interrupts her foray into the dizzying world of technology: what she thought she left behind is still there to haunt her because the analogy of classical metaphysics (Being, Consciousness, Bliss as DB Hart puts it) has implanted itself deeply in all of our metaphors. As these scientists use metaphysical language to analogize technology, biology, and physics, O'Gieblyn is, similarly, analogizing science's own use of religious language by using her story as the source of her metaphors.
So this book is so much more than a book about technology. It's a book about language, metaphysics, and metaphors, disrupted by stories of Calvin's god, alcoholism, and the failed attempt at leaving religion all together. It didn't convince me to leave my job, however, but it did convince me that our relationship with technology is so, so complicated.