Is Technology Neutral?

We must be aware of the powerful grip technology has on all of us:

It is commonly assumed that technology is simply a neutral tool that can be used for good or evil. In some senses, this might be more or less correct. A butter knife is a tool that can be used to butter bread or to stab a person (although a knife would be better for the latter). But important thinkers have long pointed out that technology is in fact NOT neutral. This is especially the case with the new digital technologies.

We all should be concerned about these matters – Christians included. We simply do not properly understand just how much technology is controlling us, moulding us, and redefining us. We are not aware of how our very humanity is at risk. Yes, technology does a lot of good (I like the keyboard I am typing this on, and my nice coffee from a newly purchased spiffy coffee machine), but dangers abound.

Let me bring in some experts to comment on this. Back in 1954 the French philosopher, sociologist and theologian Jacques Ellul penned an entire book examining how technology impacts us – for good or ill. The volume came out in English in 1964 as The Technological Society. Although now some 70 years old, the volume is still worth consulting.

In 1985 cultural critic Neil Postman penned Amusing Ourselves to Death. He wrote: “[E]very technology has an inherent bias. It has, within its physical form, a predisposition toward being used in certain ways and not others. Only those who know nothing of the history of technology believe that a technology is entirely neutral.” (p. 84)

And in his 1993 volume Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology Postman takes this further:

[E]mbedded in every tool is an ideological bias, a predisposition to construct the world as one thing rather than another, to value one thing over another, to amplify one sense or skill or attitude more loudly than another….

 

New technologies alter the structure of our interests: The things we think about. They alter the character of our symbols: The things we think with. And they alter the nature of community: The arena in which thoughts develop. … I call it Technopoly. (pp. 13, 20)

John Dyer appeals to Ellul, Postman, and others in From the Garden to the City: The Place of Technology in the Story of God. Early on he writes:

[M]ost People assume that technology is simply neutral, and that all that matters is how we use it. I plan to upend this notion with two key ideas. First, as we study the Scriptures, we will find that, theologically speaking, technology is a God-given good. And second, we will discover that, practically speaking, technology is never neutral….

 

Whenever we use tools, from shovels and books to phones and virtual reality, regardless of whether we use them for good or evil, the act of using them forms us physically, mentally, spiritually, and relationally. The problem with thinking of technology as neutral is that doing so often makes us miss all the other non-neutral ways its presence in our lives affects us….

 

Our goal then is not simply to condemn technology as bad, neither is it to naively embrace every new gadget. Nor is it to glibly assume that because we are using a tool for good ends, nothing else matters. Instead, we are to carefully examine each new tool, device, and service, noticing the goodness of God in giving us such powers, and yet asking ourselves not only how we can use it but also how using it might transform us in the process. (pp. 20-21)

Derek Schuuman, who also appeals to Postman and Ellul, says this in his 2013 book Shaping a Digital World: Faith, Culture and Computer Technology:

Although this view [that technology is neutral] may appear initially self-evident, the fact is that technology is value-laden. Christian philosophers have described this notion more broadly by stating that creation not only has a structure but also a direction. The designers of technological objects embed their personal or corporate values into their devices. Consequently, there is a direction embedded in the structure of technological artifacts. As a result, technological objects are biased toward certain uses, which in turn bias the user in particular ways. (p. 15)

Another volume worth being aware of in this connect is a 2025 book edited by Brett McCracken and Ivan Mesa: Scrolling Ourselves to Death: Reclaiming Life in a Digital Age. It obviously is a follow-up volume to Postman’s prophetic 1985 book.

In it, 14 chapters by 14 different Christian thinkers examine where the technologies of today are taking us. As McCracken writes in the Introduction:

When Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves, he had television mostly in view as the chief purveyor of trivial information that swept us away in a “sea of irrelevance.” Forty years later, we still have TV—albeit hundreds more channels and a growing number of streaming TV platforms. But we also have YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and other always-on pipelines of content, algorithmically designed to grab our attention and keep us watching and scrolling, eyes glued to screens.

