What Technology Wants

Kevin Kelly shows us the similarities in the evolution of biological life and the evolution of technology. This is demonstrated with logarithmic graphs that are hard to dispute, and the always fascinating examples of similar lifeforms/technologies emerging simultaneously yet independently at different locations.

So, technology is this emergent phenomenon that accompanies biological life and seems to take over with rapid speed. And we are all scared. But: While the forces driving biological evolution (1. structural inevitability due to laws of physics, 2. guided by history, 3. adaptation due to natural selection) create a momentum that is out of our control, technological evolution does leave a certain amount of control to humans in its adaptive drive. Here Kelly gives us back a shred of hope that we are not total slaves of technology.

Kelly is pro technology, and he spends a large amount of time voicing arguments in response to all the Luddites of this world. The big points being that technology does more good than it does bad, and that all that is now criticized about new technologies will disappear once those technologies move beyond their infancy.