"Verbalizing visceral feelings about technology, whether attraction or repulsion, Kelly explores the “technium,” his term for the globalized, inter...
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Dec 06, 2011
Brendan
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Kevin Kelly’s nonfiction treatise explores the question of what we should make of the seemingly-independent course the technological apparatus around us charts daily. This apparatus, which Kelly calls the technium, both depends on and guides us, and our ability, or inability, to ignore its treasures goes only so far as we’re willing to become Amish in some way (even the Amish adopt new technologies, it turns out). A few thoughts:
Like Manuel De Landa in War in the Age of Intelli More...
Like Manuel De Landa in War in the Age of Intelli More...
Jun 18, 2011
Austin
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In many ways What Technology Wants is a good companion to the book The Rational Optimist. Whereas the latter focuses on the economic and sociological implications of progress, the former focuses on the evolution of technology. And evolution is truly his theme throughout the book. Early on, Kelly (one of the founders of Wired Magazine) coins the phrase 'technium' to mean something similar to 'biosphere' or 'ecosystem' in the technological realm. He draws many parallels between the forces acting o
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Mar 23, 2011
Nick
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I was surprised by how much of this book I actually _dis_liked. I've been following the technium blog for a while, and always remember liking it. The book certainly has parts I appreciated, and on the whole they probably mostly compensate for the negatives. But still. I think my dislike was primarily based on evidence-lacking claims, or things passed off too quickly as some sort of fact. Trying to sound technical doesn't make something correct. Graphs without axes scales don't help.
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Mar 12, 2011
Dave
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Wow.
Kelly builds on arguments from Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, showing how technology is a continuation of biological evolution. Our minds are accelerating evolution using ideas instead of genes.
To me, the most beautiful section of this book was the beginning of Chapter 4, which describes the history of the universe through the lens of a single atom. For billions of years, atoms traversed the universe in solitude, never encountering More...
Kelly builds on arguments from Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, showing how technology is a continuation of biological evolution. Our minds are accelerating evolution using ideas instead of genes.
To me, the most beautiful section of this book was the beginning of Chapter 4, which describes the history of the universe through the lens of a single atom. For billions of years, atoms traversed the universe in solitude, never encountering More...
Jan 23, 2011
Book
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What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly
Kevin Kelly views technology as a natural organic living process. He calls it the technium. He views it as being part of human evolution. I found the ideas to be fascinating but overly anthropomorphic. He gave living qualities to stone, steel, spoons, bricks, and computers. There is both a humanizing and a dehumanizing aspect to this writing.
The humanizing aspect is a view of increased possibilities, more More...
Kevin Kelly views technology as a natural organic living process. He calls it the technium. He views it as being part of human evolution. I found the ideas to be fascinating but overly anthropomorphic. He gave living qualities to stone, steel, spoons, bricks, and computers. There is both a humanizing and a dehumanizing aspect to this writing.
The humanizing aspect is a view of increased possibilities, more More...
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Jan 18, 2011
This is a characteristic exercise in factoid-packed mega-optimism by the founding editor of Wired Magazine. The man whose final year of tenure as head of the magazine brought us the famous "Dow 36,000" article here tackles the role of technology in our lives, and how technology has what is, in essence, a life of its own. The future is just as bright, according to What Technology Wants, as it was in "Dow 36,000" -- but, of course, we know what came of that prediction.
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Jan 15, 2011
Craig
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The forces that govern biological evolution remain uninterrupted in their progression into the technological realm. In What Technology Wants' first few chapters Kevin Kelly makes a nice case that these forces in combination make for inevitability--a key term early on. Kelly would have done well to stick with this theme. A much slimmer and more captivating volume would have resulted. Alternatively, technological inevitability would make a fascinating premise for prediction--perhaps a more sober f
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Jun 02, 2011
Terry
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That Technology Wants focuses on what the author thinks are the inevitable moves in what he calls the technium, the output of all human creative endeavors which includes technology, culture, and all of the human-generated systems surrounding these really big things.
What I liked:
Author had great skill at communicating the scale of the affects of human technical activity. Listing agriculture as the biggest technology in terms of how it's changed the surface of the planet was someth More...
