Canon PowerShot S90
ƒ/2
6 mm
1/30
160

Kevin Kelly is my favorite author, and he has a new book…. Woot!

His comments this week @ Techonomy give us a foretaste:

“Technology is the most powerful force in the world . We think of it almost like culture. But it’s different. The technium is an emergent thing itself. It even has it’s own agency.”

“What we all want from technology is absolute customization and personalization. You can only have that with absolute transparency.”

“Technology is not neutral; it is absolutely positive. It expands choices. That itself is a good. You can choose to live with stone-age technology. You can choose to be Amish. The Amish optimize for leisure. They don’t optimize for choice.”

“We have used the precautionary principle. There is sense of caution first. I think we should use what I call the Proactionary Principle. Engage with it first. We can’t predict how technology will happen until we engage with it. This is different with how we first adopted GMOs. Each time a new technology causes a problem, the solution is always a better technology. The response to a bad idea is not to stop thinking but to have a better idea.”

“Technology wants increasing speed and faster evolution of the system. That is the nature of it. The short attention spans that we have – this is actually something we need to do to adapt to things moving faster. Information is the fasting growing thing on the planet. This data flow is the new matrix that we will be operating in.”

“There are inevitabilities in technologies. We have to embrace that. Genetically modified humans are inevitable. Cloning is inevitable.”

34 responses to “What Technology Wants”

  1. msamaclean © Avatar
    msamaclean ©

    Absolutely.

    Reply
  2. : Nils Avatar
    : Nils

    "The response to a bad idea is not to stop thinking but to have a better idea.”

    Best quote I’ve read in ages!

    Reply
  3. Dr DAD (Daniel A D'Auria MD) Avatar
    Dr DAD (Daniel A D’Auria MD)

    Looks like it would have made interesting reading on my upcoming vaca. Alas, we’ll have to wait until October.

    Reply
  4. Tamooj Avatar
    Tamooj

    Argh. Teasing us like this – it is just plain mean. 🙂

    Reply
  5. Dr DAD (Daniel A D'Auria MD) Avatar
    Dr DAD (Daniel A D’Auria MD)

    I think Tamooj is right. It’s the little bit of the "devil" in Steve. Like dangling catnip in front of a mouse and taking it away. Like driving a ‘Think" through the Tesla parking lot! We’ll have to line up at Barnes and Noble in October and wait…..

    Reply
  6. photon~wave Avatar
    photon~wave

    [http://www.flickr.com/photos/luminance] Interesting reflection. You can find useful stuff about the author in his website kk.org. In the section The Technium Kelly posted the notes for the book when it was in progress. Also, you can see the author talking about the ideas of his book in TEDxAmsterdam (November 20, 2009).

    Reply
  7. PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE Avatar
    PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE

    And here KK interviewed at the conference about the book :

    Kevin Kelly on "What Technology Wants"

    Reply
  8. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    Ah, yes, and our computers are higher still. See John’s Smart’s essay on STEM compression and its reference to Chaisson’s free energy rate:

    "Cosmic Evolution: The Rise of Complexity in Nature, Eric Chaisson, 2001. Chaisson reintroduces and significantly updates the idea of free energy rate density (Phi, an energy density flow) as a useful index for complexity in this important work. Note his estimates for the following important semi-discrete substrates (units are ergs/sec/gm):

    Galaxies (Milky Way), 0.5;
    Stars (Sun), 2;
    Planets (Cooling Earth, Climasphere), 75;
    Ecosystems (Biosphere), 900;
    Animals (Human body), 2×10^4;
    Brains (Human cranium), 1.5×10^5;
    Society (Modern culture), 5×10^5.

    What is most interesting in this analysis is that our technologies, when expressed in this index, have complexities exceeding biological and cultural substrates.
    Modern engines range from 10^5 to 10^8.
    But most tellingly, modern computer chips exceed all these measures by orders of magnitude, due to their extreme miniaturization (STEM compression).
    The Intel 8080 of the 1970’s comes in at 10^10;
    The Pentium II of the 1990’s at 10^11.

