24th
Kevin Kelly on information, evolution and technology: ‘The essence of life is not energy but ideas’
“Technology’s dominance ultimately stems not from its birth in human minds but from its origin in the same self-organization that brought galaxies, planets, life, and minds into existence. It is part of a great asymmetrical arc that begins at the big bang and extends into ever more abstract and immaterial forms over time. The arc is the slow yet irreversible liberation from the ancient imperative of matter and energy.”
— Kevin Kelly, What Technology Wants, New York: Viking, The Penguin Group, 2010
“The best way to understand the manufactured world is not to see it as a work of human imagination only, but to see it as an extension of the biological world. Most of us walk around with a strict mental dichotomy between the natural world of genes and the artificial world of concrete and code. When we actually look at how evolution works, the distinction begins to break down. The defining force behind life is not energy but information. Evolution is a process of information transmission, and so is technology, which is why it too reflects a biological transcendence.
Q: You have described technology as the “seventh kingdom of life” – which is a very ontological description – and as “the accumulation of ideas” – which is an epistemological description. Are the two converging?
Kelly: I take a very computational view of life and evolution. If you look at the origins of life and the forces of evolution, they arevery intangible. Life is built on bits, on ideas, on information, on immaterial things. The technology sphere we have made – which is what I call the Technium – consists of information as well. We can take a number of atoms and arrange them in such a way as to maximize their usefulness – for example by creating a cell phone. When we think about who we are, we are always talking about information, about knowledge, about processes that increase the complexity of things. (…)
I am a critic of those who say that the internet has become a sentient and living being. But while the internet is not conscious like an organism, it exhibits some lifelike qualities. Life is not a binary thing that is either there or not there. It is a continuum between semi-living things like viruses and very living things like us. What we are seeing right now is an increased “lifeness” in technology as we move across the continuum. As things become more complex, they become more lifelike. (…)
One of the problems for biologists right now is to distinguish between random and organized processes. If we want to think coherently about the relationship between biology and technology, we need good working definitions to outline the edges of the spectrum of life that we are investigating. One of the ways to do that is to create artificial life and then debate whether we have crossed a threshold. I think we are beginning to see actual evolution in technology because the similarities to natural evolution are so large that it has become hard to ignore them. (…)
I think that the essence of life is natural and subject to the investigation by reason. Quantum physics is science, but it is so far removed from our normal experience that the investigation becomes increasingly difficult. Not everyone might understand it, but collectively we can. One of the reasons we want to build artificial intelligence is to supplement our human intelligence, because we may require other kinds of thinking to understand these mysteries Technology is a way to manufacture types of thinking that don’t yet exist. (…)
Innovation always has unintended consequences. Every new invention creates new solutions, but it also creates almost as many new problems. I tend to think that technology is not really powerful unless it can be powerfully abused. The internet is a great example of that: It will be abused, there will be very significant negative consequences. Even the expansion of choices itself has unintended consequences. Barry Schwartz calls it the “paradox of choice”: Humans have evolved with a limited capacity for making decisions. We can be paralyzed by choice! (…)
Most of the problems today have been generated by technology, and most future problems will be generated by technology as well. I am so technocentric that I say: The solution to technological problems is more technology. Here’s a tangible example: If I throw around some really bad ideas in this interview, you won’t counsel me to stop thinking. You will encourage me to think more and come up with better ideas. Technology is a way of thinking. The proper response to bad technology is not less, but more and better technology. (…)
I always think of technology as a child: You have to work with it, you have to find the right role and keep it away from bad influences. If you tell your child, “I will disown you if you become a lawyer”, that will almost guarantee that they become a lawyer. Every technology can be weaponized. But the way to stop that is not prohibition but an embrace of that technology to steer its future development. (…)
I am not a utopian who believes that technology will solve our problems. I am a protopian, I believe in gradual progress. And I am convinced that much of that progress is happening outside of our control. In nature, new species fill niches that can be occupied and inhabited. And sometimes, these niches are created by previous developments. We are not really in control of those processes. The same is true for innovation: There is an innate bias in the Technium that makes certain processes inevitable. (…)
I use the term the same way you would describe adolescence as the inevitable step between childhood and adulthood. We are destined by the physics and chemistry of matter. If we looked at a hundred planets in the universe that were inhabited by intelligent life, I bet that we would eventually see something like the internet on almost all of them. But can we find exceptions? Probably. (…)
Q: Is innovation a process that can continue indefinitely? Or does the infinite possibility space eventually run against the constraints of a world with finite resources and finite energy?