What I liked:
Author had great skill at communicating the scale of the affects of human technical activity. Listing agriculture as the biggest technology in terms of how it's changed the surface of the planet was someth More...
Feb 12, 2012
Curtis
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Here's somebody who is thinking about the big picture, the really big picture. I had a mixed reaction to this book. It has interesting and challenging arguments, facts, ideas. It is fairly easy to read, the style is engaging, although overly energetic at times. Yet I come away from it unsure exactly what his claims are. Kelly gets carried away, probably by his own excitement, and gets so over the top in places that I cringe. Especially at the end, which treats of God and the Future of the
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Apr 25, 2011
Nick
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Although I disagree with many of Kelly's points, my main reasons for giving this book only two stars are its length--was it really necessary to recap the history of the universe from the Big Bang?--and Kelly's almost tautological optimism about technology. He consistently dismisses or downplays criticisms and negative aspects of the evolution of technology, developing from his basic premise--that technology is a self-sustaining and somewhat autonomous system--the tautological proposition that a
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Nov 02, 2011
Andrew
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Life evolves.
Major transitions:
one rpelicating molecule -> interacting replicating molecules
replicating molecules -> stringing into chromosones
rna enymes -> dna proteans
cells w/o nucleus -> cells with nucleus
asexual reproduction -> sexual reproduction
single cell organisms -> multicellular organisms
solitary indiviuals -> colonies & super organisms
primate societies -> language based societie More...
Major transitions:
one rpelicating molecule -> interacting replicating molecules
replicating molecules -> stringing into chromosones
rna enymes -> dna proteans
cells w/o nucleus -> cells with nucleus
asexual reproduction -> sexual reproduction
single cell organisms -> multicellular organisms
solitary indiviuals -> colonies & super organisms
primate societies -> language based societie More...
Mar 28, 2011
Bill
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Brilliant and a little scattered as one would expect from the editor of The Whole Earth Catalogue, and Wired Magazine. More in-depth than a TED talk, but yet retaining that positivity that is so inspiring. Kelly proposes we hold our Tech at a skeptical distance. Adopt the new evolutions, but then really consider how it affects our humanity in contrast. The tradition he most seems to ally himself to is the Amish, oddly enough, who don't reject technology, but retain an especially critical awarene
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May 02, 2011
Abbey
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Technology has goals in the sense that a star has goals: a star "wants" to consume fuel, and technology "wants" to develop toward complexity. Technium (the author's personification of technology) is a selfish, grasping blob that seeks energy, input, development; it's the same as any evolutionary force. It's predatory, too: it eats other blobs of technologies along the way to become mashups of whole new inevitabilities. Technology is an inescapable force. Kelly makes technolog
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Oct 29, 2010
David
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Kevin Kelly's contemplation of meaning, couched in terms of the "Technium" (all technology and its trends), which includes our minds, life itself, and indeed all the cosmos.
I like Kelly's description of history and the aforementioned contemplation of existence better than I like his assessment of present technology, or his transition to potential futures and proscriptive ways of living, but there were parts from each perspective I enjoyed and agreed with throughout the book.
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I like Kelly's description of history and the aforementioned contemplation of existence better than I like his assessment of present technology, or his transition to potential futures and proscriptive ways of living, but there were parts from each perspective I enjoyed and agreed with throughout the book.
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Feb 04, 2011
Danny
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In ‘What Technology Wants’ Kelly makes the case that the grand sweep of and direction of technology (which he terms the technium) shares parallels with evolutionary principals. He uses this analogy to suggest that there are universal laws that dictate the trajectory of technology and push it towards a predetermined goal: what technology ‘wants’ to achieve. Along the way, he paints a very happy picture of the thrust of technology – postulating that it will become ever more complex, beautiful, f
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Jan 30, 2012
Adrian
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Fascinating, challenging book, well worth reading if you are interested in technology, and where we might be headed. Kevin Kelly thinks that we are headed in the right direction, even if we have some distinct and powerful challenges, because the number of choices we have are getting more rather than less. The perhaps more disturbing challenging idea, is that the change in technology is happening of its own accord, and has its own direction. He draws many parallels between the evolution of tech a
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Mar 27, 2011
Antonio
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Kelly brilliantly describes the nature of technology, its evolution, as well as its profound interrelation. It is a tour de force about the dynamics in which technology are embedded. Kelly defines the so-called technium, a kind of supra taxonomic family. It is analysed by Kelly as a biologist will analyse a biological phenomena, perhaps only with a more mathematical perspective. Three pillars define the technium, accordingly to Kelly: 1. Geometrical and physical constraints (what can and cannot
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Dec 21, 2010
Gavin
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A very clever premise.
