Friday, 30 October 2015

What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly

This  362 pages long book  with the title What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly  gives a fresh perspective on the  present and future role of technology in human life.Is technology good for us? Can we or should we minimise technology in our lives?Is  the progress of technology evolutionary and  inevitable?How technology is related to culture?Is life getting better and better through technology?What does technology want from us?
                  Kevin  asks us to select technology for the empowerment of individuals.(Page 5).     Technology creates choice and  enhances our  potential for self realisation.So,on the whole ,technology is good for us.
                                        In chapter 8,"Listen to the Technology" ,Kelly gives an optimistic picture."Digital technologies will roughly double  in performance every two years for the foreseeable future.That means our most culturally  important devices and systems  will get faster,cheaper and better  by 50% every year.The optimism of our age rests on the reliable advance of Moore's promise:That stuff will get significantly ,seriously and desirably  better and cheaper tomorrow"
                           In chapter 11:Lessons of Amish Hackers,Kelly  describes  how Amish people adopt technology after years of carefully observing its effects on  their guinea pig neighbours.
Technology is evolving incredibly fast.We need to understand and deal with the changes.We need strategies to get the best out of technologies, and out of ourselves.That is what technology wants.Technology also wants mindfulness from us.
                 Technology wants what life wants.In chapter 13,Kelly   describes thirteen  trajectories life and technology tend towards.
 1.Efficiency
2.Opportunity
3.Emergence
4.Complexity
5.Diversity
6.Specialisation
7.Ubiquity
8.Freedom
9.Mutualism
10.Beauty
11.Sentience
12.Structure
13.Evolvability.
What technology wants is understanding.Its purpose is to create structures that organic  life cannot. Life is trying  to discover different  possible ways to evolve.  There are possibly minds in the universe that biology cannot  evolve , but technology might be able to create them.We are making minds that biology can not make.The long term trend will be to make as many different kinds of mind as possible through technology.This trend needs to be understood and supported.This is what technology wants from us.
         This book  tells us  exciting possibilities  which technology is headed towards, especially in the area of artificial intelligence and making of minds.Despite its large size,I recommend you to read this fascinating book.

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