Accepting technology means accepting ourselves, Pt. 1

In this edition, please enjoy the first part of an essay on how I learned to embrace my internal contradictions, and embrace technology in the process.

💭 Why people love to “fight the system”

It was my first year of college, and I had the perfect system for eating my favorite foods with my favorite people.

Every Sunday, I opened up every dining hall's menu for the week, along with a list of friends I wanted to catch up with and where they lived on campus. For each meal, I picked out the dining hall with the best food, then invited people who lived nearby to eat with me.

The system worked great — until one day.

I was at lunch with a friend, chatting at the table, when another friend who also lived nearby approached.

"Don’t you live across campus?” she asked me. “Why did you come all the way here?"

"Well, I do this thing every Sunday..." I began excitedly, going on to describe my process.

"Ha! So you just go down your list like a robot. Guess I’m not valuable enough to make the cut," she said with a huff, storming off.

I sat there in shock. A wave of guilt and self-doubt swept over me. Was she right? Had I taken the soul out of socializing?

That was the last day I followed my system.

Paranoid android

Humans and systems have a tense relationship. That’s especially true in individualistic societies, where anything mechanistic is portrayed as inhuman: We fight the system, distrust the establishment, rage against the machine.

It follows naturally that technology — a literal machine — inspires both great awe and deep concern. When we fear the algorithms stalking us or AI taking over, it’s the same fear of being swept up by forces vastly beyond our control, of being treated as insignificant and interchangeable cogs.

And, I believe, it’s the same fear we feel in response to a seeming paradox at the core of our humanity: We are simultaneously rational and emotional. Logical and creative. Left-brained and right-brained. Within and between us, these sides are forced to coexist, but they can’t seem to get along. How many needless conflicts begin when one side approaches a problem rationally, another approaches it emotionally, and a battle for validation ensues?

Like two sides of the same coin, emotions and logic make up the whole of human experience — and yet, like two sides of a coin, only one at a time can be on top.

The same dynamic is at play between humans and systems. Behind the dining hall encounter was that person’s fervent opposition to taking friendship out of the emotional realm and into the rational: People should get together because they want to, not because it’s logistically convenient.

So, too, between us and technology. The part of us that rebels is our emotional side, rising up against the cold, harsh logic of machines.

That means as long as emotions and logic are seen as irreconcilable, humans and technology will be, too.

Fix you

I finished making my mac and cheese and served myself a bowl. As I joined my family at the dinner table, I heard a familiar exchange.

“It’s too much,” my mom told my dad. “You don’t have time to figure that out.”

“But it would be a really nice thing,” my dad insisted.

“Wait, what did I miss?” I blurted, eliciting an eye roll from one of my brothers. Another explained, “Daddy wants to start a program for high schoolers to shadow him at the office.”

Now I understood. My dad, a dentist, would often bring home funny stories from his patients, big ideas for reinventing the toothbrush, or dreams of community service projects. Meanwhile, my mom — his office manager — would focus on more concrete, pressing matters, like collecting payments and ordering supplies.

I looked at my dad. “We’ll see,” he said with a sigh.

My parents love each other, and they make a great team. That they operate and communicate differently doesn’t take away from that. But what I observed as a child was that my dad was more emotional, my mom was more rational, and only one could “win” at a time.

Those dinner table conversations were the first time I was exposed to humanity’s paradox — and since then, I’ve wrestled with it endlessly. Not just because of my parents’ dynamic, but because I felt that same dynamic within me. Whatever combination of nature and nurture I received left me 50% rational and 50% emotional, and I couldn’t get both sides to work together.

The kid who ignored his family in favor of his Game Boy was the same kid who yearned for quality time with his parents and brothers. The college student who aligned friends with dining halls was the same one whose heart fluttered when those friends walked into the room.

As much as I confused others, I confused — and criticized — myself. I was a hyper-rational robot, or I was an emotionally sensitive blob, but either way, I was convinced that something was wrong.

To be continued…