Kelly: I don’t believe in omega points. One of the remarkable things about life is that evolution does not stop. It always finds new paths forwards and new niches to occupy. As I said before, the essence of life is not energy but ideas. If there are limits to how many ideas can exist within a brain or within a system, we are still very far away from those limits. (…)
Long before we reach a saturation point, we will evolve into something else. We invented our humanity, and we can reinvent ourselves with genetic engineering or other innovations. We might even fork into a species that embraces speedy development and a species that wants no genetic engineering.
Q: You are advocating a very proactive approach to issues like genetic enhancements and human-technological forms of symbiosis, yet you also stress the great potential for abuse, for ethical problems and for unintended consequences.
Kelly: Yes, we are steamrolling ahead. The net gain will slightly outweigh the negative aspects. That is all we need: A slightly greater range of choices and opportunities every year equals progress. (…)
For the past ten thousand years, technological progress has on average enabled our opportunities to expand. The easiest way to demonstrate the positive arc of progress is to look at the number of people today who would want to live in an earlier time. Any of us could sell all material possessions within days and live like a caveman. I have written on the Amish people, and I have lived with native tribes, so I understand the attractions of that lifestyle. It’s a very supportive and grounded reality. But the cost of that experience is the surrender of all the other choices and opportunities we now enjoy. (…)
My point about technology is that every person has a different set of talents and abilities. The purpose of technology is to provide us with tools to maximize our talents and explore our opportunities. The challenge is to make use of the tools that fit us. Your technology can be different from my technology because our talents and interests are different. If you look at the collective, you might think that we are all becoming more alike. But when you go down to the individual level, technology has the potential to really bring out the differences that make us special. Innovation enables individualization. (…)
Q: Is the internet increasing our imaginative or innovative potential?
Kelly: That is a good point. A lot of these impossibilities happen within collective or globalist structures. We can do things that were completely impossible during the industrial age because we can now transcend our individual experience. (…)
Q: The industrial age made large-scale production possible, now we see large-scale collaboration. What is the next step?
Kelly: I love that question. What is the next stage? I think we are decades or centuries away from a global intelligence, but that would be another phase of human development. If you could generate thoughts on a planetary scale, if we moved towards singularity, that would be huge.
Q: The European: The speed of change leaves room for optimism.
Kelly: My optimism is off the chart. I got it from Asia, where I saw how quickly civilizations could move from abject poverty to incredible wealth. If they can do it, almost anything is possible. Let me go back to the original quote about seeing God in a cell phone: The reason we should be optimistic is life itself. It keeps bouncing back even when we do horrible things to it. Life is brimming with possibilities, details, intelligence, marvels, ingenuity. And the Technium is very much an extension of that possibility space.”
— Kevin Kelly, writer, photographer, conservationist, the founding executive editor of Wired magazine, and a former editor/publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog, “My Optimism Is Off The Chart”, The European Magazine, 20.09.2011 (Illustration: Seashells from Okinawa by Thomas Schmall)
See also:
☞ Kevin Kelly on Technology, or the Evolution of Evolution
☞ Kevin Kelly on Why the Impossible Happens More Often
☞ Kevin Kelly on the Satisfaction Paradox
☞ Technology tag on Lapidarium
☞ Technology tag on Lapidarium notes
