Technology and Humans
Summary: Technology is not neutral — it is shaped by the quality of attention brought to it (Pirsig), constrained by physical reality (Smil), and entangled with the brain’s old-vs-new architecture in ways that determine whether it extends or undermines human agency (Hawkins).
Sources: Clippings/Pirsig-Zen-and-the-Art-of-Motorcycle-Maintenance.md · Clippings/Hawkins-A-Thousand-Brains.md · Clippings/Smil-How-the-World-Really-Works.md · Raw/Crawford-Shop Class as Soulcraft.md
Source pages: A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence — Quotes, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values, How the World Really Works — Quotes
Last updated: 2026-05-06
Technology is a relationship, not a tool
Pirsig’s challenge to both pro- and anti-technology positions: neither “technology is progress” nor “technology is exploitation” is adequate, because both treat technology as an external object:
“The way to resolve the conflict is to break down the barrier of dualistic thought that prevent a real understanding of what technology is — not an exploitation of nature, but a fusion of nature and the human spirit into a new kind of creation that transcends both.” (source: Pirsig-Zen-and-the-Art-of-Motorcycle-Maintenance.md)
Technology built without care replicates alienation. Technology built through caring engagement with materials is an act of creation. The same motorcycle can be approached as a thing to fix or as a relationship to maintain. The difference is entirely internal — a quality of attention, not a property of the machine. See quality.
The generative structure problem
If a factory is torn down but the rationality that produced it remains intact, another factory follows. Technology is not just hardware; it embeds patterns of thought. Changing the technology without changing the underlying goals and assumptions changes the outputs, not the structure. See systems-thinking and quality.
Old brain vs. neocortex: who runs the machine?
Hawkins identifies the central tension in human-technology interaction:
“In the battle between the old brain and the neocortex, the old brain usually wins. We eat the cake.” (source: Hawkins-A-Thousand-Brains.md)
The neocortex can model long-term consequences of technology use — surveillance capitalism, addiction loops, social fragmentation. The limbic system and ancient subcortical structures evolved to satisfy immediate needs: novelty, status, social approval. Technology designed to exploit the old brain’s appetites (engagement metrics, infinite scroll, dopamine-timed notifications) consistently outcompetes the neocortex’s long-term models. Compare dual-process-cognition and sapolsky-behave.
Genes vs. knowledge as civilizational choice
Hawkins frames the stakes explicitly:
“The choice we face as we think about the future is, should we continue to be driven by our biological past or choose instead to embrace our newly emerged intelligence?” (source: Hawkins-A-Thousand-Brains.md)
Gene-driven behavior is short-sighted and zero-sum (survival, replication). Knowledge-driven behavior can be long-sighted and positive-sum. Technology amplifies whichever driver is in control. A civilization that builds AI tools optimized for old-brain appetites is making a choice — just not consciously. See free-will-and-moral-responsibility.
Energy as the physical constraint
Smil’s contribution: no amount of aspiration overrides thermodynamics:
“energy is the only truly universal currency, and nothing (from galactic rotations to ephemeral insect lives) can take place without its transformations.” (source: Smil-How-the-World-Really-Works.md)
Modern technological civilization runs on four material pillars — ammonia, steel, concrete, plastics — all produced with fossil fuels, for which there are no ready substitutes at scale. The idea that software-layer innovation can dissolve material constraints is itself a technology-as-magic belief. See smil-how-the-world-really-works and economic-behavior.
We learn by moving
Hawkins’s theory of knowledge as embodied and active:
“we learn by moving. In order to learn a model of a building, we must walk through it, going from room to room.” (source: Hawkins-A-Thousand-Brains.md)
Systems that only observe, without interacting, build impoverished models. This applies equally to humans and to AI: a technology designed to maximize passive consumption (social feeds, streaming) is optimizing against the brain’s preferred mode of learning. Active engagement, making, maintaining, adjusting — these are how humans build real knowledge, which is also Pirsig’s point about the motorcycle.
False beliefs and viral technology
“how all of us are susceptible to false beliefs and how some beliefs are viral.” (source: Hawkins-A-Thousand-Brains.md)
Beliefs that spread easily are selected by social transmission, not by truth value. Technology that accelerates transmission — social media especially — creates selection pressure for viral over accurate. This is not the technology’s purpose; it is its effect when optimized for engagement rather than for Quality. See narrative-bias and in-group-out-group.
Crawford: manual competence and cognitive agency
Matthew Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft (2009) argues that skilled manual work — motorcycle repair, welding, farming — is not cognitively lesser than knowledge work. It is cognitively distinct in ways that matter politically and psychologically.
The stoic machine
A broken motorcycle is what Crawford calls a stoic machine: it does not adapt to your theory of it. Unlike a spreadsheet or a presentation, the engine either runs or it does not. The world’s resistance is epistemically productive — it forces contact with a reality that is not a projection of your assumptions.
This is why manual competence is philosophically significant: it trains a particular kind of epistemic humility that abstract work does not require. You cannot convince a carburetor. (source: Raw/Crawford-Shop Class as Soulcraft.md)
Crisis of agency
Crawford connects the decline of shop class and manual education to a broader crisis of agency: modern consumers are positioned as passive recipients of engineered systems (software, appliances, buildings) designed to be operated but not understood or repaired. The person who cannot fix anything is dependent on the infrastructure they inhabit in a way that is both material and psychological.
This parallels Hawkins’s point that passive consumption builds impoverished models — see the section above on embodied knowledge. Crawford adds a political dimension: dependency is a form of disempowerment that does not require coercion.
Bodily skill as thinking
Crawford draws on phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger’s ready-to-hand) to argue that skilled practice involves a kind of knowledge that cannot be fully articulated — a knowing-how that is not reducible to knowing-that. The master mechanic’s diagnostic intuition is not a primitive version of scientific reasoning; it is a different cognitive mode, one that Pirsig also recognizes as engagement with Quality. See quality.