    That makes both of these very local, very special computational domains already much more impressively "complex" (or, in alternative language, more dynamically "self-organizing" per unit time) if not yet more sentient—or more structurally complex, which is only distantly related to dynamic complexity—than the individual and social organisms they are coevolving with. If you are searching for a universal perspective, and a coarse quantitative proof, that silicon systems (more generally, the "electronic systems" substrate) are the current leading contender for the next autonomous substrate, Chaisson’s analyses are well worth investigating. " (John Smart)

    Reply
  9. aeroculus Avatar
    aeroculus

    Every Organism is a Hack. Have been a fan of Kelly’s writing & philosophy for longer than I can remember. While there are certainly too many to say which is a favorite, I often return to this short piecewhen building a model

    Reply
  10. TomiTapio Avatar
    TomiTapio

    Neato!

    Reply
  11. Tamooj Avatar
    Tamooj

    Hmmm. Isn’t this just a more secular restating of Pierre Teilhard du Chardin’s concept of complexity-energy?

    Reply
  12. Tamooj Avatar
    Tamooj

    Agreed – but Teilhard was the first paleontologist to really define it as a quantifiable process. Myself being an atheist I can see the huge cognitive dissonance he faced as a prominent Jesuit priest, a leading scientist and a christian mystic; he was trying to define and put words to a fundamental cosmogenesis process profoundly at odds with Catholic doctrine. However, his unique way of expressing these concepts, as inspirational revelation, was aimed at his fellow priests almost as sermons about Cosmology. His writing style gentle, almost paternal, and yet ‘epic’ and resonates through time – "The human world of today has not grown cold, but rather it is ardently searching for a God proportionate to the newly discovered immensities of a Universe whose aspect exceeds the present compass of our power of worship". Who cannot look the Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) and be immune to this feeling? Carl Sagan was sooo right about all the places we find the ‘wonder’.
    In any event, Eric Chaisson’s work is a brilliant look at these concepts, framed with solid examples that make sense to today’s audience. His awesome book has a very prominent place on my favorites shelf. Nice links, Steve!

    Reply
  13. jgury Avatar
    jgury

    "Technology is not neutral; it is absolutely positive. It expands choices. That itself is a good."

    What about the technology of warfare? Nuclear and biological technology expand warfare choices and is therefore good by this absurd thinking. Not even rising to the level of dealing with the basic problem of evil. Does anyone ever challenge these guys who spew out this kind of palaver? You sure don’t have to channel the ghost of Voltaire to come up with this kind of cutting insight.

    Reply
  14. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    I can always count on you for the absurd point of view.

    There are those who believe in progress and those who romanticize medieval thought as the pinnacle of human achievement. We are in different camps here. And from the interaction to date, I don’t see much persuasion going on.

    As you have already heard, reviewing the actual data, Steven Pinker finds that violence is dramatically declining: “The decline of violence is a fractal phenomenon, visible at the scale of millennia, centuries, decades, and years. It applies over several orders of magnitude of violence, from genocide to war to rioting to homicide to the treatment of children and animals. And it appears to be a worldwide trend, though not a homogeneous one. The leading edge has been in Western societies, especially England and Holland, and there seems to have been a tipping point at the onset of the Age of Reason in the early seventeenth century.” (New Republic, 3/19/07)

    At the end of the article, he gives four hypotheses for the progress, all related to political, economic, and technological advances.

    Reply
  15. jgury Avatar
    jgury

    Negative. I am the one pointing out the absurd thinking that technology is absolutely positive.
    That does not make my point of view absurd. Ridicule is far from absurdity. Voltaire is relevant here…
    "I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it."

    Reply
  16. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    well put, epp

    In the short video link by PhotonQ above, you will see that Kevin has a wider definition of technology and the technium that includes our developing social constructs.

    In this interview about spirituality, he defines the technium as "the greater sphere of technology—one that goes beyond hardware to include culture, law, social institutions, and intellectual creations of all types. In short, the Technium is anything that springs from the human mind. It includes hard technology, but much else of human creation as well. I see this extended face of technology as a whole system with its own dynamics." The Technium exists at the interface between science, technology, culture, and consciousness, exploring the various ways humanity has defined and redefined itself through the ages. Within the Technium, technology is not regarded merely as the lifeless artifacts created by a particular species, but as a living matrix of innovation—the infusion of consciousness into inanimate matter, which in turn shapes our personal and cultural experience of the world."

    Of course, it goes without saying, that most of what we value in modern society and morality does not come from medieval books. It is the interpretation, experimentation and advances from then that we have collectively made and will continue to make. The combinatorial space of choices, innovations and learnings grows exponentially.

