Dear readers,

Welcome to the first edition of my newsletter—Old Wisdom. New Technology—where I will share my findings (texts or ideas, past or present) and learnings (from personal experience) on wisdom and technology.

The question that concerns me is as follows: How can we (in this Technological Age) make sense of our human experience and existence? I don't pretend that I have the answers, but I will draw from a wide range of sources and material, including my personal experience, and ranging from history, philosophy, religion and spirituality, literature, and of course, my personal experience, but this is by no means an exhaustive list.

Enjoy, and let me know what you think of this first one!

Four months ago, while chilling on vacation in Slovenia, near a beautiful river (Soča) next to my camping, I saw a stranger reading a book, which I made a note of on my phone. The book was titled "The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World" (2024).

I remember that the title resonated deeply when I first saw it. My vacation was filled with social interactions, friends and strangers, nature and physical activity. My digital devices were barely touched. Life felt a bit more magical.

Once I returned from vacation, I started to read the book, though I haven't finished it yet. (This is not a book review, but a few preliminary remarks) This seems to be the main premise of the book:

The author argues that technology has created these new forms of "mediated experience". Even though technology brings convenience, they also ultimately undermine human experience, including physical interaction between human beings. The divide between the physical and virtual has become more ambivalent, and along with it, the extinction of authentic, "unmediated experience", which is instead replaced with "algorithmically curated experience". We are thus living in a sort of "pseudo reality".

I like that the author brings attention to human experience in relation to digital technology. Digital technologies are disruptive, and might cause our experience to become disordered. We essentially have lost ways of controlling and ordering experience, that we deem as more meaningful and significant to us.

This is where I start to disagree:

Any interaction with digital technology becomes a "databased" (or "mediated") form of (inferior) experience. The central argument of the author is situated on the notion that "mediation" is something that can be destructive to human experience. And, this mediation occurs when we interact with tangible (digital) technologies.

This is problematic for a few reasons. Firstly, we as humans have and are constantly mediating reality. Language, a fundamental aspect of human experience, mediates reality. The best example is that "voice in your head". Defining mediation as any interaction with external technologies is thus a bit of a misnomer. Secondly, the quality of human experience shouldn't be judged on a quantitive metric, that states that the more one disengages with technology, the better the quality of their lived experience.

I believe we need to change our relationship with technology, to be more healthy and meaningful, but not to utterly demonise it. Aren't the Bible and the Quran technologies (writing and symbols on pages), and a form of mediation? Aren't they, for many people, including me (the Quran), at the root of making sense of human experience? We need to "remediate" our experience with (digital) technologies, if they are disordered and dysfunctional, but that requires a different attitude than complete negligence.

The common sentiment among people is that digital technology has shifted something in our daily experience of life. One term that is often mentioned in this vein is "disenchantment". There is a bit of useful historical context surrounding this term, that I want to share:

With the advent of the Scientific Revolution (and similar developments, like the Enlightenment), the natural world had become more explainable in mechanistic and causal terms in the West. The mystery of the world had vanished, since all of the mysteries could be explained, and would all be eventually solved with science. That is how the story goes, according to a few influential thinkers, like Max Weber (a 20th century German sociologist). He would coin the term "disenchantment" (Enzauberung in German) in a lecture series called Wissenschaft als Beruf (Science as Vocation) in 1917 held at the Munich University. Since the world had lost all it's mystery (or eventually would), the world had become "disenchanted". For Weber, humanity could either have an enchanted world, where life's mysteries were not to be solved, or one could have a disenchanted world, since science would solve all mysteries. It was an "either/or" choice between enchantment and disenchantment, ignorance and science, etc.

There are many problems to this thesis by Weber, since science itself seems to have sparked wonder and awe at the cosmos and universe, and the mysteries of outer space have seemed to "re-enchant" the imagination of the West. This is only one example of many counterpoints to Weber's thesis, but suffice to say, I think we can have scientific research alongside an enchantment of the human experience and imagination.

The term "disenchantment", as I mentioned earlier, also seems to have taken a different turn the last fifty years or so. With the advent of digital technologies, more people feel or describe "disenchantment" with the world. Digital devices, which give us access to unlimited information, and potential for distraction and incoherence, seems to have resulted, for many people, in an alienation with their world. The use of "disenchantment" is a bit different here as compared to how Weber intended to use it. But I think this term (or related terms like "alienation") are at the heart of what disenchantment is all about: a description of subjective experiences of individuals and communities.

If technologies have the potential to cause havoc in human experience and life, why should we allow them to march on, without any interrogation? I think it is our responsibility to question the potential implications of new technologies.

If you think this is nonsense, and believe that technology marches along on it's own pace, independent from any human motivation, then allow me to introduce one early thinker that also struggled with the introduction of a new technology:

Plato writes in the Phaedrus (370 B.C.E)—a dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus, which pertains to themes of divine love and madness, and the soul's ascent—about an Egyptian king (Thamos) and someone who shares the invention of writing with him (Teuth). Thamos is a bit more sceptical about the promise of Teuth that writing will learn us how to remember better and will make us more wise. He tells Teuth the following:

I must agree with any reader that might say that writing has become a staple in the world. In that sense, maybe technologies do advance at their own pace? If that's the case, then shouldn't we at least be critical about the way in which technologies are designed for human use? I believe here to be a gap that needs to be further explored.

The alienation with digital technologies, in my opinion, partially stems from the random content that is being presented, controlled by big tech companies, that design digital technology for their own benefit and profit. I believe we need to take complete control over the design of our digital devices.

On Friday 19 December, I was introduced to Claude Code, which holds immense potential for people to design their own software (without being a coder). I was in Utrecht at a monthly meetup organised by Digital Fitness, which runs every third Friday of the month.

The first workshop about Claude Code was delivered by Frank Meeuwsen in the morning, which helped me to install Claude Code, and start playing around with it (Claude Code – Open workshop). Later, in the evening, Martijn Aslander showed what was possible with Claude Code, since he himself has used it more than 400 hours the last few months or so. He has built for himself a dashboard (which he calls his "ThetaOS") in which he pulls personal information from all sorts of places, ranging from bank transactions, mails, personal notes that are well structured (with Obsidian), etc. (Theta - een demo over informatieliquiditeit en metadata)

The interfaces and content and that we see and consume on digital devices dictates our behaviour and experience. What if we can completely gain control over how software is designed, and can create a place where personal information, often scattered in different software, comes together, and forms a new sort of interface, that is more meaningful and personal to us?

That is the potential I think that software similar to Claude Code can enable. To be sure, it is not the saviour that will release us from all the digital suffering we endure. Doomscrolling and other sorts of toxic behaviour will not disappear. But, it at least gives us a digital place we can visit, which gives us complete control over the things we get to see, and how we get to see it.

Send a mail with your thoughts, and spread the message!