Overall, this is an excellent book (I'd rate it as 9 out of 10). Kelly is a broad and original thinker. And those of us that enjoy original thinking will be stimulated by this book.

However, prior to reading Kelly's book, I encourage you to read the first chapter, at least, of Ray Kurzweil's book The Singularity is Near. I'll explain why shortly.

Kelly writes: "Scientists had come to a startling realization: however you define life, its essence does not reside in material forms like DNA, tissue, or flesh, but in the intangible organization of the energy and information contained in those material forms. And as technology was unveiled from its shroud of atoms, we could see that at its core, it, too, is about ideas and information. Both life and technology seem to be based on immaterial flows of information." So far, so good. But then Kelly goes on to say that while it was clear to him "that technology was an extension of natural life" he proceeds to ask "in what ways was it [technology] different from nature?" Ultimarely Kelly finds 'technology' is too constrained a term, so he coins the term 'technium', which he defines as "the greater, global, massively interconnected system of technology all around us." I think, unfortunately, that the introduction of this term actually dilutes the clarity of Kelly's message.

And this is where Ray Kurzweil's book The Singulariy is Near comes in. Kurzweil makes a much clearer and compelling argument about the inherent trajectory of order in the universe. For those of you that are data oriented, one need not look beyond Kurzweil's logarithmic plot of "Canonical Milestones" presented in Chapter 1 of The Singularity is Near: there isn't much arguing that for the last ten plus billion years, biology/technology has evolved/increased at an exponential rate. Over the long-haul of cosmological time, nothing - not an asteroid collision with earth, not an ice age, not the black plague, not a world war - has derailed this exponential increase in order. Kelly attempts at length to build such a case, but the case he makes is a bit muddled. It is actually much easier to digest and accept Kelly's thesis (that technology has an inherent and inevitable direction) after reading Kurzweil's book.

With that said, Kelly succeeds brilliantly in weaving a narrative that brings to life various aspects of biological and technological evolution. This is a well researched book with hundreds of citations. Kelly clearly started his conceptual investigations with technology in mind, but he successfully traces technology's roots to biology. My educational background is in genetics, and I was surprised and pleased to find a very thoughtful discussion, in chapter 6, of biological evolution. Kelly traces the origin of life, making a compelling argument that physics and chemistry dictate the path of biological evolution. For example, the structure of carbon - that can simultaneously bind four other elements, such as oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, or another carbon atom - results in it being extraordinarily likely that higher ordered chemical structures would be carbon-based, ultimately culminating in DNA, biology's self-replicating machinery. Indeed, evolution, biological and technological, is probably much more constrained (as in it follows a fairly narrow and predictable path) than current popular orthodoxy suggests.

In chapter 7 Kelly speaks brilliantly of technological convergence, dispelling the notion that technological advancements are the brainchild of the individual scientist, but rather that inventions result from a synthesis of knowledge that is readily available to multiple fertile minds (and not simply the result of the thinking of one lone archetype genius).

Kelly's unique perspective shines through in Part 3 of his book, where he discusses the Unabomber and the Amish (yes, the Unabomber and the Amish!). What I personally very much like and admire about Kelly is his humanity. He very much considers the utility function of technology, and readily admits that certain technologies, or certain aspects of technology, can be stifling or dehumanizing. But after all is said and done, he returns to the premise that the exponential growth of technology is inevitable, and that it is up to each individual human to choose how to maximize the utility function of technology in his or her life.

Unfortunately Kelly drags out the book unnecessarily as the final two (long) chapters are long on words and short on conceptual impact.

My conclusion: physics dictates the order observed in the universe, and physics dictates that the observed order increases. Kelly's book does make me rethink my concept of free-will on a macro scale. On a micro (individual human) scale clearly there are many choices, some that increase overall fitness and some that decrease it . . . but on a macro scale, it appears that we collectively have less choice, or at least less control, than I'd previously imagined. That is the overall value of this book: juxtaposing human choice with the inevitable consequences of exponential growth of ordered information (or of the technium, to use Kelly's terminology).

What Technology Wants is a slightly puzzling title which poked my interest. Can technology actually "want" something? What does that phrase mean? Does it attempt to imply that technology has a will of its own, is it is a "force of nature", or just something inevitable built in the rules of the universe?

