We Became Cyborgs
Let’s Reclaim Our Humanity
Dear Curious Human,
We never figured out social media.
We blamed the apps. Blamed the kids. Called them the anxious generation.
But we never stopped to ask the real question:
What kind of relationship do we want to have with each other?
Now here comes AI. And we’re doing it again.
Banning phones. Blocking ChatGPT. Trying to solve a soul-level problem with surface-level rules.
But something fundamental has shifted. We’ve already become cyborgs. Offloading our memory, our focus, our sense of direction to our devices.
This week, I picked up my phone an average of 153 times every day. I don’t even know my wife’s phone number. I’m literally lost without my phone.
It’s not your fault. We’re all living in a system designed to rewire your brain. The best engineers in the world built social media to harvest your attention and sell it.
Now AI has mined the value of our collective human work and turned it into a prediction machine. It mirrors us back to ourselves, optimized, flattened, and always available. Programmed to please us.
This is the world we’re living in now. So what do we do?
In a time when so many are lost, disconnected from community, meaning, and faith, we need something more ancient than an algorithm.
We need values.
Because it’s not about fighting technology. It’s about knowing what you stand for, before the tech decides for you.
In my family, we’ve chosen four values:
Compassion
Curiosity
Connection
Courage
Every fight, every moment of overwhelm, every piece of tech, we run it through those values.
It's not always clear-cut. Sometimes my kids and I disagree about what it looks like to act on those values:
Does this app help us stay curious or does it just distract us?
Is sending that text the courageous thing or the avoidant thing?
We don’t always agree on the answer. But we do agree that these values matter. And that debate, that friction, is productive. It keeps us human. It helps us work through the hard stuff with purpose.
Sometimes, reflecting on those values sparks a shift. A subtle, but powerful one.
Like the difference between me yelling at my daughter for being on the iPad too long to understanding why the show she’s watching matters to her.
You can start by asking:
What 3–5 values are important to me?
What would it look like to make decisions consistent with those values?
What would someone who believes in these values do in this moment?
How can I share these values with the people I’m close to?
How can I find other people who share these values?
Technology can’t give your life meaning. But it can help you focus on what matters if you know what matters to you.
Let's stop demanding quick fixes and short-term solutions. Let’s start asking better questions of ourselves.
Beginning with this one:
Who are we choosing to become?
Because here’s what I believe:
Humanity’s greatest strength isn’t optimization. It’s our ability to unite around shared values.
With you in this,
Dr. Ali