    Reply
  17. jgury Avatar
    jgury

    Utopian dreams of a new Silicon enhanced globally unified Technium mind order. Things like greed, power, crime, violence, warfare, all remnants of the instinctive savages we once were. Edgar Allen Poe had his Frogpondians and what we have now are Silitopians.
    In Silitopia the world is really less violent even though we have the real means of planetary destruction becoming a reality in my lifetime. Lucky we did not have to break the fractal scale of violence rule with that black swan of a Cuban Fidel. That sure would have been a mess and I probably would not have made it past 5 years old. Not that something like that could ever happen again. Also good news is that animals in Silitopia do seem happy with the latest Western agribusiness trend of the CAFO. Of course the animals in the wild find their habitats exponentially vanishing which is not a very kind thing. To make up for it with kindness we give the most sensitive animals a nice cozy CAFO for optimal animal satisfaction.
    It is not just people and animals in Silitopia who are so important. Since the nation state
    system is no longer relevant and was a just a source of endless disputes we have elevated the larger combinatorial space of the global memetic network now to be our leadership, collective identity, culture and what used to be religion. Let me see if I can make a nice Flickr photo collection of some of the best aspects of Silitopia since that might be more expressive.

    Reply
  18. jgury Avatar
    jgury

    Honest with myself? How is this relevant in any way here. Yes, to my true self I am everything and to the greater universe of Technium nothing. How can I be anything but honest to that which within me is the seed of pure truth? That eternal seed of pure creation which is neither created nor destroyed, beyond any human concept of truth or falsehood.

    Everybody benefits from technology? False even in the strictly human domain. Not just those "out of proportion" things like nuclear bombs, bioweapons, and hellfire missiles.
    Again. the absurd notion is that "Technology is not neutral; it is absolutely positive. It expands choices. That itself is a good." That is like saying humans are absolutely positive. Sorry, but the truth is Technology mirrors the humans that create it. At worst destructive and tyrannical. At best whatever I find to my benefit.

    How about we introduce the dismal science along with modern medicine into these big thinker statements. Hmmmm. Let me be Benjamin Braddock and think REAL hard about this. How about the technology of dialysis? Those Amish too are problematic. They can choose to live with Amish technology but when it comes to enforced vaccination things get a bit more complicated. Not just for Amish either. You go and setup a living will with a pro estate planner. There is a good test for your level of understanding and faith in the powers of technology. A massive heart attack is a good thing in this case? Yes. That way we can get you off the machine easily so just initial here. Death outside your resident nation is a good one too. I think Ariel Sharon is still kept alive in Israel where they will not allow the technology of cremation either.

    Reply
  19. jgury Avatar
    jgury

    My beliefs are very helpful in finding massive things that are Gödel incomplete. So we agree about logic. If we want to really test our faith in terms of belief in the Technium then we should be comfortable with having a truly anonymous judge on questions like should this person live or die. I would be more comfortable in having good software determine my guilt or innocence if I am not guilty. If I am guilty I am certainly going to want a human judge, a jury and options such as choice of venues. With trial by software then I want a lawyer good at casting actions in terms of Gödel incomplete.scenarios regardless of my guilt or innocence. For example, a computer judge in the OJ Simpson case would never be swayed by the glove trick and the clever rhyme. However, the machine would find everything about Kato Kaelin beyond all reason and doubt of Gödel incompleteness in possible proofs of the crime. The skilled attorney would be good at convincing the judge that a Kato witness is an honest sane human and not dismissively insane, a suborned machine or alien.

    Reply
  20. jgury Avatar
    jgury

    I’m not sure what the policy is on computers, web connecting, texting and twiting in the general US judicial system. When I said "truly anonymous" that was the first thing that occurred to me. I tend to write quickly. Anonymity is not something we value in a judge in the US-yet- but it is an advantage in a more lawless society. A computer also can’t be bribed, threatened, coerced, or suffer from feeble senility. The developers could introduce bias in that you could have a liberal, conservative or neutral weighting on the decision algos. If you are not comfortable with the machine having all the authority you could introduce it like a lie detector or expert witness. The mind boggles at the potentials. We already have de jure machine automation justice with camera systems and automated ticketing of what used to have to go thru the regular legal system. So don’t dismiss this as too far fetched. Think of it in the context of how pro sports justice resisted and then finally gave in to the technology of the video replay. At least let the compu para legal/atty have a shot at refuting the "facts" of an expert witness. Probably 9 out 10 of these schmoes now are just getting it right off Wiki and the computer could spot that and red flag it in sub milisec response time for everyone in court to see.