These questions might sound a bit like "hippy-talk" (for lack of a better term) and while reading the first chapters of the book, which try to grasp this rather evasive concept, it felt rather hard to follow out where the author tries to lead. Solid lines of reasoning do emerge eventually, so if the narrative feels a bit vague in the beginning, one should not give up. Getting the grips on the driving force behind all the technology that most of us humans has ready access to, and what this actually means, is to say the least a rather daunting task. Also, I suppose the book tries to cater for many readers, not just the tech-savvy, so it attempts to gather everyone and provide a foundation on which the ideas and theories of subsequent chapters can build on.

The amount of background research made for the book is phenomenal. He devotes a large part of the book on the Amish, being that they are a successful group that chooses to live outside the "normal" western civilization, actively choosing to abstain from much of today's technology. However, he notes, crucially in my (and his ) opinion, that the Amish would not be able to function without the rest of the society, and that they continually lag about 50 years behind.

This choosing of technology is not specific to Amish though. Everyone is doing it, one way or the other. Often, we are not very consistent in our choices. I.e. we may be on the cutting edge on one part, but several generations back on another, just because we want to.

Kelly relates this to the fact that Amish seem to live a pretty happy and unstressful life, at least in comparison to many of the rest of us. They perform their honest work and labor with the tools they have, being fairly content with the situation. They choose their tools by waiting for the rest of society (and select individuals of their own) to try out technologies before choosing that which is good and not disruptive to their way of living. This of course relies on the fact to the rest of us continues to provide spare parts for old tech, as well as continuously producing new technology.

An interesting side-fact (related to the issue of spare parts above) that is stated is that, apparently, no technology ever dies. You can find somewhere to buy a piece of flint and steel, an axe, an abacus, vacuum tubes (for your "this-goes-to-eleven" guitar amp), a vinyl player, etc. It don't doubt it at all, and it does help to choose between various technologies.

The book also contains a treatise on the unabomber. Being Swedish (and rather young at the time of the event), I knew very little about him before reading this book. There are some excerpts of the unabombers manifesto included (and discussed) in the book, which make the case that technology is inevitable and people cannot escape it. From this, IIRC, the unabomber draws the conclusion that since it's forced upon people by the system, so the system (and/or civilization) such as it is must be destroyed completely for the people to be free. Most of us agree with the first part, but our rejection of the latter conclusion probably separates civilization from apocalypse. (Also, even the unabomber tried to reject civilization and technology for several years, but could not do so completely, since he needed bullets for his rifle, rope for his traps and gasoline for the car to be able to travel to trade these things.)

Kelly proffers the same statement here, which is that technology in something inevitable, in the same sense that the universe has given us DNA, multi-cellular organisms, mammals, humans and civilization (for better or worse). One simply cannot prevent technology from appearing, given how far everything have gone already, and from where it actually started (i.e. the primordial soup). Complexity, and the perpetual increase thereof, is inherent in the foundations of the universe. We've had natural evolution for almost four billion years, and for the last ten to twenty thousand years (give or take a few), mankind (a product of the above) has been selecting, domesticating, refining and reworking different parts of nature to its liking. Now, we're selecting technology instead, and technology is undergoing evolution under the same criteria that (probably) made us domesticate the wolf rather than the hyena. (It's more beautiful, more intelligent, more adaptable, etc etc.)

This strive towards beauty, complexity, adaptability, etc etc is going on with technology today. Personally, I see this in the world of computer components, libraries, frameworks, utilities, etc. The open-source ecosystem a good example of this evolutionary process, as libraries come, evolve and leave. Some evolve quickly then stagnate when there is no opposition, then either gets wiped out when a new, better toolkit appear, or they attract sufficient interest (from it's users and developers) to catch up. The book's final chapters summarizes a number of criteria that are selected for in the evolutionary process, that will continue to be the driving force of change as technology evolves into more diverse, specialized, complex, interlinked, adaptable and beautiful manifestations..

Kelly, rather early, names the entire technological sphere the Technium. In the end, he concludes that what it wants is just to live and prosper, just like any other self-evolvable entity. The difference is that the Technium can evolve a thousand or a million times faster, and that it this speed is because it does not evolve by chance (i.e. mutation), but rather the fact that it is actively driven (you could say developed) towards improvement with every generation. Also, since it's so interlinked, and has perfect memory (i.e. the Internet, more or less), it will build upon itself much faster than evolution (wherein for instance the eye evolved independently eight times) and even faster than human civilization (which could not communicate ideas and inventions especially fast until we had the Internet).

