Technology and the Human Purpose

Brian Wixted and Nick Toews

In a discussion ranging over the full history of human making (stone tools to modern cities), we centre our perspective of human purpose within a Christian worldview. Our distinctive focus centres on how the Bible's lens on a diverse range of technologies starts within its ancient culture. However, its theological position often transforms those ideas with its own unique moral imagination. Bringing the Bible's ideas to bear on times and places beyond the text, we must grapple with the original cultures and the theological transformation.

  1. 27 NOV

    S6E2 Techumanpurpose •• The (Almost) Everywhere Revolution

    The season is all about the (almost) everywhere everything all at once revolution we are living through at the present moment. Today, its about the almost everywhere nature of change.  We live in a fast changing world it seems.  While the world tech hubs are still the mountain peaks of the global technosphere, the 21st technologies are mostly quickly beginning to spread. Everything is changing it seems but how far do the changes go.  Notes News  Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortune-deluge-fraudulent-ads-documents-show-2025-11-06/  . Pay Wall but the first para is readable.  LLM and Roomba. https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/llm-robot-vacuum-existential-crisis  Go listen to Holy Post 696: Transcending Our Political Divisions & Labels with Andy Beshear. Development. Dani Rodrik Journal Econ Growth (2016) 21:1–33.  Premature Deindustrialisation Energy. International Energy Agency. Access to electricity stagnates, leaving globally 730 million in the dark. https://www.iea.org/commentaries/access-to-electricity-stagnates-leaving-globally-730-million-in-the-dark  Mobility. The Economist October 4th 2025. Automation. Way more. SAN FRANCISCO. The peculiar economics of self-driving taxis.  AI and Development. Technology: Leaps and limits. Can artificial intelligence make the poor world richer? Economist 25 October 2025 p63-64. Weird and Wonderful. Those Year 7 students https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-02/3d-printed-hands-made-by-port-macquarie-high-school-sudents/105793670  Utter disruption. Suspected drone sightings disrupt flights at Belgium airports. BBC 4 Nov 2025 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyk9k399lyo The intro and outro music is 'fantasy orchestra' available at https://freesound.org/ Watch out for more information and connected content with each episode on the blog https://theology-and-technology.blogspot.com/

    33 min
  2. 10 APR

    S5E9 Techumanpurpose • Human Dimension- Combo Lock 4 – The Bads, Crime, Security, Violence , War and Order

    Notes Questions or comments to techumanpurpose@gmail.com Anthropology and economics: Undeceptions by John Dickson https://undeceptions.com/podcast/the-anthropologists/ Amnesty International – gun violence https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/arms-control/gun-violence Pew Research https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/05/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-us/#:~:text=On%20a%20per%20capita%20basis,16.3%20per%20100%2C000%20in%201974. Statistics Canada. Table 35-10-0059-01  Police services expenditures, by detailed expenditures (x 1,000) DOI: https://doi.org/10.25318/3510005901-eng National Geographic ancient copper fraud https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/ea-nasir-copper-merchant-ur BBC news – Kobe Steel. http://ww.bbc.com/news/business-41607008 The Economist Scam Inc. (article and podcast both behind paywall) https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/02/06/the-vast-and-sophisticated-global-enterprise-that-is-scam-inc   https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc Casinos, high-rises and fraud: The BBC visits a bizarre city built on scams https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c04nx1vnw17o Jerrod Brown, Jeffrey Long-McGie, Judge Anthony Wartnik, Pamela Oberoi, Janina Wresh, Erv Weinkauf, Gennae Falconer, & Alyse Kerr Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders in the Criminal Justice System: A Review. JOURNAL OF LAW ENFORCEMENT, VOLUME 3, NUMBER 6 Lautensach, A., & Lautensach, S. (Eds.)  2020 Human Security in World Affairs: Problems and Opportunities (2nd edition) chapter 13. Transnational Crime John Wilson   The US econ in 2025 is est. to be about                     30.3 trillion $ The Chinese Econ                                                       19.5 trillion Germany                                                                     5 Trillion The 2017 Global Financial Integrity report suggested that just for transnational crime https://gfintegrity.org/report/transnational-crime-and-the-developing-world/   Transnational Crime Estimated Annual Value (US$) Counterfeiting $923 billion to $1.13 trillion Drug Trafficking $426 billion to $652 billion Illegal Logging $52 billion to $157 billion Human Trafficking $150.2 billion Illegal Mining $12 billion to $48 billion IUU Fishing $15.5 billion to $36.4 billion Illegal Wildlife Trade $5 billion to $23 billion Crude Oil Theft $5.2 billion to $11.9 billion Small Arms & Light Weapons Trafficking $1.7 billion to $3.5 billion Organ Trafficking $840 million to $1.7 billion Total $1.6 trillion to $2.2 trillion   That was 2017.     Now there was one missing from that list. Bloomberg reported in 2024 that cyber crime alone was probably worth 9.5 Trillion making it the 3rd largest economy on the planet. https://sponsored.bloomberg.com/quicksight/check-point/the-worlds-third-largest-economy-has-bad-intentions-and-its-only-getting-bigger Facebook and scam ads - Andrew Forrest https://www.proactiveinvestors.com.au/companies/news/1068185/us-judge-orders-meta-to-explain-230-000-scam-ads-using-andrew-forrest-s-image-1068185.html   Recommendations Podcast – Ask N T Wright Anything