    Reply
  21. jgury Avatar
    jgury

    What’s not to like about technology? Unless you are speeding in your new Tesla electric car and get nailed by one of these robo computer camera cops. At least the robo camera cop can’t taser you if you are black and have been drinking a few too many in your new Tesla electric car. The robo camera cop can still profile you and even faster, but can’t taser you
    because it hates rich people, blacks, drunks, or tech geeks. It can however post your photo on the FB wall of shame, call a real cop to make a friendly home visit, check your tax status,
    deduct the fine from your credit card, send an email to your boss (or whoever really SHOULD be notiifed) all before you make it to your speeding electric drunk driver car rainbow coalition celeb. party destination.

    Reply
  22. jgury Avatar
    jgury

    Look on the bright side. At least you didn’t get tasered then have to show up in court , getting your valuable time wasted listening to some stupid lecture, and the indignity of proximity to the general public. So its bad news good news about new technology. I must be honest with myself in similar circumstances and give the nod to net positive in tech innovative robo camera drunk speeding driver pattern recognition technology. Society as a whole is much better off freeing up law enforcement resources for more important tasks and making the punishment which I deserve much easier to deal with. Thank God the Tesla is not really a performance machine. If it was my old SC T-Bird I would be in prision.

    Reply
  23. jgury Avatar
    jgury

    Here is what Technology really wants.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTBzwGhH2MY&feature=related
    In this case even I have machine envy.

    Reply
  24. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    I read some interesting passages in this book today (which reminded me of my prior comment on the dichotomy between progress and retrograde thought):

    “In all cultures prior to the 17th century or so, the quiet, incremental drift of progress was attributed to the gods, or to the one God. It wasn’t until progress was liberated from the divine and assigned to ourselves that it began to feed upon itself.
    There was a tight feedback loop as increased knowledge enabled us to discover and manufacture more tools, and these tools allowed us to discover and learn more knowledge, and both the tools and the knowledge made our lives easier and longer. The general enlargement of knowledge and comfort and choices — and the sense of well-being — was called progress. The rise of progress coincided with the rise of technology.” (pp.89-90)

    “By systematically recording the evidence for beliefs and investigating the reasons why things worked and then carefully distributing proven innovations, science quickly became the greatest tool for making new things the world has ever seen. Science was in fact a superior method for a culture to learn.
    Why didn’t the Greeks invent it? Or the Egyptians? Science is costly for an individual. Sharing results is of marginal benefit if you are chiefly seeking a better tool for today. Therefore, the benefits of science are neither apparent nor immediate for individuals. Science requires a certain density of leisured population willing to share and support failures to thrive. In other words, science needs prosperity and populations.” (p.91).

    Also, to clarify Kevin’s point again. He is not saying that every technology is positive, but the collection of all technologies — the technium — is positive and compounds improvements for society over time.

    Some his ideas seem so obvious in retrospect… but I had not heard them crystallized in this way…

    “Most change in the past was cyclical.
    For most humans, for most of time, real change was rarely experienced.
    And when change erupted it was to be avoided. If historical change had any perceived direction at all, it was downhill.
    In ancient times when a bearded prophet forecast what was to come, the news was generally bad. The idea that the future brought improvement was never very popular until recently.” (p.73.)

    Reply
  25. jgury Avatar
    jgury

    “In all cultures prior to the 17th century or so, the quiet, incremental drift of progress was attributed to the gods, or to the one God. It wasn’t until progress was liberated from the divine and assigned to ourselves that it began to feed upon itself."
    "In ALL cultures prior to the 17th century or so"
    Do we really have to go thru this trivial excercise. Progressive things like the compass, gunpowder, papermaking, and printing. Those inventions are well documented as attributed to the monkey god king Sun Wukong. As this progess made its way to the west it was ultimately usurped by the Christian church authorities who had to conceal the truth to maintain absolute divine authoritarian power.
    Similar to how the statement "Technology is not neutral; it is absolutely positive. It expands choices. That itself is a good. " Does not mean every technology is positive. Like ALL cultures prior to the 17th century or so ( "or so" being a hallmark of serious historical scholarship) means ALL with some exceptions. Like technology with the exception of of warfare. Its the big picture that really big thinkers are concerned with unlike those narrow experts. Let them just figure out the history of gunpowder which has a pretty good popular history by J. Kelly. If you are hardcore start with the Novum Organum where Bacon is really seminal, absolutely brilliant in iterating on the impact of the compass, printing and gunpowder. Now there is a big tech thinker. Start there and work either forward or backward.