I think this book is awesome in several ways. The question it attempts to both define, investigate and answer is immense. It is also a most relevant question, as I (and I suspect a few more) wonder where we are heading with all this technology, how it will shape us and what we can do, if anything, to guide it during its evolution. And since it actually manages to pull it off, I cannot by heartily recommend it to anyone that has some kind of interest in the field.

Having left me me with a sense that there is really no difference between the big bang and the forming solar systems, life and evolution, humans and civilization and finally technology (and thus the Technium, as Kelly names it), I feel that I'm standing slightly more on firmer ground, while the world around us spins ever faster.

I recommend this book for anyone interested in the future of humanity. That should include most of us. Kelly makes up a new term --- the technium --- to include technology and all of human culture --- everything humans make, do, think, write, all human institutions and organizations, law, science, politics, art, --- everything. He draws examples from many areas of human activity and these examples illustrate his general arguments very well. They give substance to the book and are well worth knowing even if you don't accept all his theory. He talks about the Amish's considered evaluations of new technology and he mistakenly accepts Ted Kaczinsky's (the Unabomber) anti-technology arguments. "The Unabomber was Right" is the title of his chapter 10. It would have been easy to refute Kaczynski's arguments with other material Kelly provides, but he doesn't do it. In any case this book goes way beyond the Amish and the Unabomber.

Although most of his examples are about what we usually think of as technology, I wish he would have put more emphasis on the non-technology aspects of human culture such as law and current politico-economic systems since these "technologies" right now seem to need much improvement. But maybe that would require another book.

A few high points for me were his recognition that evolution is continuous from the big bang onward through the indefinite future, that evolution is a force and has a direction, that evolution wants progress. Humanity will progress in the short run and in the long run, although there can be temporary setbacks in any area. Evolution is not totally random. It has recurring patterns and biases. For example biological evolution has generated eyes independently on earth multiple times. Cultural evolution, what Kelly calls the technium evolution, is a natural seamless overlapping continuation of biological evolution since all particular evolutions are parts of the universal evolution.

Here are a few quotes everyone should understand, but most people don't or won't.

"Human nature is malleable." Yes, it evolves along with everything else, but most people act like it's fixed.

"... shared knowledge is often superior to even a million individuals."

"From one cosmic perspective information is the dominant force in our world."

"Both life and technology seem to be based on immaterial flows of information." Yes. Evolution can be seen to be the evolution of information. This is a more coherent view.

"Over time our laws, mores, and ethics have slowly expanded the sphere of human empathy."

"Life and mind emerge not as the result of freakish accidents, but as natural manifestations of matter, written into the fabric of the universe."

"Nothing is complete, all is in flux, and the only thing that counts is the direction of movement." I wish those who believe that we now know the one and only true economic system, the one that is the best of all possible, now and forever, could understand that nothing is complete, all is in flux.

"The conflict that the technium triggers in our hearts is due to our refusal to accept our nature---the truth is that we are continuous with the machines we create. We are self-made humans, our own best invention. When we reject technology as a whole, it is a brand of self hatred."

"An awful lot of the shape of your life is given to you and is beyond your control, but your freedom to choose within those givens is huge and significant."

"Anyone who is inventing, discovering, and expanding possibilities will indirectly expand possibilities for others."

"The drift toward mutualism in the technium is moving us toward the old dream: to maximize both individual human autonomy and the power of people working together." The old apparent dilemma of individual versus community can now be seen to be an illusion. Individual and community are not separable in theory or practice. Neither can exist without the other. Neither can be understood without the other. Both can only have arisen together through genetic and cultural (memetic) coevolution.

"In the future we'll find it easier to love technology."

"... the technium is rapidly discovering new ways to know."

"... it is evolving more ability to evolve, or greater evolvability."

"If we fail to enlarge the possibilities for other people, we diminish them, and that is unforgivable."

I have a few disagreements or instances where I would put a different emphasis.

"The technium is a global force beyond human control." Kelly should be more careful with statements like this. Such statements feed the fear bugaboo many people have of technology. We always have some control but never total control. This is the nature of existence in general. This is nothing particular to technology.

"We are at a tipping point where the technium's ability to alter us exceeds our ability to alter the technium." This is an apparent "us vs them" dilemma where the us and the them are actually inseparable both in principle and in practice. The technium is part of humanity and humanity is part of the technium. Neither can be understood without understanding the other. They really are not two separate things at all. Neither would or could or can exist without the other. They can only have come into existence together through their coevolution. The quoted sentence is meaningless. It's a bogyman. It's a misunderstanding of evolution. There is a unity here, and unity means unsplittable. Humanity is more than warm bodies. Humans use things and make things. You can't be human without moving around and changing the world. The mistake is assuming humans can be separated from the rest of the world and the things we create (the technium).

