Attentive readers of the account of Genesis 11, however, might notice that the Babel builders begin not with a plan to build a city and tower, but with the discovery of a technique for firing bricks. The determination to build the city and tower seemingly arises, at least in part, out of humanity’s intoxication with new technological potential.

…the words and works of creatures striving for a rebellious autonomy have their own tendencies to autonomy and can imprison those who supposed themselves to be their masters. Make an idol – political or technological – and it will turn on you. The Lord’s frustration of humanity’s ambitions through death, the resistance of creation, the confusion of language, the scattering of humanity, and other such means are ways in which he saves us from those who seek to be, or create, gods.

Like Nebuchadnezzar, proud in our technological capacities, our humanity is debased as technology empowers our passions to dominate us. Seeking to exercise our good human abilities in illicit ways to attain godlike power, we lose not only the godlike power we thought we had, but even our good human abilities themselves.

– Alastair Roberts, Tech Cities of the Bible.