    Reply
  26. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    always fun. Looking back past the Scientific Revolution, which culture was it that generally attributed societal progress to science?

    Of course individuals can contribute to progress despite a religious culture. It’s just harder.

    Reply
  27. jgury Avatar
    jgury

    Which particular revolution? In F. Bacon’s time:
    "Printing, gunpowder and the compass: These three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world; the first in literature, the second in warfare, the third in navigation; whence have followed innumerable changes, in so much that no empire, no sect, no star seems to have exerted greater power and influence in human affairs than these mechanical discoveries."
    Arguing that technology itself is a bigger force than religion, politics, or beliefs. Technology in that time which came from China. Bacon also recognized, to your interest, that travel and exploration with all its consequences is a primary influential factor. In his day wooden ships with accurate compasses and maps being the state of the art.
    Sir Francis has some great thoughts on atheism which are truly mind expanding. Tends to go along with being a towering (oi vey) historical genius.
    http://www.quotationsofwisdom.com/portraits/Sir_Francis_Bacon_00...

    Reply
  28. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    I asked what culture, not what revolution. Bacon was neither.

    So we agree that technology is progress and religion is stasis?

    Consider morality. If one is fundamentalist, the medieval texts that condone slavery, genocide and rape are the final word.

    Or… this just came out on EDGE: A statement of consensus reached among participants at The New Science of Morality Conference:

    "1) Morality is a natural phenomenon and a cultural phenomenon
    Like language, sexuality, or music, morality emerges from the interaction of multiple psychological building blocks within each person, and from the interactions of many people within a society. These building blocks are the products of evolution, with natural selection playing a critical role. They are assembled into coherent moralities as individuals mature within a cultural context. The scientific study of morality therefore requires the combined efforts of the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities.

    2) Many of the psychological building blocks of morality are innate
    The word "innate," as we use it in the context of moral cognition, does not mean immutable, operational at birth, or visible in every known culture. It means "organized in advance of experience," although experience can revise that organization to produce variation within and across cultures.

    Many of the building blocks of morality can be found, in some form, in other primates, including sympathy, friendship, hierarchical relationships, and coalition-building. Many of the building blocks of morality are visible in all human culture, including sympathy, friendship, reciprocity, and the ability to represent others’ beliefs and intentions.

    Some of the building blocks of morality become operational quite early in childhood, such as the capacity to respond with empathy to human suffering, to act altruistically, and to punish those who harm others.

    3) Moral judgments are often made intuitively, with little deliberation or conscious weighing of evidence and alternatives
    Like judgments about the grammaticality of sentences, moral judgments are often experienced as occurring rapidly, effortlessly, and automatically. They occur even when a person cannot articulate reasons for them.

    4) Conscious moral reasoning plays multiple roles in our moral lives
    People often apply moral principles and engage in moral reasoning. For example, people use reasoning to detect moral inconsistencies in others and in themselves, or when moral intuitions conflict, or are absent. Moral reasoning often serves an argumentative function; it is often a preparation for social interaction and persuasion, rather than an open-minded search for the truth. In line with its persuasive function, moral reasoning can have important causal effects interpersonally. Reasons and arguments can establish new principles (e.g., racial equality, animal rights) and produce moral change in a society.

    5) Moral judgments and values are often at odds with actual behavior
    People often fail to live up to their consciously-endorsed values. One of the many reasons for the disconnect is that moral action often depends on self-control, which is a fluctuating and limited resource. Doing what is morally right, especially when contrary to selfish desires, often depends on an effortful inner struggle with an uncertain outcome.

    6) Many areas of the brain are recruited for moral cognition, yet there is no "moral center" in the brain
    Moral judgments depend on the operation of multiple neural systems that are distinct but that interact with one another, sometimes in a competitive fashion. Many of these systems play comparable roles in non-moral contexts. For example, there are systems that support the implementation of cognitive control, the representation of mental states, and the affective representation of value in both moral and non-moral contexts.

    7) Morality varies across individuals and cultures
    People within each culture vary in their moral judgments and behaviors. Some of this variation is due to heritable differences in temperament (for example, agreeableness or conscientiousness) or in morally-relevant capacities (such as one’s ability to take the perspective of others). Some of this difference is due to variations in childhood experiences; some is due to the roles and contexts influencing a person at the moment of judgment or action.

