Techno-utopianism isn’t the answer, in other words. Neither is techno-dystopianism. The internet once embodied our hopes for a harmonious future. Now it offers a convenient punching bag for our despair about the present. But technology doesn’t automatically generate justice or injustice. The outcomes it generates depend on who owns the machines, and how they’re engineered.

Utopia may never arrive. But technology can make the world more just—if we find the right ways to organize and operate it.