Kevin Kelly defines technology as everything that living things do to alter their environment. This includes language, civilization, law, art, bird's nests, and yes, gadgets.
Technology with this broad definition is simply an extension of biological evolution. It tends to evolve toward certain things such as autonomy, sentience, complexity, and diversity. Technology "wants" these things in the same way that genes "want" to perpetuate More...
Kevin Kelly defines technology as everything that living things do to alter their environment. This includes language, civilization, law, art, bird's nests, and yes, gadgets.
Technology with this broad definition is simply an extension of biological evolution. It tends to evolve toward certain things such as autonomy, sentience, complexity, and diversity. Technology "wants" these things in the same way that genes "want" to perpetuate More...
Nov 06, 2010
Hans
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In a sense this is my ultimate book: it touches on all the topics/themes that I find compelling and argues a case that is in full alignment with my take on technology and on life.
It is by no means a perfect book: Kelly is no great literary talent and even though the book reads much better than his posts on the Technium it still could have used some heftier editing. That said I do think that Kelly is a great philosopher. Every page is brimming with ideas and there is so much stuff to More...
It is by no means a perfect book: Kelly is no great literary talent and even though the book reads much better than his posts on the Technium it still could have used some heftier editing. That said I do think that Kelly is a great philosopher. Every page is brimming with ideas and there is so much stuff to More...
Jan 28, 2012
Hong
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Summary:
This book is about the long term trajectory of technology development. The emerging of technology is embedded into the framework of increasing complexity and self-organization of universe– big bang, galaxy formation, planets formation and life evolution. To make this view compelling, Kelly uses convergent evolution and abundant examples of simultaneous inventions to illustrate the inevitability of technological development. It thus follows naturally that technology has a long term More...
This book is about the long term trajectory of technology development. The emerging of technology is embedded into the framework of increasing complexity and self-organization of universe– big bang, galaxy formation, planets formation and life evolution. To make this view compelling, Kelly uses convergent evolution and abundant examples of simultaneous inventions to illustrate the inevitability of technological development. It thus follows naturally that technology has a long term More...
Jan 10, 2011
Matt
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I liked this book but it didn't totally blow me away. I appreciated that the author (Kevin Kelly) doesn't take the unbridled 'technology is the best' approach I expected. He discussed upsides and downsides evenly. I also liked the notion that he expanded the definition of technology to include items not usually considered: thought, language, writing, communication in addition to things we normally think of (iphones, etc.)
The most helpful insights for me related to his analysis of human More...
The most helpful insights for me related to his analysis of human More...
Nov 19, 2010
Arnav
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This review was originally published on my blog
It's rare to come across something that touches the very fabric of our existence in such profound ways - it's mesmerizing. So it is the case with What Technology Wants, by Kevin Kelly. In one of the most insightful books I've ever read, Kevin Kelly weaves together thoughts on the journey of technology (which as a whole, he calls the technium) and ties it in with all other parts of life, the universe, and everything (quite literally). This More...
It's rare to come across something that touches the very fabric of our existence in such profound ways - it's mesmerizing. So it is the case with What Technology Wants, by Kevin Kelly. In one of the most insightful books I've ever read, Kevin Kelly weaves together thoughts on the journey of technology (which as a whole, he calls the technium) and ties it in with all other parts of life, the universe, and everything (quite literally). This More...
Apr 03, 2011
Desiree
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According to the author, we are powerless to resist technology! "We continue to amass vast doses of gadgets and things because we can't help it." Minor glitches can turn into massive unstoppable waves until they reach catastrophic proportions!