    1h 5m
  3. 17 MAR

    S5E8 Techumanpurpose • Human Dimension – Global Development

    Notes.  If you want to get in touch techumanpurpose@gmail.com  For a brilliant book to read about the human scale of helping the poor then read this. Rhythms of Poverty: Reconsidering our affluent approach to the poor Paperback – Aug. 16 2013 by Murray Nickel (Author)  https://www.amazon.ca/Rhythms-Poverty-Reconsidering-affluent-approach/dp/0992020913  Holy Post with David French - A Unified Theory of Trump https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXTm6RxQ3Pk The Economist https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/02/27/donald-trump-has-begun-a-mafia-like-struggle-for-global-power https://www.worldbank.org/ext/en/home World Bank Poverty, Prosperity, and Planet Report 2024 World Development Report 2024 LSE on development https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kh7TIYuU4JM&t=3930s Deirdre McCloskey The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce. Vol. 1 of 3 of the trilogy "The Bourgeois Era,", University of Chicago Press, 2006, as a trade book, 616 + Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World. Vol. 2 of 3 of the trilogy "The Bourgeois Era," 2010, University of Chicago Press, 571 Especially. Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World. Vol. 3 of the trilogy "The Bourgeois Era," 2016 OECD data on development assistance https://www.oecd.org/en/about/committees/development-assistance-committee.html NPR on USAID https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2025/03/10/g-s1-52964/rubio-announces-that-83-of-usaid-contracts-will-be-canceled CNN https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/08/americas/china-us-migrants-illegal-crossings-intl-hnk-dst/index.html ABC New Daily 2024-05-22 Why Chinese people are the latest boat people ABC [Australia] South Africa – Lust for Red Gold. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-26/south-africa-copper-crime-wave/104384580

    55 min
  4. 3 MAR

    S5E7 - Techumanpurpose • human dimensions - Jobs Clothing Food Housing

    Some reference material. Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West Andrew Wilson. https://www.amazon.ca/Remaking-World-1776-Created-Post-Christian/ https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/statistics/research-datasets A millennium of macroeconomic data – stretching back to 1086.  Peter Mathias The First Industrial Nation https://www.routledge.com/The-First-Industrial-Nation-The-Economic-History-of-Britain-1700-1914/Mathias/p/book/9780415266727?srsltid=AfmBOoqnHA_j01irBsL2hSUMInjDIZ7zGi20ZhM5oHiSTsha6odNrJqq David Tomson. https://www.amazon.ca/England-nineteenth-century-1815-1914-Thomson/dp/B00BO7SRCG Child and infant mortality https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality Edwin Judge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgqzDfkr_6M  John Dickson Podcast Undeceptions Episode 76 - 5 minute Jesus - hospitals https://undeceptions.com/history/5-minute-jesus-the-churchs-hospitals/ Fabiola of Rome https://undeceptions.com/podcast/the-pandemic-love-single/ Jobs.New Frontiers: The Origins And Content Of New Work, 1940–2018 in The Quarterly Journal of Economics. Listen also to Freakonomics Radio podcast 605 on what do people do all day. Here is a video of kiwibots https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGNpqvHAydE Haber-Bosch Process explained https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1_D4FscMnU From Rikk Watts 2001 On the Edge of the Millennium- Making Sense of Genesis 1 And – 2002. The New Exodus / New Creational Restoration of the Image of God

    1 hr

About

In a discussion ranging over the full history of human making (stone tools to modern cities), we centre our perspective of human purpose within a Christian worldview. Our distinctive focus centres on how the Bible's lens on a diverse range of technologies starts within its ancient culture. However, its theological position often transforms those ideas with its own unique moral imagination. Bringing the Bible's ideas to bear on times and places beyond the text, we must grapple with the original cultures and the theological transformation.