“We read so as not to feel alone.” — C.S. Lewis (possibly)

Dan Turello is a cultural historian of medieval Italy, a much published photographer, and the author of the new Connection: How Technology Can Make Us Better Humans. I’m sceptical. Especially the promise (or illusion) of better humans. But Turello’s definition of technology goes back further than most — all the way to the original fig leaf. When Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, the first thing they did, he reminds us, was cover their bodies. Technology, then, in Turello’s framing, is everything that extends beyond the human body. Clothing is technology. Double-entry bookkeeping is technology. The iPhone is just the latest chapter of our technology story that began at the beginning.
His most surprising argument: our current tech anxiety has medieval roots. St. Francis of Assisi was what he calls a trust-fund kid “avant la lettre” — his father being a wealthy 13th century silk merchant at a time when northern Italy was Silicon Valley. Francis sold some of his dad’s silk, gave the money away, stripped naked before a bishop, and founded a counterculture movement. The first tech backlash wasn’t against AI. It was against double-entry bookkeeping. Dante idealised an earlier Florence — what scholars call “paleolithic chic.” Sound familiar?
On AI, Turello goes a bit Saint Francis on us. Large language models generate material without lineage — you can’t trace where ideas came from. Technology is about power: who controls the storyline. Making us better humans requires recovering agency. Dante wrote the entire Divine Comedy without Claude. We can barely write an email without a little help from our friends at ChatGPT. Machiavelli donned the robes of the past to think. We might try putting ours on too. But then isn’t that a tech solution too?

Five Takeaways
• St. Francis: Trust-Fund Kid, First Tech Critic. His father was a silk merchant. Francis stripped naked and founded counterculture. The first backlash was against bookkeeping, not AI.
• Technology Is Everything Beyond the Naked Body. Fig leaves. Clothing. The iPhone. All iterations of the same metaphysical destabilisation since Genesis.
• Dante Wrote Without Being Able to Edit. The entire Divine Comedy from memory. We can’t write an email without ChatGPT. That should concern us.
• LLMs Generate Without Lineage. You can’t trace the sources. Technology is about who controls the storyline. Without provenance, there’s no truth.
• Agency Still Matters. Machiavelli donned the robes of the past to think and write. We might try putting ours on too.

About the Guest
Dan Turello is a writer, cultural historian, and photographer. Connection is published by Columbia University Press.
References
Connection: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0231220154
Dan Turello: https://www.danturello.com

About Keen On America
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.
Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow

Chapters:
00:00:00 Introduction: has technology made you a better human?
00:03:22 The iPhone vs. the decisive moment: Bresson and photography
00:05:39 The orange cushion: an ode to imperfection
00:06:27 St. Francis of Assisi: the first tech critic
00:07:22 800 years of tech anxiety: from double-entry bookkeeping to AI
00:11:27 Žižek, capitalism, and the love-hate relationship with technology
00:13:50 Fig leaves to iPhones: technology as everything beyond the naked body
00:15:00 Marinetti, Svevo, and the mammoth: technology as relationship
00:17:54 Walter Benjamin, The Matrix, and who controls the storyline
00:20:51 Bresson’s decisive moment vs. Nietzsche’s blow it up
00:22:25 Agency under attack: reclaiming embodied experience
00:25:47 Machiavelli donning the robes of the past
00:28:44 Nostalgia: a virus or an emotional homecoming?
00:30:29 Anthropic, AI, and the question of control
00:33:38 Is now the best time to be alive?
00:35:16 What would Dante make of ChatGPT?