"What Technology Wants": Kevin Kelly Sees Tech as an Autonomous Being (Forget the Singularity)
Posted by Alex_Pasternack on Thursday, Oct 21, 2010
Expanding on ideas developed on his Technium blog, Wired founder Kevin Kelly’s new book, “What Technology Wants,” imagines the world through the eyes of technology, as if they were part of an autonomous system, dictated by many of the principles of evolutionary biology.
It sounds like a provocative way of thinking. Speaking at the New York Public Library on Tuesday night, he made it clear that he isn’t interested in the Singularity, that future moment when computer ‘thinking’ surpasses human cognition. Rather, Kelly wants to look at the ways we use our technology – defined, in the classical sense as just about any skill, craft, idea, method, or system – and how they can help us make our world better.
“We are kind of evolution’s way to invent minds that evolutionary biology could not make, and ways of thinking that biology could not reach,” he told the library audience. “It’s eseential that we understand the nature of technology so that we can begin to change it. Because it’s our mind child.” (Above, you can see a lecture on the topic he gave at TEDxAmsterdam last year.)
While I haven’t yet read the book, his tone at the event – where he spoke alongside writer Steven Johnson – cut the difference between an almost spiritual techno-optimism and (a very muted) skepticism. On his ‘Cool Tools’ site, he offers “some provocative things I see through its point of view”:
- Technology is the most powerful force on the planet.
- Technology is an extension of evolutionary life, best thought of as the 7th kingdom of life.
- Humanity is our first technology; We are tools.
- Technology is selfish; as a system it exhibits its own urges and tendencies.
- Technologies cannot be banned, and none go extinct.
- The progression of technologies is inevitable.
- Because technologies are inevitable we can prepare to optimize their benefits.
- Technology is not neutral but serves as an overwhelming positive force in human culture.
- We have a moral obligation to increase technology because it increases opportunities.
- The origins of technology lie in the Big Bang.
- Technology preceded humans and will continue beyond us.
- Among the things technology wants are increased diversity, complexity, and beauty.
- Technology may be as much a reflection of the divine as nature is.
- Technology is an infinite game, a grand story we can align ourselves with for greater meaning.
What I learned from writing this book is that I want to minimize the amount of technology in my own life while maximizing it for others. I want the largest pool of choices possible so that I can select a minimal set of highly-evolved tools that will optimize my gifts. At the same time I have a moral obligation to maximize the amount of technologies in the world at large so that others may also select their minimal set from this ever growing pool of possibilities.
His hope is to offer us “a way to anchor your own self in the face of ceaseless accelerating technological change.”
Also see our video and text interviews with Jaron Lanier, author of “You Are Not a Gadget.”
Filed under:
About the author
Email: alexp at motherboard dot tv. @pasternack,