"Ted Kaczynski ... was right about one thing: Technology has its own agenda. It is selfish." Wrong, wrong, wrong! See the preceding paragraph. Another way to see that technology cannot have its "own" agenda is that it is coevolving inseparably with us and thus any agenda it may have is also ours. This coevolution can also be seen as expanding us as individual humans by expanding our minds. OK, we have a warm body and a warm wet mushy brain. What else? We have a mind. Our immaterial mind is all the information our brain and body have or use to run our life. The mind, being information, is not localized only to the brain or body. The mind extends beyond the body. It is now clear, as Kelly notes, that much of our memory resides on the web. Much of our thought occurs outside our bodies. Even doing simple things such as making and using written notes, doing long division with pencil and paper or a calculator prove that our minds extend beyond our bodies and brains. Our minds are living and evolving, always changing. (How many times did you change your mind today?) So as the technium expands and evolves, our minds are expanding and evolving with it. So the technium can't get "ahead" of us. It can't leave us "behind". Evolving, expanding human culture can't leave humans behind. Humans are inseparable from human culture.

Kelly quotes Kaczynski: "The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs. Instead it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs of the system." The system was created to satisfy human needs. In so far as the system does not satisfy human needs humans can modify it so it does satisfy them. Since the system and humans are evolving inseparably together as humans modify the system we can expect that the system will modify humans and their needs. This is coevolution. In coevolution, both "parts" change. So it is a gross misunderstanding of evolution to just say, as Kaczynski does, that "it is human behavior that needs to be modified to fit the needs of the system." In coevolution all parts change. Besides, human behavior is always being modified --- by wind, rain, earthquakes, food, money, disease, other people, snakes and spiders. You can continue the list. The idea of technology completely controlling us is a bogyman. It's like saying birds' nests completely control birds. Or that the beavers' technology completely controls beavers. The obvious answer to the specter of control is simple and direct: Partly yes; completely, no. Kelly clarifies this elsewhere in the book. All evolution occurs within the constraints of physics, geometry, and its previous history. Within those constraints evolution has a kind of free will.

I could comment on Kaczynski further but his mistakes all seem to arise from either his lack of understanding of evolution or his assumption that human nature is fixed or should be. Many people make similar mistakes. And most people have no conception of how evolution works. Human nature is not fixed. And all evolution is coevolution. Kelly shouldn't have mentioned Kaczynski and affirmed his negative views towards technology, not because he was the Unabomber but because his ideas about technology were so totally wrong. It's a real shame Kelly couldn't see through Kaczynski's flawed arguments although he provides enough material to refute them elsewhere in the book.

But "What Technology Wants" goes way beyond Kaczynski and the Amish.

Buy, read, and understand this book. It will speed up the progress of humanity.

Joe Rebholz

4 NOV 10

I discuss memetic evolution (cultural evolution) and the unity of individual and community in my book No More War Memes.

On one level, I agree with what many others have already mentioned; that Kelly posits a metaphysical connection between technology and human existence. In many ways he falls short of substantiating such a bold claim and that is a bit off-putting. However in the end I laud him for making such bold assertions and providing such a well researched book. In the end my main criticism is that he did not take his thesis farther.

Kelly adopts the same orientation that gave The Selfish Gene its energy. By employing the old saw that a chicken is an egg's way of making another egg is to cause a change in perspective that allows some well trod material to take on new life. It is certainly true that one can see an obsequious nature to technology in its attempts to continually find new ways to please us. From the lowest levels of Maslow's pyramid to the highest, technology, like the faithful dog, closely observers our behavior and willingly answers all our needs, expressed or unexpressed. It is chilling when we think of how our ids summon machines, sometimes with almost no conscious thought. In this way the book echos the horrors of the old scifi movie Forbidden Planet which of course was itself based on Shakespeare's The Tempest. What will we get once our machines can maintain and reproduce themselves without any help from us? Will this urge to answer our every want lead to mankind's destruction? Kelly only vaguely lets this kind of dystopic thought enter his rather optimistic work.

