Technologys epic story Kevin Kelly

and I want to talk about my

investigations into what technology

means in our lives not just our

immediate life but in the cosmic sense

in a kind of a long history of the world

and and our place in the world what is

this stuff what what is the significance

and so I want to kind of go through my

little story of what I found out and one

of the first things I started to

investigate was the history of the name

of technology and in the United States

there’s a State of the Union address

given by every presidents that since

1790 and each one of those is really

kind of summing up the most important

things for the United States at that

time if you search for the word

technology it was not used until 1952 so

technology was sort of absent from

everybody thinking until 1952 which

happened to be the year of my birth and

obviously technology had existed before

then but we weren’t aware of it and so

it was sort of awakening of this force

in our life I actually did research to

fire at the first use of the word

technology that was in 1829 and it was

invented by a guy who was starting a

curriculum a course that bring together

all the kinds of arts and crafts and

industry and he called it technology and

that’s the very first use of the word so

what is this stuff that we’re all

consumed by and bothered by Allen K

calls that technology is anything that

was invented after you were born which

is sort of the idea that we normally

have about what technology is it’s all

that’s new stuff it’s not roads or

penicillin or factory tires it’s it’s

the new stuff my friend Danny Hillis has

a kind of a similar one this

technologies anything doesn’t work yet

which is again a sense that it’s all new

but we know that it’s just not new it’s

it actually goes way back and what I

want to suggest is it goes long way back

so another way to think about technology

what it means is to imagine a world

without technology if we were to

eliminate everyone

a single bit of technology in the world

today and I mean everything from blades

to scrapers to cloth we as a species

would not live very long we would die by

the billions and very quickly the Wolves

would get us we would be defenseless we

would be unable to grow enough food or

find enough food

even the hunter-gatherers use some

elementary tools and so with the minimal

technology but they have some technology

and those if we study those

hunter-gatherer tribes and lean and D

and earth all which are very similar to

early man we find out a very curious

thing about this world without

technology and this is a kind of a curve

of their average age there are no

Neanderthal fossils that are older than

40 years old that we’ve ever found so

and the average age of most of these

hunter-gatherer tribes is 20 to 30 there

are very few young infants because they

die a high mortality rate and there’s

very few old people so the profile of

Servier your average San Francisco

neighborhood a lot of young people if

you go there you say hey everybody’s

really healthy that’s because they’re

all young the same thing is with the

hunter-gatherer tribes and early manners

is is that you didn’t live beyond the

age of 30 so it was a world without

grandparents and grandparents are very

important because they are the

transmitter of cultural evolution and

information imagine a world and

basically everybody was 20 to 30 years

old how much learning can you do you

can’t do very much learning in your own

life it’s so short and there’s nobody to

pass on what you do learn so that’s one

aspect it was a very short life but the

same time anthropologists know that most

hunter-gatherer tribes of the world

without very little technology actually

did not spend very long time gathering

the food that they needed three to six

hours a day some anthropologists calls

that the original affluent society

because they’d banker hours basically so

it was possible to to to get enough food

but when the scarcity came when the

highs and lows and the droughts came

then people went into starvation and

that’s why they didn’t live very long

so what technology brought through the

very simple tools like these stone tools

here Eve

something as small as this the early

bands of humans were actually able to

eliminate to extinction about 250

megafauna animals in North America when

they first arrived ten thousand years

ago so long before Industrial Age we’ve

been affecting the planet on a global

scale with just a small amount of

technology the other thing that the

early man then it was fire and fire was

used to clear out and again it affected

the ecology of grass and whole

continents and was used in cooking it

enabled us to actually eat all kinds of

things it was sort of in a certain sense

and McLuhan sense an external stomach in

a sense that it was cooking food that we

could not eat otherwise and if we don’t

have fire we actually could not live our

bites have adapted to these new diets

our bites have changed in the last

10,000 years so what’s that little bit

of technology humans went from a small

band of 10,000 or so the same numbers

and Neanderthals everywhere and we

suddenly exploded the invention of

language around 50,000 years ago the

number of humans exploded and very

