Kevin Kelly on the Autonomy of Technology

Video via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyKC-wc3z5I

Description

Human Energy:

""At some point in its evolution, our system of tools and machines and ideas became so dense in feedback loops and complex interactions that it spawned a bit of independence. It began to exercise some autonomy.

At first, this notion of technological independence is very hard to grasp. We are taught to think of technology first as a pile of hardware and secondly as inert stuff that is wholly dependent on us humans. In this view, technology is only what we make. Without us, it ceases to be. It does only what we want. And that’s what I believed, too, when I set out on this quest. But the more I looked at the whole system of technological invention, the more powerful and self-generating I realized it was.”

This idea is closely akin to Teilhard’s description of The Mechanical Apparatus in The Formation of the Noosphere, where he writes:

“The significance and biological function of the tool at last separated from the limb has, as I was saying, long been recognized; and it has long been realized that the tool separated from Man develops a kind of autonomous vitality. We have passive machines giving birth to the active machine, which in turn is followed by the automatic machine.”

This all makes for a lively and highly relevant conversation between Kevin and David Sloan Wilson, another valuable and fascinating discussion that contributes to a deeper understanding of the Science of the Noosphere.

"At some point in its evolution, our system of tools and machines and ideas became so dense in feedback loops and complex interactions that it spawned a bit of independence. It began to exercise some autonomy.

At first, this notion of technological independence is very hard to grasp. We are taught to think of technology first as a pile of hardware and secondly as inert stuff that is wholly dependent on us humans. In this view, technology is only what we make. Without us, it ceases to be. It does only what we want. And that’s what I believed, too, when I set out on this quest. But the more I looked at the whole system of technological invention, the more powerful and self-generating I realized it was.”

This idea is closely akin to Teilhard’s description of The Mechanical Apparatus in The Formation of the Noosphere, where he writes:

“The significance and biological function of the tool at last separated from the limb has, as I was saying, long been recognized; and it has long been realized that the tool separated from Man develops a kind of autonomous vitality. We have passive machines giving birth to the active machine, which in turn is followed by the automatic machine.”

This all makes for a lively and highly relevant conversation between Kevin and David Sloan Wilson, another valuable and fascinating discussion that contributes to a deeper understanding of the Science of the Noosphere.""

(https://www.humanenergy.io/science-of-the-noosphere-series/evolution-of-technology)