What I find even darker is the suggestion you can see in this work, and has been echoed in other works, that technology may completely surpass us once it becomes fully autonomous and self-reproducing. Perhaps all of humanity is nothing more than a seed which provides a temporary structure needed to grow the technium. Once it reaches it fullest manifestation it can shed this useless husk and express its own desires, desires that do not have to have anything to do with the biosphere at all. However this cheery book has none of this darkness to it although it never feels like it is more than a page away.

As mentioned elsewhere, one of Kelly's key contributions and bright spots in the book is when he talks about how people and groups deal with the relentless race toward mechanization. His description of how Amish view technology and assimilate it into their culture was far more nuanced and deep than any other piece I had read so far. It also was very encouraging to see how these people find a way to find a middle ground between outright rejection of modernity and complete embrace.

The part of this book that made me want to stand up and cheer was his section on Ted Kaczynski. I am sure he received a great deal of grief for allowing that a mass murderer had anything to say that was worth hearing. But Kelly is right that you cannot reject all messages from a madman simply because you don't like the messenger. While TK was warped, he had also given a great deal of thought to our relationship with our technology and had a good, if warped, mind. Like the Amish, he understood that technology was disruptive to human relations even if his prescriptions were bad medicine.

So for me I found this a very well crafted book by someone who knows and loves technology more than almost anyone and has the strength to say what he feels about it. For anyone else who claims to be concerned about the future of technology, this is a must read. My quibbles with the thesis leave room for a followup book. Let's hope Kelly continues his work.

One of the most thought provoking books in human history. The cofounder of Wired (who also spent half his life voluntarily, technologically homeless, so this is NOT a one-sided book) starts with a simple question: Where is technology going, what does it want, why, and what can we do about it? I can guarantee that you have many of the same concerns or (deep-seated uneasiness) that he describes.

The answers are not simple, in fact that are impossibly complex. Tracing cosmological, biological, and technological evolution Kelly makes an honest attempt at revealing the truly BIG answers--Man, God, Life, and Meaning. All within a historical and scientific framework.

This book has more facts and history than you can shake a spoon at and for those alone it's worth reading. Why is the smallest Rock ant smarter than our best computers? Humans can go to space but we can't make basic judgemental calls--Why? What tech will continue evolving and what will stay the same for millennia (more)? Why do the Amish use diesel engines drawn by horses? How many times have eyes evolved independently? How many individual times was Harry Potter written? Why do technological terrorists shop at Walmart? What level of tech will make you happy? All of these are answered in incredible, clear detail. The first quarter of the book is a very large scale view of technological evolution. This serves as the framework that is theoretically modified in more specific directions later.

The truly remarkable parts of this book occur in the 2nd and 3rd quarters. This is where Kelly takes your concerns and goes 10 steps beyond even the most audacious science fiction in describing technology as a living force in the greater evolutionary context of the Universe. It makes The Matrix seem like a puppet show and the remarkable thing is that Kelly says it is--in comparison to real life. Life really is stranger than fiction.

The last quarter loses steam as it concludes. With all his major points made, Kelly spends a lengthy analysis on how exactly future technology will develop. It is very convincing but understandably broad (and unknowable!). The last quarter does not detract one bit from the immensity of the ideas presented in the first 3 quarters.

What I like best is Kelly's passionate, clear, yet remarkably humble writing. The idea that we are nothing more than free yet completely inconsequential parts of a vast autonomous system is haunting yet inspiring. Kelly isn't concerned with fame or even academic impact. If he didn't write this, book someone else would have. Even Einstein only beat inevitability by a few years. He understands the scale of it all. Above all, he is concerned with the human element: how to make our lives better and how they will change in the immediate and long term future. As they always have.

Must read.

Quick review and recommendation:

As a person with a B.Sci and half of a Whole Systems Design masters program, employed as a computer/network test engineer, and having read way too many science/society books, I recommend What Technology Wants with the highest praise -this is the missing manual for the meaning of life for secular, scientific, technologist types.

Longer review and recommendation:

I discovered Kevin Kelly's Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, & the Economic World years after its arrival. This sounds overly dramatic, but it was a life changer. I was in a masters program (Whole Systems Design -Antioch U Seattle), a program that put all that is primitive on a pedestal, and advanced civilizations (along with their tools and lifestyles) were cast as anathema. I was choking on the putrid thesis my school was demanding we bow down to in order to walk away with a graduate diploma. I was getting high marks, but walked away before I got any dumber. When I dropped out I was midway through Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, & the Economic World.