quickly became the dominant species on

the planet and they migrated into the

rest of the world at two kilometers per

year until within several tens of

thousands of years we occupied every

single watershed on the planet and

became the most dominant species with a

very small amount of technology and even

at that time with the introduction of

Agriculture 8,000 10,000 years ago we

start to see climate change so climate

change is not a new thing what’s new is

just the degree it was even during the

agricultural age there was climate

change and so already small amounts of

technology were transforming the world

and what this means and where I’m going

is is that technology has become the

most powerful force in the world all the

things that we see today that are

changing our lives we can always trace

back to the introduction of some new

technology so it’s a force that is the

most powerful force that has been

unleashed on this planet and it’s such a

degree that I think that it’s become our

what who we are in fact our humanity and

everything that we think about ourselves

is something that we’ve invented so

we’ve invented ourselves of all the

animals that we

domesticated the most important animal

we’ve domesticated has been us

okay so humanity is our greatest

invention but of course we’re not done

yet we’re still inventing and this is

what technology is allowing us to do

it’s a continually to reinvent ourselves

it’s a very very strong force I call

this entire thing us humans as our

technology everything that we’ve made

gadgets in our lives we call that the

Technium that’s this world ID networking

definition of technologies anything that

useful that a human mind makes it’s not

just hammers and gadgets like laptops

but it’s also law and of course cities

are ways to make things more useful to

us while it’s something that comes from

our mind it’s also has his roots deeply

into the cosmos it goes back the origins

and roots of technology go back to the

Big Bang in this way in that they are

part of this self-organizing thread that

starts at the Big Bang and goes through

galaxies and stars into life and to us

and the three major phases of the early

universe was energy when the dominant

force was energy then it became the

dominant force as it cooled became

matter and then with vention of life

four billion years ago the dominant

force in our neighborhood became

information that’s what life is this

information process that was

restructuring and making new order so

those energy matter einstein showed were

equivalent and now the new sciences of

quantum computing show that entropy and

information and matter and energy are

all interrelated so it’s one long

continuum you put energy into of the

right kind of system and outcomes wasted

heat entropy and extra troubie which is

order it’s it’s the increasing order so

where does this order come from its

roots go way back we actually don’t know

but we do know that this

self-organization trend throughout the

universe is long and it began with

things like galaxies they maintained

their order for billions of years

SARS are basically nuclear fission

machines that self organize and self

sustain themselves for billions of years

this order against the extra P of the

world and flowers and plants are the

same thing

extended and technology is basically an

extension of life so one trend that we

notice in all those things is that the

amount of energy per gram per second

that flows to this is actually

increasing the amount of energy is

increasing through this little sequence

and that the amount of energy per gram

per second that flows through life is

actually greater than a star because of

the star’s long length a long lifespan

the energy density in life is actually

higher than a star and the energy

density that we’ve seen the greatest if

anywhere in the universe is actually in

a PC chip there’s more energy flowing

through per gram per second than

anything that we have any other

experience with and so what I would

suggest is that if you want to see where

technology is going we continue that

trajectory and we say that what’s going

to become more energy dense that’s where

it’s going and so what I’ve done is I’ve

taken the same kinds of things and

looked at other aspects of evolutionary

life and say what are the general trends

in evolutionary life and there are

things moving towards greater complexity

moving towards greater diversity moving

towards greater specialization set

tudents

ubiquity and most important evolvability

those very same things are also present

in technology that’s where technology is

going in fact technology is accelerating

all the aspects of life we can see that

happening just as there’s diversity in

life there’s more diversity in things we

make things in life start off being

general cell and they become specialized

of tissue cells your muscle brain cells

and same thing happens with say hammer

which is general first and becomes more

specific so I would like to say that

while there’s six kingdoms of life we

can think of technology basically as a

seventh kingdom of life it’s the

granting off from the human form but

technology has its own agenda like

anything like life itself for instance

