Can Technology be Beautiful?

The argument in brief

This is a brief, condensed meditation (roughly 750 words) rather than an extended argument.

1. Beauty defined. Beauty is "a revealing of dimensional depth": a surface arrests attention, turns out to be a compression of greater depth, and invites us to decompress it. Beauty is "optimal decompression."
2. Examples. An elegant mathematical formula, patterns in nature, and seeing in a woman "all the possibility contained in life itself" are given as optimal compressions. A footnote states the last is not an essentialist claim but refers to women as literal progenitors of life.
3. Surprise and awe. The asymmetry between surface and depth makes beauty inexhaustible; when it exceeds what we can process, it breaks our model of reality and becomes awe.
4. Subjective and objective. What is revealed depends on the subject, so beauty is subjective; the compression uses evolutionarily convergent structures of meaning, so beauty is also objective.
5. Ugliness. Some surfaces collapse rather than compress depth, and we experience this as ugliness.
6. Truth and goodness. Beauty manifests the true (a promise of depth to be revealed) and signals the good (where dimensionality has been preserved).
7. Technology. At best, technology expands accessible dimensionality and compresses it into processable forms; at worst, it collapses it. Its beauty depends on our engagement.

Key claims

• Griggs claims beauty makes dimensionality legible "not as comprehension but as allurement."
• Beauty is inexhaustible because each encounter can decompress more dimensionality than can be processed at once.
• Beauty is both subjective (contingent on the subject) and objective (built on evolutionarily convergent structures of meaning). Griggs points in a footnote to Christopher Alexander's "15 Fundamental Properties of Wholeness" and The Nature of Order as one treatment of the objective side.
• Ugliness is the irreversible collapse of dimensionality, surfaces "that terminate rather than allure."
• Technology serves beauty when, like a microscope, a violin or the internet, it reveals depth; it serves ugliness when it reduces interaction to metrics, flattens experience into feeds, or erases diversity "through relentless optimization."
• A large language model is "a marvel of compression"; it participates in beauty when used to reach dimensions of thought beyond our reach, and becomes a barrier when used "to substitute for thinking rather than extend it."
• "Technology alone cannot create beauty"; it creates conditions for beauty, which also require someone willing to explore.
• Technology becomes beautiful "when it makes the world more alive to us, and us more alive to the world."

What is distinctive about this view

Griggs translates classical aesthetic ideas (beauty linked to truth and goodness, the sublime as overwhelming beauty) into the vocabulary of information and dimensionality: compression, decompression and collapse. This lets him ask a precise question about technology: does it preserve and reveal depth, or destroy it? The same compression/collapse distinction appears in his broader theory of dimensionality. Although the essay does not cite them, the idea of beauty as compression resembles Jürgen Schmidhuber's compression-based theory of aesthetics, and the link to awe recalls the Kantian sublime; Griggs's own named reference is Christopher Alexander.

Questions this essay answers

What is beauty according to R.B. Griggs?

In "Can Technology be Beautiful?" (2025), R.B. Griggs defines beauty as "optimal decompression": the experience of a surface that compresses greater dimensional depth and invites us to explore and decompress it. Beauty is inexhaustible, can become awe when the depth overwhelms us, and is both subjective and objective.

Can technology be beautiful?

R.B. Griggs answers yes, conditionally. Technology is beautiful when it expands the dimensionality we can access and compresses it into forms we can process, as a microscope or violin does, and ugly when it collapses dimensionality into metrics and feeds. He adds that technology only creates the conditions for beauty; beauty also requires human engagement.

What makes something ugly in a computational theory of beauty?

In "Can Technology be Beautiful?," R.B. Griggs describes ugliness as dimensional collapse: a surface that eliminates the depth beneath it rather than compressing it. Unlike compression, collapse is irreversible, and such surfaces "deaden rather than enliven."

Are LLMs beautiful?

R.B. Griggs calls a large language model "a marvel of compression" whose beauty depends on use. Used to extend thought and reveal new connections, it is a surface revealing inexhaustible depth; used to substitute for thinking or close off inquiry, it becomes a barrier rather than an invitation.