Around this time I discovered the early draft of What Technology Wants, called The Technium. It was online, in blog format and even allowed reader comments.

What Technology Wants fits into a zeitgeist with others -most primarily Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, and Athena Techne: An Assertion of Technical, Civilized Virtue.

Summation: Kevin Kelly is on fire in this volume, it begins with an attention-getting survey of his life experience as a qualification to answer "the question", fills in the bulk of the book with quality material, and (to my delight and surprise) ends with an even stronger and bolder assertion than earlier pages had stated.

I like that the book did not wind down and end with a repeat of the book's general message, rather, in the closing pages Kelly commits heresy against the Nature First regime by saying there is more indication of God, and/or everthing good, in a cellphone than there is in a tree frog.

What Technology Wants, Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, and Athena Techne: An Assertion of Technical, Civilized Virtue are a tripartite representing a change in paradigm: the old paradigm wants to monkeywrench civilization in order to let Nature reign supreme, and these three great books of the new paradigm place technological civilization at the apex of all reality, and Kelly goes the extra mile by claiming technology is grand not because it is precious to mankind, but because it is precious to the universe.

Kevin Kelly has written a terrifically interesting book that is actually two books in one. The bookends (Parts 1 and 4) are pretty out there. In those portions of the book, Kelly aims to prove that "the technium" - "the greater, global, massively interconnected system of technology vibrating around us" (p. 11) -- is a "force" or even a living "organism" (p. 198) that has a "vital spirit" (p. 41) and which "has its own wants" (p. 15) and "a noticeable measure of autonomy." (p. 13) "The technium is whispering to itself," he says. (p. 14) At times, Kelly even seems to be longing for humanity's assimilation into the machine or The Matrix. "We can think of technology as our extended body," he says. (p. 44) He speaks repeatedly of human-machine "symbiosis." "We are now symbiotic with technology" (p. 37) and, apparently, that symbiotic bonding can get pretty intense as "humans are the reproductive organs of technology." (p. 296) Sounds a little kinky, but what the hell does that even mean? I think those are the weaker sections of the book. He sounds like one of those enviro-extremists who proselytizes about Gaia theories of Earth as a spirit or deity.

But Kelly redeems himself with eight absolutely stunning chapters in the middle two parts of the book. Gone is most of the Gaia-like talk of the technium as a living organism. Kelly instead focuses on explaining to us in plain terms the progression of technology in our lives and how we've come to cope with it. He notes, for example, that "Over the centuries, societies have declared many technologies to be dangerous, economically upsetting, immoral, unwise, or simply too unknown for our good. The remedy to this perceived evil is usually a form of prohibition. The offending innovation may be taxed severely or legislated to narrow purposes or restricted to the outskirts or banned altogether." (p. 240)

But banning technology never works, he argues, largely because humans adapt and embrace new tools and developments. "[H]istory shows that it is very hard for a society as a whole to say no to technology for very long." (p. 241) "Prohibitions are in effect postponements" and "wholesale prohibitions simply do not work to eliminate a technology that is considered subversive or morally wrong. Technologies can be postponed but not stopped." (p. 243)

Importantly, Kelly doesn't turn a blind eye to the downsides of technology. In fact, he is refreshingly candid about the trade-offs we face. He argues that, "If we examine technologies honestly, each one as its faults as well as its virtues. There are no technologies without vices and none that are neutral. The consequences of a technology expand with its disruptive nature. Powerful technologies will be powerful in both directions - for good and bad. There is no powerfully constructive technology that is not also powerfully destructive in another direction, just as there is no great idea that cannot be greatly perverted for great harm... This should be the first law of technological expectation: The greater the promise of a new technology, the greater its potential for harm as well." (p. 246)

Quite right. But then Kelly then goes on to masterfully discuss the dangers of applying the "precautionary principle" to technological advancement. Kelly correctly argues, is that because "every good produces harm somewhere... by the strict logic of an absolute Precautionary Principle no technologies would be permitted." (p. 247-8) Under such a regime, progress becomes impossible because trade-offs are considered unacceptable. This doesn't mean humans shouldn't try to foresee problems associated with new technologies or address them preemptively. But that can be done without resisting new technologies or technological change altogether. "The proper response to a lousy technology is not to stop technology or to produce no technology," Kelly argues. "It is to develop a better, more convivial technology." (p. 263)

Kelly's formulation is remarkable similar to the "bad speech/more speech principle" from the field of First Amendment policy / jurisprudence. That principle states that the best solution to the problem of bad speech (such as hate speech or seditious talk) is more speech to counter it instead of censorship. That's the same principle that Kelly wants us to embrace when it comes to technology: Don't seek to ban or restrict it; find ways to embrace it, soften its blow, or counter it with new and better technology. I think that's a beautiful principle and I applaud Kevin Kelly's formulation and defense of it.