    Morality varies across cultures in many ways, including the overall moral domain (what kinds of things get regulated), as well as specific moral norms, practices, values, and institutions. Moral virtues and values are strongly influenced by local and historical circumstances, such as the nature of economic activity, form of government, frequency of warfare, and strength of institutions for dispute resolution.

    8) Moral systems support human flourishing, to varying degrees
    The emergence of morality allowed much larger groups of people to live together and reap the benefits of trust, trade, shared security, long term planning, and a variety of other non-zero-sum interactions. Some moral systems do this better than others, and therefore it is possible to make some comparative judgments.

    The existence of moral diversity as an empirical fact does not support an "anything-goes" version of moral relativism in which all moral systems must be judged to be equally good. We note, however, that moral evaluations across cultures must be made cautiously because there are multiple justifiable visions of flourishing and wellbeing, even within Western societies. Furthermore, because of the power of moral intuitions to influence reasoning, social scientists studying morality are at risk of being biased by their own culturally shaped values and desires."

    Reply
  29. jgury Avatar
    jgury

    So we agree that technology is progress and religion is stasis?
    Absolutely not. Religion can be destructive or positive just like technology.
    If one is a fundamentalist Zen Buddhist, the medieval texts that condone slavery, genocide and rape do not exist. In fact fundamentalist Zen Buddhists don’t exist either but they have a pretty strict moral code if you mess with them. Likewise I don’t think fundamentalist Presbyterians exist either but they do participate in things like Aikido, Zen sitting weekends, Tai Chi and Yoga without becoming possessed by savage fanatical fervor. Making them watch an Obama speech or trying to take away their guns is sufficient for that without having to challenge the faith that they cling to. For savage fanatical fervor on the atheist side of the aisle just put on a best of Sara Palin show. What I do agree on is that separation of church and state has been progress and there are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times. Technology too. Technology is good but not when it is Nazi technology. Nazi rocketeers a fine example. Nazi rocketeers are bad except when they are our Nazi rocketeers. I find it hard to defend the goodness of tech in and of itself when we now have X number of tech means to wipe out human life on earth, keep it extended or pillage the planet so that everyone in China may have an iphone Pillage of the planet to supply an iphone for everyone in China gets into Linkola land. Linkola offering fine examples of the most extremely challenging thoughts on technology, morality and basic human value. Sure the man goes too far in some of his ideals. I’ll be the first to admit it. His perspective is the winter war and life in Finland generally seems a bit flinty to say the least. "Human rights = Death sentence for all creation." He does quote the Bible exceptionally well like Hosea 2:18 as the eternal ideal of all pacifists, environmentalists and vegans in a single verse. Or Proverbs 12:10 for animal rights.

    Reply
  30. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    I was just trying to get your goat with the progress vs. stasis question (which you did not answer, by the way; it’s a different question than positive vs. negative. Religious fundamentalists would regard stasis as a virtue. Nor did you answer my previous question about "what culture?" I hope you realize that you are dodging the questions =).

    Some argue that Buddhism is not a religion. Yet there are fundamentalist Buddhists and violent Buddhist terrorists.

    "The 14th Dalai Lama has agreed that there exist also extremists and fundamentalists in Buddhism, arguing that fundamentalists are not even able to pick up the idea of a possible dialogue." (wikipedia)

    Of course the Presbyterians, and all Protestants, rely on a medieval text that condones slavery, genocide and rape. It’s the Old Testament, and they have not disowned it.

    I am just baffled about how you can be wrong about so many things. Of course, that’s just my perception, which itself may be wrong. But it does highlight how different our views of the world are and how those views come in clusters that are diametrically opposed, with so little common ground.

    Take your latest example, Nazi rockets. It is a great example of Kevin Kelly’s original point which I think you are trying to refute – that in the long run, technology is a net positive. The net benefit of this technology (rockets) to society has been positive. The net benefit of Nazis to society has been negative.

    The concept of a Nazi (infused with Christian rhetoric, and itself a quasi-religious movement) is the culprit, the activity that society learns to revolt against. And if you want to avoid Nazi atrocities in the future, rising up against rockets is absurdly misplaced. Rising up against the religious mind is closer to the mark.