right now three-quarters of the energy

that we use is actually used to feed the

Technium itself in transportation it’s

not to move us is to move the stuff that

we make or buy I use the word want

technology once this is a robot that

wants to plug itself in to get more

power your cat wants more food

a bacterium which has no consciousness

at all wants to move towards light if

urge and technology has an urge at the

same time he wants to give us things and

what it gives us is basically progress

you can take all kinds of curves and

they’re all pointing up there’s really

no dispute about progress if we discount

the cost of that and that’s the thing

that bothers most people is that

progress is really real but we wonder in

question whether the environmental cost

of it I did a survey the number of

species of artifacts in my house and

there’s 6,000 other people have come up

with 10,000 when King Henry of England

died he had 18,000 things in his house

but that was entire wealth of England so

and with that entire wealth of England

King Henry could not buy any antibiotics

he could not buy refrigeration he could

not buy a trip of a thousand miles

whereas this rickshaw wallah in India

could save up and buy antibiotics and he

could buy refrigeration he could buy

things that King Henry in his all’s well

that’s what progress is about so

technology’s selfish technology’s

generous that conflict that tension will

be with us forever that sometimes he

wants to do what it wants to do and

sometimes it going to do things for us

we have confusion about what we should

think about a new technology right now

the default position about when a new

technology comes along as we people talk

about the precautionary principle which

is very common in Europe which says

basically don’t do anything when you

mean a new technology stop until it can

be proven that does no harm I think that

is really leads nowhere but a better way

is to what I call proaction Airi

principle which is you engage with

technology you try it out you obviously

do with the proaction area precautionary

principles suggest you try to anticipate

it but after anticipating it you

constantly assess it not just once but

eternally and when it diverts from what

you want we prioritize risk we evaluate

not just the new stuff but the old stuff

we fix it but most importantly we

relocated and what I mean by that is

that we find a new job for it nuclear

energy fission is really bad idea

bombs but it may be a pretty good idea

relocated into sustainable nuclear

energy for electricity instead of

burning coal when we have a bad idea the

response to a bad idea is not no ideas

it’s not to stop thinking the response

to a bad idea

I say tungsten light bulb is a better

idea

okay so better ideas is really always

the response to technology that we don’t

like is basically take better technology

and actually in a certain sense

technology is a kind of a a method for

generating better ideas if you can think

about it that way so maybe spraying DDT

on crops is a really bad idea but DDT

sprayed on local homes there’s nothing

better to eliminate malaria

besides insect DDT impregnated mosquito

nets

but that’s a really good idea that’s a

good job for technology so our job as

humans is her parent are our mind

children to find them good friends to

find them a good job and so every

technology is sort of a creative force

looking for the right job that’s

actually my son right here there are no

bad technologies just like there’s no

bad children children we don’t say

children are neutral children are

positive we just have to find them the

right place and so what technology gives

us over the long term over this sort of

extended evolution from the beginning of

time through the mention of of plants

and animals and evolution of life

evolution of brains what that is

constantly giving us is increasing

differences its increasing diversity its

increasing options its increasing

choices opportunities possibilities and

freedoms that’s what we get from

technology all the time that’s why

people leave villages and go into cities

because they are always gravitating

towards increased choices and

possibilities and they are and we are

aware of the price we pay a price for

that but we are aware of it and

generally we will pay the price for

increased freedoms choices and

opportunities even technology wants

clean water it’s technology

diametrically opposed to nature because

technology is an extension of life it’s

parallel and aligned with the same

things that life wants so that I think

technology loves biology if we allow it

to great movement that is starting

billions of years ago it’s moving

through us and it continues to go and

our choice so to speak

in technology is really to align

ourselves with this force much greater

than ourselves so technology is more

than just a stuff in your pocket it’s

more than just gadgets it’s more than

just things that people invent it’s

actually part of a very long story

a great story that began billions of

years ago it’s moving through us is

self-organization and we’re extending

and accelerating it and we can be part

of it by lining the technology that we

make with it and I really appreciate

your attention today thank you