> Bill Peirson Case #70 - Progress

Editorial: Progress

October 17, 2024

Editorial: Progress

If we understand progress in terms of technological advancement, there is no doubt we’ve made huge advances in the last 150 years, and the pace is only accelerating. We have built cars, planes and skyscrapers. We’ve been to the moon, Mars and seen beyond. We can talk to each other and explore the information of the world through devices that fit in our pockets. We can replace body parts and grow new ones in a lab. We’ve created artificial intelligences that surpass our own in many ways. We’ve dammed rivers to supply water to our cities, for irrigation and to power hydroelectric schemes. We can turn our fertility off and on. We can mass produce food and process it to please our palates and keep for months and years.

Yet when we look at the bigger picture, we see this progress interwoven with regress as a raft of new problems has emerged: environmental contamination, species extinction, climate shifts, hook-up culture, the commodification of bodies, continual restructuring to meet changing labour needs, deep fakes, epidemics of anxiety, obesity, and loneliness.

Is this progress?

This edition of Case Quarterly draws on a diverse range of technological advances and biblical wisdom to interrogate the idea of progress. Chris Mulherin evaluates AI and techno-enthusiasm in the light of Christian ideas about what it is to be human. Dani Scarratt presents the second instalment of her investigation into a women’s movement which is emerging as a counter-reaction to earlier responses to the industrial and contraceptive revolutions. Charissa Forrest takes a look at the weight-loss epidemic enabled by wonder-drugs like Ozempic, and how progress in one area might spell deterioration in another. Readers are also introduced to my work on fish pumps, a technology necessitated by the damming of our waterways. And last but far from least, Dan Anderson strikes at the heart of the issue with his incisive analysis of the human heart in reference to technology.

This edition does not have a simple take-home message. It leaves us with questions and challenges about our multifaceted relationship with technology, as it enhances our ability to do good, and our capacity for evil. We can, in turn, rightly express joy, admiration, thankfulness, caution, frustration, fear, and horror at where our ingenuity can take us.

Human efforts to progress via technology take us two steps forward on one front, two steps back on another. The really good news is that God has not left the job of progressing to a better world in our hands. In Jesus’ death and resurrection we progress from condemnation to justification, depravity to sanctification; death to life, despair to hope. AI, eat your heart out!