Dr. John Cuddeback argues that science, big business, and the pursuit of power form a "toxic trio" that currently determines what technologies get developed and how they're used—none of which is capable of answering the truly decisive question of whether a technology actually serves human flourishing. Drawing on the Aristotelian-Thomistic distinction between speculative and practical reasoning, and further between "making" (governed by art, which can be misused) and "doing" (governed by prudence, which cannot), Cuddeback locates the real fix not at the political or industrial level but in the household: "domestic prudence," the virtue of ordering everything in a home's life to the true good of its members, is squarely within a family's power even when the wider culture isn't. He argues many technologies—the smartphone chief among his examples—never should have been developed, or at least demand far more scrutiny than the "innovation is good by default" instinct of a technocratic culture allows, since the inner logic of technology tends toward control and power and will overrun prudence unless deliberately reined in. His practical counsel: cultivate intentionality about what a good home life looks like, default to skepticism toward new technologies rather than presumption in their favor, and build a concrete vision of good work and true leisure in the home, using technology only in service of that vision rather than letting it set the terms. He closes by reading Pope Benedict XVI's reminiscence of his own simple, technology-free childhood as a picture of the ordinary, unmediated goods worth protecting.
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