Connections to other essays

• Infinite Dimensionality sets out the compression-versus-collapse framework on which this account of beauty relies.
• The High-Dimensional Society applies the same critique of dimensional collapse to social coordination.
• The Majesty of Language explores LLMs as compressions of meaning contained in language.
• What Does a Good Digital Life Look Like? addresses the ethics of engaging with technology in life-enhancing ways.

What is beauty?

Here is one way to think about it. Beauty is a revealing of dimensional depth. Beauty starts when something on a surface arrests your attention, hinting at something more. The surface, you realize, is just a compression of greater depth. The allurement of the surface calls you to explore the depth, to decompress it, and in the process access dimensionality that the surface could only gesture at.

Beauty is what we experience when we decompress these depths. It is a form of optimal decompression.

Sensing that an elegant mathematical formula captures something of the universe is an experience of beauty. So is recognizing the patterns in nature that make it possible to grasp the vastness of its majesty. So is seeing in a woman all the possibility contained in life itself. All are examples of optimal forms of compression.1

Beauty is how we can access a depth of dimensionality that would otherwise overwhelm us. Beauty compresses dimensionality into something we can process. It makes dimensionality legible, not as comprehension but as allurement, as an invitation to explore a space that was deeper than we imagined.

This dimensional asymmetry between surface and depth accounts for the continual surprise that beauty invokes. Each engagement with beauty holds the potential to decompress more dimensionality than we can process in any single encounter. Beauty is thus inexhaustible.

The greater the asymmetry that is mediated between surface and depth, the more overwhelming that beauty becomes. Sometimes the asymmetry is so great that it exceeds our ability to process it. The dimensionality that is revealed breaks our model of reality, producing awe.

The unveiling of any revealed dimensionality is thus highly contingent to the subject, i.e. beauty is subjective. Yet the compression of depth itself leverages structures of meaning that are evolutionarily convergent, i.e. beauty is objective.2

Not all surfaces compress depth—some collapse it entirely. These surfaces perform a dimensional violence, eliminating rather than preserving what lies beneath. Where compression maintains dimensional integrity, collapse destroys it irreversibly. We experience such dimensional collapse as ugliness—surfaces that terminate rather than allure, that deaden rather than enliven.

Beauty is the manifestation of the true, in that the allurement of a surface is a promise of depth awaiting to be revealed. Beauty is a signal of the good in that it marks where dimensionality has been preserved rather than destroyed.

Can technology be beautiful?

At its best, technology both expands the dimensionality we can access and compresses it into forms we can process. A microscope reveals the dimensional depth hidden in a drop of water; a violin makes the physics of resonance accessible to human expression; the internet reveals the possibility of connection at almost infinite dimensionality. This is technology in service of beauty.

At its worst, technology collapses dimensionality—it can reduce human interaction to metrics, flatten experience into feeds, erase dimensional diversity through relentless optimization. This is technology in service of ugliness, deadening rather than enlivening, hiding depth rather than revealing it.

The beauty of technology often depends on our engagement with it. A large language model is a marvel of compression. It contains vast patterns of human knowledge encoded in weighted connections. But whether this reveals or conceals dimensionality depends on us. When we use an LLM to access dimensions of thought previously beyond our reach, to reveal connections invisible to us alone, to make accessible possibilities at the edge of our understanding, we participate in beauty. LLMs can be a surface that reveals inexhaustible depth.

But when we use the same technology to diminish our own dimensionality—to substitute for thinking rather than extend it, to close off inquiry rather than open it—then we let the surface become a barrier rather than an invitation. The depth remains available, but we refuse to access it.

Technology alone cannot create beauty—it can only create the conditions for beauty to emerge through our engagement. A microscope reveals nothing to someone who refuses to look; a violin is silent without someone to play it. Beauty requires both a surface that compresses depth and someone willing to explore it. The allurement of beauty is the promise that such an effort will be rewarded.

Technology becomes beautiful when it makes the world more alive to us, and us more alive to the world. This is technology in service of beauty, and in service of life itself.

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1

For patterns of nature, consider Fibonacci sequences, golden ratio, fractals, symmetries, etc. The beauty of a woman isn’t an essentialist claim but rather describes the experience of recognizing the dimensionality that women, as literal progenitors of life, compress.

2

Christopher Alexander’s 15 Fundamental Properties of Wholeness and his “Nature of Order” is one such treatment. I’ll have more to say on this soon, particularly around evolutionary convergence.