Outlines of a Trinitarian Anthropology of Technology

Abstract

This essay outlines the framework of a “trinitarian anthropology of technology.” It offers a theoretical and practical response to the current techno-cultural transformations of digitalization. Starting with the question of how technology can be designed and culturally appropriated in ways that genuinely enrich human life, the focus is on an interdisciplinary and holistic conception of humanity, compatible with a value-based understanding of technology and systems design. Against the backdrop of the deconstruction of the classical modern subject-object dualism in contemporary technology debates, this paper further develops the premodern trinitarian anthropology of St. Augustine. This framework results in a view of humans as temporally constituted and relational beings in constant interaction with their environment. The intricate entanglements of embodied existence with a technologically and culturally shaped environment open new perspectives on the precarity and potential of human personhood, situated between memoria (memory), intellectus (understanding), and voluntas (will). From this perspective, media technologies can either serve as sources of creativity and inspiration or deplete the energies of human life. Whether they have an alienating or invigorating effect depends on their embedding in meaning-oriented cultural and spiritual practices that enable us to interact responsively with our environment.