(A) How does technology influence people for good or ill?

Summarized Answer:
Some people may be tempted to say that technology is all good or evil, but that does not take into account the complex way in which tools affect us.

Like a shovel, technology in general does work on the environment and user. A shovel may move dirt, but it also creates callouses with continued use. The principle is true for virtual technology: Twitter can communicate short thoughts around the globe and it also trains the user to express thoughts within 160 characters.

Hence, technology affects us in two ways: (1) effects on the environment and (2) relevant effects on the user. Both factors need to be considered in deciding whether it is prudent or moral to use technology in a particular way.


Definitions and Details:

By environment, I mean to include any external effects of the technology, not limited to "environmental" effects. By user, I mean anyone controlling or interacting with that technology.

(1) Tools expand our abilities, which can be used for good or evil. Autonomous cars would be great for handling multiple asynchronous commuter drop offs and pickups. But, could an autonomous car be modified to remotely commit homicides? Perhaps. And so our capacity for good and evil increases. The same can be said about past technological advances: social media and websites have allow people greater access to the Good News as well as dangerous and evil content.

(2) Tools also change their users, either to improve or degrade one's abilities, morals, and person. For instance, personalied websites (Facebook) may lead people to expect the world to revolve around their tastes and interests, but this egotism degrades the human. People were made for relationships, arguably a relationship with their Creator, and egotism corrupts the virtues that grow that relationship. The pont is that people adapt to their tools, and the adaptation is not necessarily postive for the functiong and virtue of the user.

For more information, read From the Garden to the City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology by John Dyer.