Kevin Kelly

In brief, the main insight about the technium, which is my term is,

or the systems of all the technologies in the world, is the understanding that they don't stand alone, that they're a web, that you can't make a hammer without a saw.

The saw cuts the handle, and the hammer is needed to make the saw, and so they're all codependent.

And we use computers to make everything, and we need plumbing and the farmers to make the computers.

And so there is this web, this ecosystem of technologies all codependent on each other, and that the bigger this ecosystem gets, the more it adopts

the same things that any system of that complexity has, which it has its own internal biases and tendencies.

All systems, whether it's living systems or even mechanical systems that are complex enough, will exhibit recurring tendencies independent of all the parts.

So

This technium that we have, this ecosystem, all the technologies in the world, has certain behaviors that are independent of us humans, the creators, and independent of the parts.

And so the question is, what are those general tendencies?

What are those wants in the sense of the tendency of a plant is to lean towards the light and call it a want?

And so that was my question was, well, with this system, what is a want?

What are its tendencies?

Part of what I concluded was that the tendencies were basically an extension of the same tendencies in evolution of biological systems.

In a certain sense, this technium was the seventh kingdom of life.

It's an extension and acceleration of the same forces that made life, that evolved life on the planet and that made self-organized systems of stars and planets.

planets and elements, I see the origins of technology back in the Big Bang.

It's not human ingenuity.

We are just the vehicles.

We are just the sexual organs of it.