WHEN TECHNOLOGY FORGETS ITS MAKERS

 WHEN TECHNOLOGY FORGETS ITS MAKERS

Technology fulfills its highest purpose when it serves the people who create, use, and are affected by it. Every innovation is the result of countless human hands and minds—workers, engineers, technicians, educators, caregivers, and families whose labor, sacrifice, and imagination make progress possible. When technology advances while forgetting these makers, progress loses its moral direction.

The purpose of innovation is not simply to increase efficiency or expand profit. It is to improve human life, strengthen communities, and create opportunities that allow people to flourish. When workers become expendable, when experience is treated as a cost rather than a gift, or when technological advancement is pursued without adequate concern for those displaced by change, society risks valuing machines more highly than the people who created them.

The Gospel offers a different vision. Jesus never measured a person's worth by productivity or usefulness. He drew near to ordinary laborers, welcomed those whom society overlooked, and revealed that every human being possesses an immeasurable dignity because each bears the image of God. The Cross reminds us that people must always remain the purpose of every system, never its sacrifice.

As artificial intelligence and automation reshape the future of work, innovation must be accompanied by responsibility. New technologies should expand human opportunity, support meaningful work, and help those whose livelihoods are transformed by change. Progress reaches its highest calling when it strengthens both invention and inclusion, excellence and compassion.

For the greatest achievement of technology is not the intelligence of its machines.

It is the wisdom with which humanity remembers its makers.
The neighbor is where reality becomes visible.

Proximity is the proof of mercy.
The Cross teaches us to draw near, so that no maker is forgotten by the future they helped create.

Pastor Steven G. Lee
St. GMC Corps
July 7, 2026

*The tech sector in Silicon Valley experienced roughly 246,000 job losses globally in 2025, a severe downturn that has hit California doubly hard as its overall share of U.S. tech employment shrunk.The primary catalyst for this massive workforce contraction has been a structural shift toward Artificial Intelligence (AI). Tech companies are shifting operational expenditures away from human salaries to pour billions of dollars into capital expenditures like data centers and specialized chips.