Beyond Progress: Technology, Ethics, and Interdependence

Tragedy has historically accompanied Western narratives of technology, from Prometheus to Oppenheimer, framing invention as a force that promises progress while courting catastrophe. This Eurocentric lens, however, obscures non‑Western traditions that have long reflected on technological excess through ethics of balance, care, and interdependence. This article proposes a transcultural and existential framework for understanding technology not merely as an instrument of progress or disaster, but as a relational and culturally situated agent. Drawing on Yoruba mythology, particularly the figure of Ogun as an ambivalent deity of technique, creation, and violence, the paper examines how technological power is ethically constrained by communal responsibility and ritual regulation. It then turns to Mesoamerican worldviews, where technologies such as chinampas and agricultural calendars were embedded in cosmologies of reciprocity, ritual time, and ecological care rather than optimization. Narratives and practices among the San people of the Kalahari further emphasize restraint, balance, and the avoidance of accumulation, situating technical knowledge within social cohesion and environmental limits. The Taoist principle of wu‑wei complements these perspectives by framing technique as alignment with natural flows rather than domination. From a South American perspective, the article analyzes how contemporary extractivism, particularly lithium, cobalt, and data industries, reproduces a modern Promethean tragedy in which promised ecological salvation masks territorial sacrifice and structural inequality. Finally, the paper examines generative artificial intelligence as a cultural technology and «context machine,» arguing that evaluating AI solely through performance metrics perpetuates technological determinism. Instead, a hermeneutic approach grounded in technodiversity, relational ethics, and situationality enables more just and sustainable technological imaginaries.