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Editor’s note, October 2026: published in September 2021, weeks before Facebook renamed itself Meta and more than a year before ChatGPT brought AI into everyday conversation. Since then the techno-utopian and the dystopian positions described here have both gone mainstream, which makes the call for sober, concrete knowledge about technology more relevant, not less.
What people can achieve when they understand each other and have united in pursuit of a common goal can be read in Gen 11:6 (NKJV)
“And the LORD said, ‘Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them.’”
Few people realise that since the birth of the Internet, the world has in fact been connected by one language again. Although that connection only exists at machine level, we can see all around us what an enormous revolution it has meant for humanity’s capabilities. To share its knowledge, to master its environment, and so to protect itself against the ever-present risk of decay that grows with the complexity of its society. Is this technology the foundation of a new utopian prospect for free humanity? Or is it rather an instrument of ultimate control that quietly limits all our freedoms to whatever serves an ever more narrowly defined ‘common good’?
Utopian freedom?
Like every major technological development, digitalisation, the Internet and the software built on it have had an enormously positive impact on the well-being of many people.
International trade, for example, is connected through software and databases to a historically unprecedented degree. Among other things, this has allowed economically lagging countries to catch up significantly. The result: lower child mortality worldwide, the near eradication of famine and, with it, unprecedented population growth. Through mutual economic dependencies, this globalisation has also reduced the number of wars and armed conflicts.
Our knowledge of culture, nature and science has also grown explosively by sharing insights, models and the computing power to analyse them. Thanks to improved farming methods and biotechnology, food production yields have increased sixfold. Average life expectancy has risen by decades thanks to research into new medicines and medical treatments. And finally, efficient and fast financial markets have become possible, creating unprecedented wealth that, through smart redistribution, is available to a broad part of the population
Supporters of ‘techno-optimism’ therefore point, with good arguments, to the hope that further technological progress supposedly holds. But there is a reason the Bible warns in several places about the danger of the craving for power and control, already fed by the technology and idolatry of those days.
Ultimate control?
So there is more than enough reason for concern. Just as censuses in the Bible symbolise power and control through taxation and war, information technology in our time cannot be separated from the power and control it gives central governments and platforms like Google and Facebook.
The immense centralised databases at their disposal offer unprecedented insight into, and influence over, human behaviour. They serve not only the people who connect with each other on these platforms, but also political and commercial influence by the big funders of political parties and the big advertisers, who together control more than half of the 406 billion dollars in media budgets. This leads to less freedom, through unprecedented possibilities for selecting and censoring unwanted opinions and ‘dangerous dissidents’. It also has a catastrophic impact on small and medium-sized businesses, which have become dependent on the customer reach of these platforms and are increasingly being replaced by more efficient and cheaper eCommerce.
The worst of both extremes
Both the promise and the threat of technology need to be assessed realistically. Without knowledge of the positive possibilities, we run great risks in a complex world that will soon have to produce for 10 billion people. But without a sober view of the corrupting power of unprecedented control, we forget to build in the checks and balances that protect us from ill-intentioned (but more often all-too-well-intentioned) rulers.
Sadly, the public debate is dominated by the least nuanced opinions. Either those of techno-utopians, who expect us to be heading for a ‘singularity’ moment, when the ‘messiah’ of artificial intelligence (AI) reveals itself and humanity can devote itself for all eternity to a life of entertainment and consumption. Or those of conspiracy theorists, who see in every form of digitalisation and progress an Orwellian, dystopian tyranny of the technocratic upper class.
Meanwhile, clueless governments stumble between these two extremes towards policies that combine the worst of both. They ask social media to filter hate from sarcasm, fully convinced that advanced AI has long been able to do this. But they also venture into mandatory registration and identification systems to ‘protect’ their populations against new biological and digital viruses.
What is Wisdom?
Christians could arm themselves against this confusion by going back to the deeper insights the Bible has offered for centuries. Yes, we were created with divine creativity, but we are also called to submit it to Divine authority. Yes, in a fallen world we will often be oppressed for our faith, but there is only one real conspiracy, and that is God’s.
Trusting in this Plan, it is wise to take all expectations around technology with a hefty grain of Salt. Both the ultimate threat of control and the ultimate triumph of human ingenuity. I am convinced both will increasingly be pushed in the form of absolute statements by so-called experts. So there is a real need for concrete knowledge about technology. To put the grandest promises and worst threats into perspective where needed. But also, now and then, to point out underexposed promises and unexpected threats.
But in all of this we still need the foundation of rock-solid trust in a good outcome. And if you occasionally doubt His Plan, the stories of the unfortunate Joseph, the megalomaniac emperor Augustus and of course the Tower of Babel are a good ‘vaccine’ against too much mental suffering in these strange, exciting, but ultimately God-controlled times.
What still holds in 2026
- Platform power is now regulated directly. The EU’s Digital Services Act has applied to all platforms since February 2024 (source), and its first fine, €120 million against X in December 2025, concerned transparency duties such as paid verification badges and researcher access to data (source). How such rules balance protection against free expression is the control-versus-freedom question of this piece, now argued out in law and in court.
- Both AI extremes are louder than ever. Since ChatGPT launched in November 2022, the promises and fears around AI have moved from the fringe into boardrooms and parliaments, with the EU AI Act in force since August 2024 (source). Concrete knowledge of what the technology can and cannot do remains the best antidote, for business leaders as much as for believers.
- Identification systems are back, now as wallets. The registration and identification systems this piece worried about return in Europe as the EU Digital Identity Wallet, which every member state must offer by the end of 2026. The law makes its use voluntary and requires selective disclosure (source); keeping it that way is exactly the kind of check and balance this piece asked for.