The people who design and create technology are – almost by definition – rich and powerful. It is their concerns which are baked into the objects which everyone else, if they are to function in a modern world, must use. Cheaper, faster, smarter, more profitable; preserving an order that puts the current “winners” on top: this is what technology is for. When AI is tasked with making things “better” we must ask, “better for whom?”
Technology is rarely designed with widows, orphans, immigrants, the poor, oppressed, or the disenfranchised in mind. It is even more rarely designed with their good in mind. Such people – almost by definition – do not have a say in the design and creation of technology that orders their existence.
How does the church fulfil its calling in a technologically driven world, to have concern for people with whom technological development is unconcerned? This course will help church leaders and their congregations engage with the theological, technological, practical, and pastoral issues raised by this question.
This course uses a ‘flipped classroom’ model of teaching, so participants will be sent material to read, listen to or watch which will be discussed during the Thursday evening online sessions.
Optional in-person discussions with Faraday team members will be held in a Cambridge pub (venue TBC) at 7.30pm on Mondays: 3 Nov, 1 Dec, 2 Feb, 2 March, 13 April.
This course is being run in partnership with The Methodist Church and Christians in Science.
Session 1, How Technology Embodies Values, Thu 23 Oct 2025, Dr Mike Brownnutt
Technology is always necessarily biassed. It necessarily embodies values and assumptions – about race, gender, wealth, ability, politics, power, education, age, culture, and religion. Sometimes these assumptions are deliberately and actively biassed against disempowered groups. Often, however, the assumptions are inadvertently biassed against such groups, because caring about such groups just never occurred to people. And sometimes, with the best or intentions to help and benefit such groups, technology works against them anyway. The first session will raise awareness of the fact that technology is not some neutral thing: it is actively working against our calling to have concern for the poor. In doing so, it will also outline some of the unique opportunities that the church has, to care in an often-uncaring age.
Session (date TBC), working title, How technology – specifically AI – can help or hurt children, Dr John Wyatt
Session 4, working title, How technology can help or hurt immigrant populations, Thu 26 Feb 2026, Dr Obert Hodzi
Session 5, working title, How technology can include or exclude people from civic life, Thu 25 March, Dr Jenny Leith
