Plough Quarterly No. 40 – The Good of Tech

How can we live well with tech, without it becoming our master?

These days, the heady promises of Silicon Valley seem suspect: the internet didn’t bring all of humanity together; neither did smartphones or social media. We have long since stopped associating tech with utopian visions of global harmony, instead blaming it for distraction, polarization, addictions to porn and gambling, the trivialization of culture, loss of privacy and work-life balance, and fears that automation may push millions out of a job. Advances in artificial intelligence seem poised to bring us to the next technological watershed. It’s a good time to ask how we can learn to live well with tech, and how we might push back against technologies that shape humans in anti-human ways.

On this theme:

• Find out why computers can’t do math and humans can.
• When parenting from prison, a little tech can make a big difference.
• Glucose monitoring systems transform life for children with diabetes.
• Should ChatGPT write sermons and prayers?
• From scrolls to scrolling, tech has changed the way Jewish people read scripture
• Will AI bring the end of the world, or is it already here?
• An intentional community tries to be intentional about personal technology.
• Our struggle with technology goes back to the Tower of Babel in Genesis.
• A farmer praises a simple piece of technology – the rock bar.

Also in this issue:

• A photo essay about children on the frontlines in Ukraine
• A philosopher’s proposal for a gift economy
• The winners of the 2024 Rhina Espaillat Poetry Award
• Insights from Gerard Manley Hopkins, E. F. Schumacher, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, and Hannah Arendt
• Reviews of Birding to Change the World, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, and All Things Are Too Small

Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to apply their faith to the challenges we face. Each issue includes in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art.