In sum, I loved the middle sections of What Technology Wants, but I could have done without the silly "technology-as-organism" theories found in the opening and closing chapters. Overall, however, Kevin Kelly has written a book that demands our attention. We will be talking about What Technology Wants for many, many years to come.

My complete review of Kelly's book can be found on the Technology Liberation Front blog.

Maybe it's because I spent my life in science and technology and have come to many of the same conclusions, but I found this book to be ponderous and full of endless, repetitive justifications for his basic thesis that technologies have been advancing at ever-increasing rates throughout history. (Sorry for the ponderously long sentence, but it matches my view of the book).

Not that the author is wrong - I fully agree with most of it. I do have a serious problem with his personification of technology - starting with the title itself. There is no doubt that most technologies have developed in tandem, that they are interdependent, and that there is an inevitability to it all - for better or for worse. To anthropomorphize this "technium" is downright silly, in my opinion.

Avant Darwin, explique Kevin Kelly, l''étude de l'histoire naturelle se résumait à une collection infinie de spécimens disposés dans des boites en verre. Il n'y avait aucun schéma organisateur pour y mettre de la vie. Darwin, avec la théorie de l'évolution, a apporté une logique à ce défilé d'organismes. Kevin Kelly nous dit qu'aujourd'hui nous sommes dans une situation semblable avec la technologie...

Nous avons tendance à considérer notre monde technologique comme une suite infinie de nouveautés, sans y voir aucun ordre. La technologie inclut des inventions anciennes, comme les montres, les leviers, le béton, les briques, etc. À ces choses matérielles, il faut ajouter ce qui est intangible : le calendrier, les principes de la comptabilité, les lois, les logiciels. Mais aussi l'organisation sociale, les villes, etc. La grande majorité des technologies ont été inventées bien avant notre naissance ! La somme de ces technologies forme un tout qui interagit un peu à la manière d'un écosystème. Ce super système d'inventions interdépendantes, Kevin Kelly l'appelle « technium ». Comme la vie elle-même, ce système dans son ensemble n'a pas le même comportement que chacune de ses parties. De la même manière qu'il n'y a rien de la ruche dans une seule abeille, le comportement du technium n'est pas visible dans un iPhone, un couteau ou un réfrigérateur. C'est dans le système dans son ensemble que l'on peut ressentir la vraie influence de la technologie.

Un livre très intéressant qui permet d'exercer son esprit à voir beaucoup plus loin que la technologie, à dépasser le syndrome de la technologie pour la technologie.

Entering this book, at first you will deep dive into biological evolution. Kevin takes your mind on a journey and tries to alter your vision. Having read it, you might accept that biological evolution follows certain trends (e.g. evolving towards complexitiy), is irreversible and repeatable.

Those are some bold statements and you should feel curious about them when you think about buying this book.

He continues comparing this to technological progress, or man-made things, basically meaning all things man made, from spoons to law, science, CPUs or metal. So reading it you will end up thinking a lot about technology as an ecosystem, a living thing, something good or evil, something inevitable...technolgoy as a whole and as a being.

For me it was a wonderful journey.

You will find in this book:

* nice examples

* ample talk about evolution,

* the Amish

* and the Unabomber

All of which I enjoyed very much.

For those of you think a lot about technology, like evolutionary talk, and care about where society is going as a whole, read it!

And he closes by saying: "That is what technology wants". So he does give an answer. Nevertheless I advise to not read it for the answer, but for the thought experiment.

It is a whopping 360p. So take some time. It best suits an evening when you would like to discuss impacts of the latest gadget with friends, but friends are not available. In that case, lean back and read Kevin Kelly instead.

I loved it.

Kevin, if you ever come to Germany, make some noise. I do not want you miss you.

His publicly available video on TED gives a good idea what the book is about, but I found the book much more enjoyable than his talk.

Eyeopener

odio quando i libri sono rovinati. Questo è arrivato con la copertina rotta come si vede in foto.

Contenuto interessante e non c’è nulla da ridire

will buy again