    Reply
  31. jgury Avatar
    jgury

    “In all cultures prior to the 17th century or so, the quiet, incremental drift of progress was attributed to the gods, or to the one God. It wasn’t until progress was liberated from the divine and assigned to ourselves that it began to feed upon itself." Says Kevin Kelly.
    This has to be the atheist view of the history of science. The whole point of the iteration of printing. gunpowder, and the compass in Novum Organum was that technology itself changed the world regardless of politics, religion, fate or anything else.
    "Printing, gunpowder and the compass: These three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world; the first in literature, the second in warfare, the third in navigation; whence have followed innumerable changes, in so much that no empire, no sect, no star seems to have exerted greater power and influence in human affairs than these mechanical discoveries." I don’t think Bacon viewed the progress of these technical inventions as having anything remotely to do with thinking that required liberation from the Church. This coming from a man who is establishing the basis of the scientific method.
    Galileo Galilei however was in a more adversarial role with the Roman Catholic Church
    "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." Not from the Dale Carneglioli school of Vatican relations. This was a bigger battle than just science and smart guys vs. the Church. The truth is much closer to Voltaire where its relative to the times and to the people in those times. You tell me how great Nazi rocket science is if they are blitzing your estate with V2 rockets. Oh pip pip, stiff upper lip old chap, after the war we will have directTV and Google Earth. Think of the long run value of the work that those Jerries are doing. It is not the religious mind either but much bigger than that kind of simplification. Again Voltaire, which is essentially the same point that Bacon made only in a context of political power…..

    "Most of the great men of this world live as if they were atheists. Every man who has lived with his eyes open, knows that the knowledge of a God, his presence, and his justice, has not the slightest influence over the wars, the treaties, the objects of ambition, interest, or pleasure, in the pursuit of which they are wholly occupied."

    You think Colonel Gaddafi or Ahmed Ahmadinejad base their tactics on the Quran?
    Like getting them to accept the logic of Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris is going to alter what they are up to in the mideast? Getting the women there to read Gloria Steinem is more like it, in full Quranic verse done in Zar trance dance. Put that in your Vivekananda peace pipe and smoke it.

    Now, who said anything about rising against rockets? I think it is reaching the point where you seriously have to consider what not to research or build. Everything from medical l tech to weapons, genetics and robots.
    This posting is getting complicated. How about a non sequitur comic….
    http://www.viruscomix.com/page518.html
    http://www.boingboing.net/2010/09/15/tom-the-dancing-bug-20.html...
    The Atheist Apocalypse is a good one..
    http://www.viruscomix.com/page433.html
    As is Frederick the Great…
    http://www.ftg-comic.com/

    Reply
  32. jgury Avatar
    jgury

    Great interview.
    http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/5227/
    I like the big blanket statements:
    "Religions appeal to tradition, to people who are afraid of change."
    Obviously. The religion of Islam for example was spread by people afraid of change and appealing to tradition. Same story for the success of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Pilgrims. Also Kelly commits multiple classic half baked thinker fallacies
    "Religion attempts to destroy our liberty and is therefore immoral"

    "My view of technology as holy is a minority view. Right now, technology is either the devil, or, if it’s embraced, it’s called neutral. Nobody is saying that it’s divine. An alternative view is not going to sweep the country overnight. It will require people smarter and deeper than me to work it out. Right now I’m a church of one."

    Not really a church of one. Like he is the only guy to have made the substitution of technology, science and reason in general for Religion?

    Culte de la Raison
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Temple_of_Reason_Strasbourg_17…

    My take on the Kevin Kelly viewpoint is that he is somewhat a Timothy Leary of techno babble. At least acid is real and not a humanistic sci-fi notion of the fundamental vast universal cosmological power, the Technium.
    For all these big thinker statements about religion:
    "Pourquoi disputez-vous au sujet de ce dont vous n’avez pas une science?"
    In particular for Buddhist, Hindu and Islamic thought. Kabir is a fine example.
    upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Blind_monks_e…

    Reply
  33. aeroculus Avatar
    aeroculus

    technology as the seventh kingdom of life

    Reply
  34. jgury Avatar
    jgury

    Thanks for that link. I should take it easier on K. Kelly. I have two long 0 tech bicycle trips in my past. Virginia to Oregon in ’76 and Montana to Alaska in ’82, and a France tour. Planning on doing another one to unplug but I don’t know if I can really do it without some minimal device. I might just do it this time focusing on hanging out in small town libraries rather than honky tonks, juke joints. bars, campgrounds, etc. So Kelly sure has it right about the need to unplug and reevaluate your personal relationship with all this new tech.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *