Is Technology Neutral? Grok, AI Deepfakes, and Discipleship
James Spencer and Ashish Varma close out the series on narrowing with amplification — Marshall McLuhan's insight that technology extends human capacity, and what that means when the capacity being extended is our tendency to forget God.
The conversation runs from forks and chopsticks to John Deere, from the fig leaves in Genesis to Albert Borgmann's distinction between things and devices: the wood-burning stove that gathers a household versus the thermostat that anonymizes everything behind the heat. Ashish pushes back on the common classroom line that technology is morally neutral, arguing that development and use are different questions and that a technique built for accumulation carries that logic with it. James traces the same tension through David refusing Saul's armor, the warning in Deuteronomy 8 about cisterns you did not dig, and Paul's rebuke of the Corinthian habit of following personalities — a habit our follower counts and platforms have made much easier.
It ends with a hard look at AI image generation, the Minnesota law and the litigation around it, and two Old Testament laws about goring oxen and rooftop parapets that were written to protect people without stopping progress.
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Thinking Christian is hosted by Dr. James Spencer, president of the D. L. Moody Center and author of Digital Discernment (InterVarsity Press). Each conversation reads the Bible as the final authority for life and faith, questioning the assumptions of our culture, even our Christian culture, so that we don't settle for a narrower vision than God's word offers.
Unsettling convention. Cultivating conviction.
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In addition to being a regular contributor to Christianity.com and Washingtontimes.com, James has published multiple works, including Christian Resistance: Learnign to Defy the World and Follow Christ, Useful to God: Eight Lessons from the Life of D.L. Moody, Thinking Christian: Essays on Testimony, Accountability, and the Christian Mind, and Trajectories: A Gospel-Centered Introduction to Old Testament Theology.
James currently serves as president of the D. L. Moody Center, an adjunct instructor at Wheaton College Graduate School, and faculty member at Right On Mission.
You can find out more about James at his personal website www.jamesspencer.com.
