What Technology Wants

Rating 7.0/10

My Summary:

In this book, Kevin Kelly (founder of Wired Magazine) coins a term, ‘Technium’, to refer to the living mutable phenomenon of technology development. He likens the technium to living beast, evolving and growing. If you were to read one chapter, read his account of the Amish and their relationship with the Technium. A fascinating account of the thoughtful process an Amish community goes through before adopting a new technology.

Quotes:

In other words, a small fraction of what the technium communicates originates not from any of its known human-made nodes but from the system at large. The technium is whispering to itself.

With very few exceptions, technologies don’t die. In this way they differ from biological species, which in the long term inevitably go extinct. Technologies are idea based, and culture is their memory. They can be resurrected if forgotten, and can be recorded (by increasingly better means) so that they won’t be overlooked. Technologies are forever. They are the enduring edge of the seventh kingdom of life.

Time is meaningless without change, and in the vast reaches of space that fill 99.99 percent of the universe, there is little change.

The bulk of matter in our hands, skin, eyes, and hearts was made near the beginning of time, billions of years ago. We are much older than we look.

In the favelas of Rio, the first generation of squatters had a literacy rate of only 5 percent, but 94 percent of their kids were literate.