🎓 From Theology to Technology

L.M. (Michael) Sacasas is a prominent independent scholar and writer who has become one of the most insightful contemporary voices on the relationship between technology, culture, and human flourishing. Rather than focusing on the latest gadgets or policy debates, his work explores the profound moral and social consequences of our technological environment . This blog post will delve into his intellectual journey, core philosophies, and the key ideas that define his work.

Sacasas’s path to becoming a “public philosopher of technology” began unexpectedly during his graduate studies in theology . Reading sociologist Craig Gay’s The Way of the Modern World was a pivotal moment. Gay’s premise was that many people hold religious beliefs yet live as “practical atheists,” their faith having little impact on their daily lives. Gay attributed this disconnect to the economic, political, and technological structures that invisibly shape our habits and assumptions .

This insight opened a new world of thinkers for Sacasas: Lewis Mumford, Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, and Jacques Ellul. He came to understand that technology is not a neutral set of tools but a morally consequential force that shapes our lives, communities, and sense of self, often in ways we fail to notice .

His first major foray into public writing was the blog “The Frailest Thing,” a title borrowed from a pensée by Blaise Pascal: “Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world” . For a decade, this blog established him as a deep and patient critic of digital culture, shaping the thinking of many readers and thinkers in the field . In 2019, he transitioned to a newsletter format, launching “The Convivial Society,” where he continues his explorations today .

📧 The Convivial Society

The title of Sacasas’s newsletter is a direct homage to two foundational books: Jacques Ellul’s The Technological Society (1954) and, more directly, Ivan Illich’s Tools for Conviviality (1973) .

• The Influence of Ivan Illich: Illich used “conviviality” not to mean simple merriment, but to describe a society built on tools that operate at a human scale . He argued that industrial society had created tools and institutions (like modern schools and hospitals) that made individuals dependent and de-skilled, stripping communities of their autonomy .
• Sacasas’s Vision: For Sacasas, a convivial society is one that is conducive to human flourishing on human terms—at a pace and scale hospitable to us as embodied beings. It’s about creating conditions where people feel competent, autonomous, and genuinely connected to their communities, rather than being mere cogs in a bureaucratic machine . The newsletter has garnered praise from prominent figures like Nicholas Carr, Ezra Klein, and Shannon Vallor for its nuanced and deliberate approach .

💡 A “Public Philosopher of Technology”

Sacasas’s work is characterized by a refusal of quick takes or simple pro/anti-tech stances. Instead, he offers a framework for asking better questions. He is motivated by a fundamental desire: “to know how we ought to live. What amounts to a good life and how does technology shape our ability to achieve, to some degree, the ideals we have for ourselves and for our communities?”

Key Ideas and Frameworks

🤔 The Questions Concerning Technology

Sacasas’s most widely recognized contribution is a simple but powerful list of questions designed to help us uncover the hidden moral implications of our tools . He argues that artifacts have ethics built into them; the only question is their nature . These questions move beyond simple utility (“Does this app help me?”) to probe deeper, personal, and societal effects:

• “What sort of person will the use of this technology make of me?”
• “What habits will the use of this technology instill?”
• “What will the use of this technology encourage me to notice?”
• “What was required of the earth so that I might be able to use this technology?”

A journalist who put these questions to the test found himself reflecting on how his smartphone camera made him more anxious about his appearance, and how Zoom meetings, while saving time, left him more exhausted .

🌿 The Wisdom of Embodied Experience

Sacasas frequently highlights the importance of our physical existence, which is often neglected in digital environments. In a poignant newsletter essay, he shared a personal story about caring for his ill, aging beagle, which required him to go outside several times a night for over a year . Sleep-deprived and stressed, he nonetheless felt a surprising sense of resilience, which he attributed to being forced into an “alternative attunement to the world.” He was more attentive to the stars, the moon, and the changing seasons. This experience, he suggested, helped him feel “grounded, centered, or tethered”—less alienated and more integrated into the natural rhythms of life .

🌐 A Nuanced Definition of Technology

Sacasas argues that the word “technology” itself has become so broad as to be almost useless. To speak of being “for” or “against” technology is nonsensical . He encourages a more granular view, looking at specific tools and, more importantly, the complex systems they are a part of. For example, the automobile is not just a machine; it necessitated a system of roads, suburbs, and even the standardization of time zones, all of which have profound social consequences . Ultimately, he draws on Heidegger to suggest that the “essence of technology is a way of seeing the world”—as a set of problems to be solved through technical means, a perspective that can reduce profound human experiences, like death, to mere “engineering problems” .

💻 Critiques of Digital Culture

Sacasas’s philosophical framework leads to sharp, insightful critiques of our current digital landscape. He doesn’t just critique for the sake of critique, but to illuminate how our tools reshape us.

“Nine Theses Regarding the Culture of Digital Media”

In this series of provocative aphorisms, he traces the evolution of communication and selfhood:

• On Truth: “Information scarcity encourages credulity. Information abundance encourages cynicism. Information superabundance encourages epistemic nihilism. “
• On Selfhood: Digital media collapses the romantic, individuated self of the print era, subsuming the individual into “constantly generating and degenerating swarms of information.”
• On Freedom: In a digital culture, freedom is no longer choosing for oneself, but rather seeking “relief from the obligation to choose.”

A Playful but Piercing Exercise: “How to Make Twitter Morally Useful in Four Steps”

With characteristic wit, Sacasas offers a method for using social media as a tool for self-reflection. The steps are: 1) Compose your tweet with little reflection. 2) Hold the tweet up as a mirror of your soul and ask yourself why you wrote it and what you hope it will accomplish. 3) Delete the drafted tweet. 4) Repent and resolve to be a better human being . The exercise is a perfect example of his approach: using the technology itself to expose the habits it instills, and then choosing a different path.

“Everyone Is ‘Protestant’ Online”

In a podcast interview, Sacasas offered a fascinating cultural critique, observing that online environments flatten spiritual and embodied traditions . He suggests that digital spaces, which prioritize cognitive belief and verbal expression over ritual, practice, and physical presence, make everyone, regardless of their actual faith, behave like Protestants in a classical sense. This highlights a significant loss of “material culture” and the embodied practices that shape us in profound ways .

✨ Conclusion: Why Sacasas Matters

In an era of rapid technological change and constant online outrage, L.M. Sacasas offers a vital alternative. His work is a call to slow down, to pay attention, and to ask fundamental questions about what kind of people we are becoming. He helps us see that our tools are not neutral; they are moral forces that shape our attention, our communities, and our very understanding of what it means to be human. By drawing on a rich tradition of philosophy and media ecology, he equips us not with easy answers, but with the language and frameworks to live more intentional, thoughtful, and convivial lives in a technological age.