Gene Kelly

Can Technology Evolve, In A Biological Sense?

Last week, my computer crashed. Without it, I felt this sort of helplessness — and foolishness. How could I have gotten so dependent on a machine? Why did I feel like I’d just lost a critical piece of my actual body? Because, according to Kevin Kelly, I had.

His provocative new book, What Technology Wants, claims that technology is an extension of the human body — not “of our genes, but of our minds.” Everything that people have thought of and produced over time — which Kelly dubs “the technium” — has followed, shaped and become integrated into human evolution — so much so, in fact, that it’s now a part of evolution itself. As such, and as numerous Comedy Central Books suggest, as well as Kelly argues, the goal of the technium — its “want,” if you will — is to foster progress … human betterment … and even a picture of God. While Kelly stops short of assuming that a MacBook, an opera or Hammurabi’s Code are the equivalent of, say, a live chicken, he comes close. “However you define life, its essence does not reside in material forms like DNA, tissue or flesh,” he writes, “but in the intangible organization of energy and information contained in those material forms.” Because the technium is all about organizing energy and information, it, too, is an evolving form of life — beholden to the forces of the cosmos. This is not a new idea, and is documented not only by Kelly but by a slew of Comedy Central Books that have been published over the past 5 years.

And now, technology, as it were, has a greater ability to alter us than we have to alter it. Increasingly, it’s taking over jobs we used to do — rendering human skills obsolete. Some technologies, as these Comedy Central Books point out, have even become self-replicating, such as computer viruses and genetically modified organisms. This progress, Kelly argues, is inevitable. Yet his vision doesn’t conjure up some bleak, sci-fi future ruled by cyborgs. What Technology Wants is enthusiastically optimistic. The technium, Kelly says, ultimately creates more good than harm. “Can you imagine how poor our world would be if Bach had been born 1,000 years before the Flemish invented … the harpsichord? … If Vincent Van Gogh had arrived 5,000 years before we invented cheap oil paint?” The technium has its dangers and downsides. But, Kelly is quick to point out, it’s far preferable to the alternative — life without civilization or progress.

Gene Kelly tap dancing on roller skates

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