The Dao of Technology
Between the Scylla and Charybdis of Digital Life
Two brief announcements before this week’s essay, in which I venture into Daoism:
1. Workshop: There are still 2 weeks left to apply for “The Foundations of Agency”, a 40-day workshop I developed with the novelist Jordan Castro. It starts in late September. You can learn more and apply here.
2. Work with me: I’m looking for a Marketing partner for a part-time role starting immediately. This person will work extremely closely with me to help launch my new book—but the possibilities extend far beyond that. I expect this position to grow into a full-time role within 12 months. You can learn more here.
Our Schizophrenic Relationship with Technology and Community
Engaging with technology in a way that not only preserves but enhances our senses is an art. The challenge is learning to navigate between the Scylla and Charybdis of complete technological rejection and the naive embrace of technology as the solution to every problem—even technological problems which technology itself created.
What’s needed is not escape or acceleration, but the quiet strength to perceive clearly in a world that pulls us toward unthinking reaction.
Theodore Kaczynski thought he "knew how to live" when he retreated to a remote cabin in Montana, attempting to sever ties with the technological world. He ended up killing three people and injuring twenty-three others in terrorist attacks intended to protest what he saw as an oppressive technological system. Conversely, the technological "accelerationists" who believe technological development should be accelerated at any cost never want technology to accelerate in a way that eliminates or harms themselves: destroys their marriages, or their companies, or their their lives. But it’s okay of the “cost” is born by other people. That should be the first sign that something is deeply off with this philosophy.
Two strong instincts that have accelerated in the past decade—both of them death instincts—are the instinct to throw oneself fully into a "movement", or to detach oneself completely from all forms of community and dependency, to be ‘independent’—which ironically is also a movement.
Both of these represent a flight. Kaczynski fled from technology and society itself—including his own highly dysfunctional family. The accelerationists are are sublimating their fear of interiority.
Technology is never just about the individual. It is always shaping, and being shaped by, our associations with others. We don't just use technology; we become the kinds of people our technology enables us to be.
The Wisdom of Personal Technics
Perhaps the first technologist—and the first entrepreneur—was Odysseus, who fashioned a simple piece of wood into a spear to blind the cyclops keeping him and his crew trapped in a cave. Odysseus saw the potential in the wood and crafted something for a specific purpose. He took intentional action, used the technology to fulfill his goal, and then—crucially—put it down. He didn't go into the spear-making business; it didn't become the shape of his entire life. He didn't use the spear indiscriminately, at all hours, for purposes it wasn't designed for.
Personal technics means we must design or curate technology that addresses our specific problems and helps us achieve our unique goals. To whatever extent necessary, we must resist the technological structures imposed on us and use technology outside the formal constraints it seeks to impose.
Contemporary philosopher Yuk Hui advocates for "technodiversity"—a diversity of technological practices across different cultures that may lead to more sustainable and ethical development. But I believe we need to go further, to the level of the individual.
Technology is amplifying our social senses—our awareness of social status and relationships—while diminishing our concrete senses of sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. Every technology amplifies certain human faculties while weakening others. The telephone extends the voice but diminishes sight so severely that talking on the phone while driving increases accident risk to levels comparable to drunk driving. The camera extends the eye but severs us from embodied presence and relational context. The real “sixth” sense is now social status. This has been enabled by social tech.
The more time we spend in virtual environments, the more the natural world begins to feel distant, flattened, and uninteresting. This creates thin technology—tools that stretch us across multiple contexts simultaneously, making us feel busy and connected but ultimately leaving us fragmented and superficial. Consider the typical information overload: I subscribe to dozens of newsletters, follow thousands of people on social media, and receive countless content recommendations daily. If I merely consumed what's recommended to me, my entire life would be consumed by consumption.
If that’s true, then the question becomes: how do we cultivate the kind of perception that allows us to shape our tools without being reshaped unthinkingly by them? Ancient wisdom offers insight.
The Dao of Technology
In this excellent Alan Jacobs essay, I learned the story of the ancient Daoist text, the Zhuangzi.
It includes the story of a butcher named Pao Ding. He is asked by a Duke to share his secret for being such an excellent butcher of cows. His secret, he tells the Duke, has nothing to do with the technology (his blade), or even his skill at using it. His answer is about a way of seeing and knowing the Dao, which in Daoism is the fundamental way of reality, an underlying order that is best understood not through force or analysis but by attuning oneself to its natural flow. In short, he is a good butcher due to his perception—his ability to sense reality. The butcher tells the Duke:
What I love is Dao, which is much more splendid than my skill. When I first began to carve a bullock, I saw nothing but the whole bullock. Three years later, I no longer saw the bullock as a whole but in parts. Now I work on it by intuition and do not look at it with my eyes. My visual organs stop functioning while my intuition goes its own way. In accordance with the principle of heaven (nature), I cleave along the main seams and thrust the knife into the big cavities. Following the natural structure of the bullock, I never touch veins or tendons, much less the big bones!
Pao Ding’s use of the Dao allowed him to avoid cutting with his knife through dense bones, which wears out the blade of a knife. He knew how to guide it through the void, through the spaces between the bones where it could cut safely and sharply. He explains to the Duke that a good butcher only has to get a new knife every year, while a bad butcher might have to change knives once a month. He has not had to change his knife in nineteen years.
The Duke, upon hearing the answer, says nothing about the art of butchery or cows. Instead, he simply says: “Now I know how to live.”which tells the story of a butcher named Pao Ding who had used the same knife for nineteen years without needing to sharpen it. His secret wasn't superior technique or better tools—it was perception. He had learned to work with the natural structure of reality, guiding his blade through the spaces between bones rather than forcing it through dense material.
When asked about his method, Pao Ding explained: "What I love is Dao, which is much more splendid than my skill... I work on it by intuition and do not look at it with my eyes. Following the natural structure of the bullock, I never touch veins or tendons, much less the big bones!"
The Duke, upon hearing this, said nothing about butchery. Instead, he simply said: "Now I know how to live."
Thanks—this really hits home. You've captured something important here that most tech discussions miss entirely. It's not about being for or against technology, but about staying intentional with how we use it.
The Odysseus and Pao Ding examples hit home. Both knew when to push and when to yield, when to act and when to wait. That kind of sensitivity feels almost extinct in how we talk about tech today—everything's either salvation or doom, with no room for the careful attention that actually matters.
Your point about "personal technics" is spot on. We need tools that fit our lives, not lives that fit our tools. Most of what gets called innovation just makes us more distracted and less ourselves.
I already understood your point, Luke. But I love the way you've presented it. Clear, concise...engaging.