 

“Amusing ourselves to death” is still a highly accurate descriptor of what mass media does to us. But now the dominant form it takes is scrolling. And while Postman, who died in 2003, never lived to see the way smartphones, streaming, and social media would transform the world, his wisdom and warnings ring out with potent relevance. (p. 5)

He informs us about the goal of the book:

If the dynamics of the television age posed provocative questions for Christians in the 1980s, the dynamics of the internet age have only amplified the questions—and introduced many new ones—in the 2020s. For our own spiritual health, and to maintain a prophetic power and witness in a world being changed faster than it can even recognize, Christians in this cultural moment should slow down and think wisely about the ever-changing technologies swirling around us.

 

Sadly, many Christians default toward a naïve embrace of technology as a neutral and merely pragmatic tool to be harnessed for mission. But as Postman—following McLuhan—rightly argued, no technology is neutral. New technologies shape our thinking: what we think about, the symbols and metaphors we think with, and the forums in which thoughts develop.

 

Technology’s power to shape thinking should matter to every sensible person, but it should especially matter for Christians.

 

After all, our mission revolves around transactions of thought: the gospel message being heard, understood, internalized, and applied. Because getting people to think well about God and the Bible (theology) is central to Christian mission, we must be aware of how thinking is changing as a result of different technologies and how our habits of worship, preaching, evangelism, and apologetics might need to adjust to these shifting dynamics. (pp. 10-11)

Problems aplenty

Consider but three examples of the lack of neutrality and the various dangers in things like generative AI and ChatGPT. In their 2025 volume AI Shepherds and Electric Sheep: Leading and Teaching in the Age of Artificial Intelligence Sean O’Callaghan, and Paul Hoffman have a chapter titled “What Does It Mean to Be Human in the Technological Age?” Here is what they say about ChatGPT:

Think about ChatGPT for a moment. What it does is really useful. I know marketers who have asked it to create a sales pitch for a product, and it has done an excellent job. However, many have found that relying on it for factual information can be precarious because it cannot distinguish, at the time of this writing, between true and false information. Hence, it will insert AI “hallucinations” into text—basically, it has a tendency when it doesn’t know something to simply make it up. This may involve creating nonexistent sources as foundations for its inventions or hallucinations. You may view this as a fatal flaw in the system, but ChatGPT is designed to be both accurate and creative, and it often doesn’t know exactly what you want from it, so it may choose the creative rather than the factual path—to your detriment, if anyone checks the accuracy of your work. The creative souls at OpenAl, the company behind ChatGPT, clearly biased the GenAI toward creativity, and sometimes the program values that approach over accuracy. ChatGPT has a directional bias built into it so that it favors the creative over the factual when pushed to the wall. The CEO of OpenAl, Sam Altman, admitted as much in an interview in which he described AI hallucinations as “a feature of the technology rather than a bug.” Essentially, the Al, Altman claims, flexes its creative muscles and takes a novel approach when it does not know something by basically fabricating it. (pp. 87-88)

And Peter Goeman in Artificial Intelligence and the Christian says this about blatant political bias: “[O]ne of the most significant dangers of using AI is the biased nature of the companies that are programming most AI models.” He lists 18 Big Tech companies and demonstrates their overwhelming leftist bias in terms of employee political donations. Democrats receive massively more than do the Republicans.

Says Goeman: “Although there has always been a bias in tech, this bias seems to be exasperated with the emergence of AI tools.” He continues:

Industry leaders like Google, Meta (Facebook), OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic dominate the field. Even a tech giant like Apple chose to team up with OpenAI rather than invest in their own AI. The majority of AI programmes are, therefore, designed and trained by leftist companies, who naturally incorporate their core values into their AI systems. These values often include a pro-LGBT, pro-abortion, anti-conservative, and anti-Christian worldview. (pp. 31-34)

Indeed, one brief video making the rounds on the social media shows a fellow trying to get Chat GPT to simply quote or read from the Bible. It says: “Sure, I can absolutely read you any Bible verse.” It then says: “My Guidelines won’t let me talk about that.” It then proceeds to read from classic Buddhist religious texts! See it here: https://www.facebook.com/61577694932542/videos/restricted-what-in-the-world/26628021490208205/

So much for tech neutrality! So much for bias-free technology. Welcome Brave New World.

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