reading
My original plan for this page was to take a snapshot of my bookcase, make an image-map for the picture, and to give you some nice pop-outs with my comments on the book. It all seemed so simple two months ago....I didn't even try to make the page in this manner. Instead, I've joined the Libr.io project and will help to design and build a new service to help Dutch students borrow/buy/lend/sell their required literature. Not quite as simple, but loads more fun! (in other words: I have a legitimate excuse to leave this page as it is for the time being ;-) )
Kevin Kelly's "What Technology Wants"
Every time you believe that technology has dreams of its own, you are transferring a slice of agency to those involved in shaping it. I do not think that technology should be seen as "the seventh kingdom" of life. My apologies to Kevin Kelly, but "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Instead, I assume that technology can best be seen as a complex adaptive system, examples of which are indeed found all across the scale of life. Think of cells, organs, organisms, communities, "superorganisms", ecosystems, biomes, including just about everything that is considered sacred across the globe. In my work with computers (especially the networked ones), I've experienced that technology fits the bill quite nicely. I'm willing to accept that this observation extends to all kinds of technology when seen at a larger time-scale. This however, does not mean that technology should be held equal to another kingdom of organisms. My common sense says that it's a phenomenon which is created by several organisms, but humans seem to be highly adept at shaping parts of their environment according to their perceived needs.Now why should we be making people aware of the fact that, upon examination, technology seems to have its own flavor of agency? It doesn't seem to be a very novel thing to do. For millennia, people have been telling marvelous stories about the sense of agency that is radiating from the universe around us. Perhaps Kevin Kelly's new work, which I enjoyed reading very much, is actually the latest addition in the long line of sacred stories; and I'm just one of those people who is "just not getting it" yet.
Leading people to the experience of interdependence with the larger world surrounding us seems like a wise thing to do. In a recent report, I've called it a good strategy "to shift perceptions of competition to cooperation and to avoid the pitfalls of disciplinary thinking". There I also noted however, that the actual interdependence might not be as desirable as us perceiving it. To advise on the proposal to expand shrimp farming in a district along the shore of the Bay of Bengal, we suggest that the interdependence between the aquaculture industry and the local ecosystems should be reduced. Instead, the industry should seek a mutual relationship with technical systems and let go of the relationships that have been so burdensome to all life in the region during the expansion of aquaculture.
Now why would we want to steer towards economic activity towards dependence on technical systems? Simply put: because we want living beings to have a choice in participating. You probably don't like to get dragged into most things that you didn't sign up for, and I think it's safe to say that this observation extends to our fellow inhabitants of the planet. One of the great joys in dealing with technology is that we do not owe it this same courtesy. Technological systems can go through rapid transformation when people start turning in the same direction. When Kelly points to the specific qualities of our symbiotic interaction with technology, I like his argument about much machines interacting more with other machines than with us. Lets call this machine-machine interaction the 'technological core'. Even though this seems very real, I have still only seen technology transform at the edges, where we interact with it. Without exception, machines that we don't interact with often are still largely shaped by human intention (and perseverance). Or is there something I should know about?
Seeing technology as something that we need to adapt to seems the biggest pitfall in subscribing to Kelly's new story. Of course, we are continuously learning to work with what we have at the moment. But to me the great joy for me in interacting with technology is to find people at the edges where the change that you care about can come about, and in collaboration with these other passionates explore how technology responds to your tugging and prodding. When you are perhaps a bit over-obsessive about change, try to notice how your biggest challenges are in dealing with people, not in engineering. I suggest that you join me in the appreciation that technology is not made of the stuff of life, as well as reflect on how the intensity of recent weather events indicates that technology has become one of the important non-living complex adaptive systems on the planet.
I felt the need to raise this issue because I think that we need quite a few wonderfully novel ideas to get rid of some of the mess that we have made recently. Just sacred stories, expressing grand experiences, aren't going to cut it. We need some really practical ones too! So, let's talk about resilience, stable regimes, thresholds and the likes during the week, and let us keep stories about kingdoms for our pastime. ( I really feel like I should be saying "thank you for your attention" right now. Open for questions and comments. )
Instead of pointing you straight to Kelly's greatest public detractor in this argument, Jaron Lanier, I would like you to follow the trail a bit further to two voices at the edge of the arena. Rifkin and Rushkoff.
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