Technology is neutral and sterile. Now, technology is the nature

The words of Octavio Paz, “Technology is neutral and sterile. Now, technology is the nature of modern man; it is our environment and our horizon. Of course, every work of man is a negation of nature, but at the same time, it is a bridge between nature and us. Technology changes nature in a more radical and decisive manner: it throws it out,” are as a flame cast upon the scrolls of our time. In them lies both a lament and a revelation: that technology, once merely a tool, has become the very environment in which modern man dwells, reshaping the world so profoundly that the original rhythms of nature are cast aside. Paz, the poet of Mexico, spoke not only with the voice of reason but with the prophetic weight of one who sees the spirit of an age.

The origin of these words arises from Paz’s lifelong meditation on modernity, where machines and industry had overtaken the old worlds of soil, sky, and ritual. To him, every human creation is in some sense a negation of nature, for when we build, we alter what is given. Yet he also calls technology a bridge—for through it, we reach toward nature, interpreting it, harnessing it, conversing with it. A plow cuts the earth, but it also allows the harvest to flourish. A loom consumes thread, yet it gives birth to cloth. But in the modern age, Paz warns, technology no longer only transforms nature—it expels it, replacing the forest with concrete, the silence of rivers with the roar of engines, until man’s horizon is no longer the mountain or the sea, but the gleaming city of glass and steel.

History offers stark testimony to this truth. Consider the story of the Industrial Revolution, when England’s green fields gave way to factories, and the sky grew dark with smoke. For centuries, nature had been both the adversary and companion of man. But in those decades, it was thrust aside; rivers were poisoned, forests cut, and air thickened until even breathing became labor. Technology, once a servant, had remade the very environment of man, and the songs of birds were drowned by the clang of iron. This is what Paz means when he says technology no longer merely changes nature—it throws it out.

Yet the matter is not entirely despair. For though technology is, in his words, neutral and sterile, it is shaped by the heart and hands of man. A hammer may build a house or shatter a skull; a reactor may power a city or annihilate it. The sterility Paz describes is not a condemnation but a warning: technology bears no morality of its own. It becomes our horizon because we choose to dwell in it. And thus, the weight of responsibility falls upon humankind—not only to create, but to guide, to restrain, and to weave into our tools a remembrance of the earth they displace.

The deeper meaning, then, is that modern man risks exile from nature. In building our bridges, we have forgotten the shores from which they extend. If technology becomes our sole environment, we risk losing touch with the primal ground that sustains life itself. Like the myth of Icarus, who soared on wings of wax only to fall when he forgot the limits of nature, so too do we risk burning in the brilliance of our own inventions. Paz reminds us: our triumph over nature may also be our undoing, unless we remember that technology is a bridge, not a replacement.

For those who hear this teaching, the lesson is grave but clear. Embrace technology as a tool, but never let it become your prison. Walk among the machines, but do not forget to walk also among the trees. Use your devices to learn, to create, to connect—but also to remember that life is older than the screen, that the soil and the stars still whisper truths deeper than circuits can hold. In every act of creation, seek not only to conquer nature, but to live in balance with it.

So let us pass this wisdom forward: technology is our horizon, but it must not blind us to the eternal sky. It is sterile until the human heart breathes meaning into it. It is a negation of nature, yet it can also be a bridge—if we choose wisely how we build and how we walk. Let us, then, shape our tools with humility, remembering always that to throw out nature is to throw out ourselves. For man without nature is like a tree without roots, alive for a season, but destined to wither.