The first spark that leapt from wood, carefully tended by human hands sometime in the deep past, did more than push back the night. It initiated a conversation that has never stopped. That fire was a tool, and every tool since has been an answer to a fundamental human impulse: to reach into the world and reshape it. The philosopher Henri Bergson called this homo faber—humans as makers. It’s a definition that fits the early artisan shaping flint as comfortably as it fits the modern engineer writing code. Technology isn’t just what we use; it’s a primary way we express what it means to be human. This truth is too easily forgotten in an age where “technology” has become shorthand for the digital realm alone, obscuring a much longer and richer history of human fabrication.
This legacy of making, however, comes with a built-in duality. Every extension of human capability carries a double edge. That same fire that provided warmth and safety could also consume a forest. The printing press democratized knowledge and became a potent engine for misinformation. The internal combustion engine shrank continents and now warms the planet. This is the permanent condition of homo faber: we are makers whose creations inevitably act upon the world in ways we did not fully foresee. As philosopher Albert Borgmann observed, technology delivers goods—heat, light, connection—but often by displacing the very practices and engagements that gave those goods their deeper context and meaning. A modern furnace delivers heat efficiently, but it eliminates the gathering, the skill, and the communal focus required to tend a hearth.
We are witnessing a stark, physical manifestation of this tension today in the farmlands of the American Midwest. Here, a quiet but profound collision is unfolding between two very different expressions of homo faber. On one side are farmers who are themselves master technologists. They operate sophisticated GPS-guided tractors, analyze satellite data for precision agriculture, and utilize complex software to manage crop yields. Their technology is deeply relational, intended to work with the rhythms of the living world—taking from the soil and, through careful stewardship, returning to it to sustain future generations.
They are now facing the rapid expansion of massive data center complexes. These are the physical engines of our digital lives, warehouses filled with servers that demand staggering amounts of electricity and, crucially, water for cooling. Reports from communities in states like Iowa and Nebraska detail how these projects have at times drawn millions of gallons from local aquifers, sometimes without full transparency, leaving residential wells dry and, in one documented case, reducing cows’ milk production due to constant noise pollution. This is technology of a different character: it extracts vital resources—water, land, energy—to produce a commodity (data processing) that does not feed, clothe, or directly nourish the local ecology from which it takes.
This isn’t a simple story of progress versus tradition. It is a clash between two modes of making. One is oriented toward cultivation and sustenance within a living system. The other, in its current implementation, often operates on a logic of extraction and consumption. The farmer’s protest is not against technology itself, but for a recognition that making must be paired with tending. As Pope Francis articulated in his encyclical Laudato Si’, “The earth was here before us and it has been given to us.” A gift implies responsibility.
The question first posed by that ancient fire remains our most urgent one: what do we choose to make, what cost does it exact from the world, and who is responsible for tending to what remains? The challenge for homo faber in the 21st century is to wield our formidable making power with both hands. One hand must continue to build, innovate, and reach. But the other must equally be committed to the acts of maintenance, stewardship, and reciprocity. Our tools have always changed the world. The task now is to ensure they are tools for a world that can endure.
- Humans as makers
- Technology as a way to express humanity
- Duality of making and its consequences
- Farmers as master technologists
- Impact of data centers on local resources
- Need for stewardship in technology
| Expression of Homo Faber | Characteristics |
|---|---|
| Farmers | Master technologists, relational technology |
| Data Centers | Extract vital resources, non-relational |