"The technium is also pushing the increased mutualism among machines. The majority of telecommunications traffic in the world is not between messages flowing between humans but messages between machines."
An interesti More...
"The technium is also pushing the increased mutualism among machines. The majority of telecommunications traffic in the world is not between messages flowing between humans but messages between machines."
An interesti More...
Nov 15, 2010
Rex
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An incredibly thought-provoking book. I've never read a book quite like it -- a mix of history and philosophy, as much as it is a book on technology.
I wore out the highlight feature of my Kindle app marking dozens of ideas I plan to go back and ponder.
Biggest surprise: Kelly's fascinating deep-dive into the Unabomber's manifesto. Most fascinating: His exploration of the technology adoption curve of the Amish. Most refreshing: Kelly is optimistic about the future.
O More...
I wore out the highlight feature of my Kindle app marking dozens of ideas I plan to go back and ponder.
Biggest surprise: Kelly's fascinating deep-dive into the Unabomber's manifesto. Most fascinating: His exploration of the technology adoption curve of the Amish. Most refreshing: Kelly is optimistic about the future.
O More...
Dec 27, 2010
I'll be honest: I want to like this. But I'm reading the blurbs on the back, and wondering how on earth Brian Eno had time to get through this. This is the kind of book that in my idealized, fictionalized version of my life, I'd have time to read thoroughly, reflect upon, and have fabulous conversations with other readers about. In reality, 'is there a point that I can uncover before he goes through the entire history of every invention' and 'I wonder if this would be better if I wasn't sober' c
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Dec 24, 2011
Nicholas
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I ended up liking this book a lot more that I expected to.
The first half of the book is dedicated to setting forward an argument that I find interesting, but Kelly isn't the person who can make it convincing. It would have come off much, much better as a thought-experiment instead of a direct assertion.
Kelly argues that human biological evolution is following a necessary path and that technological development (the technium, he calls it) is also following a necessary path. Te More...
The first half of the book is dedicated to setting forward an argument that I find interesting, but Kelly isn't the person who can make it convincing. It would have come off much, much better as a thought-experiment instead of a direct assertion.
Kelly argues that human biological evolution is following a necessary path and that technological development (the technium, he calls it) is also following a necessary path. Te More...
Dec 15, 2010
Jim
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So often we have a difficult time deciding what exactly technology means to society, and whether it is good, bad, etc. Kevin Kelly's exploration of this subject quite literally goes from the beginning of time to the a proposed far-off future in noting that technology isn't merely a component to our lives, but entirely separate ecosystem that exists alongside our current kingdoms of life. His writing is incredibly insightful, and leaves much for the reader to consider. I'd easily recommend this w
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Apr 30, 2011
Pam
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There are some interesting ideas here but some of the discussion was too abstract for my liking. I'd prefer more tangible data to back up the author's thoughts. There were enought cases cited to explain what would lead him to come to some of his conclusions, but I think the world is still lacking in some of the data that describe exactly what he predicts. I also read this a few months ago and have the memory of lint, so if I'm not being clear here it's because I don't actually remember fully w
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Nov 20, 2010
Adam
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I found this book tremendously frustrating. Certainly many points of excellent incite about technology and how it develops. However, the insight is surrounded by a pseudo-mystical faith in technology as well as a very strange idea of technology as an independent entity that "wants" something.
People seem to love it so maybe I'm missing something. I imagine if you can go in for technology as something with a volition that wants something, you'll like the book. If the very idea More...
People seem to love it so maybe I'm missing something. I imagine if you can go in for technology as something with a volition that wants something, you'll like the book. If the very idea More...
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Sep 30, 2011
Jenny
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I'm so sad that I didn't love this book. Kevin Kelly's "Out of Control" was such a wonderful book, a book I've re-read several times and found so inspiring - I was super excited to see this book. So disappointed that I had to skim so much of it, especially the second half. He over-explains everything. I don't need that many examples to support/prove his arguments. And some of the explanations got too mathy/technical for me too - maybe my ability to read more scholarly things is sl
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