I am within two years of what people kindly call the golden years. That marker means something to me — not as a occasion for nostalgia, but as a vantage point. I have lived through enough of history to watch the world change, and to measure what that change has cost.

The last four decades have produced a revolution in communication unprecedented in human history. Information moves faster than thought. A message composed in London reaches Manila before the next heartbeat and spreads across a nation within minutes. We have never had this before, and we have not yet reckoned seriously with what it means.

The standard response has been to call technology neutral. The internet, social media, artificial intelligence — tools, nothing more. Their morality, we are told, lies entirely with the user. But philosopher Carissa Veliz has made a persuasive case against that comfort. Technology is not of God. It is man-made, which means it is designed with intention, shaped by interest, and loaded with the biases of its creators. More often than not, those biases run toward control. Toward dominance. Toward the capture of attention and the management of perception.