A new era of technological change is upon us. It threatens to supplant the human person and make the family functionally and biologically unnecessary. But this anti-human outcome is not inevitable. Conservatives must welcome dynamic innovation, but they should oppose the deployment of technologies that undermine human goods. We must enact policies that elevate the family to a primary constituency of technological advancement. Our aim should be a newly re-functionalized household for the twenty-first century.
Technology is meant to empower the human person. We have seen, however, that if left ungoverned, technological advancement too easily comes to hinder human flourishing and threatens the human person and the family. Many of the most important political questions of our day have been prompted by the moral implications of new technologies: Should human life be artificially created or destroyed? Can people change genders? Should digital obscenity be accessible to all ages in the name of free speech? Should jobs that sustain families be automated? We must discern prudent ways to govern technology in order to keep the human person, human dignity, and the common good as the central goals of our politics. We must ensure that new technologies serve human life and the human family, not the other way around.
Our present technologies are not, however, designed to serve the family. They were developed to accomplish military, bureaucratic, and corporate purposes, without regard to effects on families. American technology has undermined the moral authority of parents, the procreative potential of spouses, and the ability of families to shape their communities; it has commodified the data, relationships, and bodies of children; and it has enabled the out-sourcing of jobs that once supported a healthy marriage culture among the poor and working class. This crisis affects almost every aspect of our national life. The family generates society, and a culture of thriving families is an indispensable condition of social health. A nation that is hostile to the family is hostile to itself.
