What Technology Takes From Us – And How To Take It Back
By Rebecca Solnit | The Guardian | January 29, 2026
In an era where artificial intelligence (AI) and digital technologies increasingly mediate our lives, we face profound questions about what is lost when we surrender the everyday acts of presence, connection, and doing to machines. Silicon Valley’s drive for convenience, efficiency, and productivity has reshaped not only how we work but also how we relate—to each other, to the natural world, and to ourselves.
Rebecca Solnit, writing for The Guardian, explores these issues in a thoughtful long read that delves into the subtle, often overlooked human experiences that technology sidelines and how reclaiming these is essential for our well-being and social fabric.
The Quiet Power of Doing
Solnit begins with a personal memory that resonates with many—spending summers wading into a creek to pick blackberries. This is more than a simple act of harvesting fruit. It is a sensory immersion: judging the perfect ripeness by touch and sight, listening to birds and bees, feeling the cool water, bearing the scratches and stains that mark genuine engagement with the world. The berries become a symbol not just of produce but of process, presence, and pleasure.
This ties into a concept Solnit’s friend, environmental activist Chip Ward, calls “the tyranny of the quantifiable.” When we try to calculate the cost of gardening by mere weight or hours, we miss the intangible values: the scent of tomato leaves, the quiet time watching life unfold, the pride in creating something ourselves. These pleasures and engagements embody the idea of "to do as well as to have."
Whether it’s blackberries or tomatoes, dancing or dog-walking, cake decorating or dirt-biking, everyone has their own form of deep immersion in the moment. These embodied experiences are vital. Yet, the prevailing ideology—amplified by Silicon Valley and capitalist efficiency models—pressures us to maximize what we have while minimizing what we do, eroding such connections.
Silicon Valley’s Quantifiable Tyranny and Social Isolation
The domination of quantitative metrics in technology culture has reframed our perception of time and relationships. We are encouraged to view social interaction and being in public as inefficient or risky, pushing us towards isolation and increased online time. While convenience and productivity increase, public spaces and forms of casual human contact, once the fabric of community life and democracy, dwindle.
Regular errands like buying milk, socks, or a newspaper once involved incidental social exchanges, observations of the environment, and a feeling of ownership over one’s neighborhood. These small moments help build tolerance for difference, belonging, familiarity with the local world, and democratic engagement. By discouraging these acts, technology fosters alienation and weakens social resilience.
Solnit recounts an experience at her local Indian restaurant, now relying on touchscreen ordering systems that eliminate human interaction. Assisting an elderly woman through the process highlighted how these changes slow us down and reduce opportunities for connection. Even restaurant staff become mere operators of machines rather than social hosts, adding to their alienation.
At a local bookstore frequented by tech workers, the shop assistant remarked on the rarity of eye contact or meaningful exchange with customers—especially people under 30, shaped by a tech culture that privileges minimal interaction.
The Loss of Solitude, Thought, and Creation
Silicon Valley’s latest pitch says, "You’ll never think alone again," promoting AI as a collaborator—but this misses why solitude, independent thought, and direct human communication are valuable.
Author and psychologist Sherry Turkle, who has studied technology’s psychosocial impact since the 1970s, highlights that screens undermine our capacity for solitude, which is foundational to empathy and creative thought. The ability to be alone, to reflect quietly and engage deliberately with the world, might seem passive but is central to mental health and social connection.
When we hand over thinking, creating, and communicating to AI or automated systems, these abilities atrophy. We risk losing not only skills but parts of our identity, resilience, and relationships.
Reclaiming What Technology Takes
Solnit’s essay is not an anti-technology manifesto but a call to resist passive acceptance of the way technology reshapes our lives and relationships. The antidote lies in conscious collective effort: revaluing the embodied, the local, the communal, and the unquantifiable.
By choosing presence over convenience, participation over detachment, doing over passive having, we can take back what technology risks taking from us. The very human processes of engagement—the messy, scratched, stained, joyful acts of living—are worth defending, cultivating, and prioritizing.
In the face of increasing digital mediation, Solnit urges us to reclaim deep immersion in the natural world, meaningful social encounters, solitary reflection, and creative independence. These are the foundations of a connected and resilient human experience, the barriers to alienation and loneliness, and ultimately the source of a life fully lived.
For more reflections on AI and technology’s impact on society, explore Rebecca Solnit’s full essay in The Guardian.
