Summary [From the Viking 2010 catalog]
This provocative book introduces a brand-new view of technology. It suggests that technology as a whole is not just a jumble of wires and metal but a living, evolving organism that has its own unconscious needs and tendencies. Kelly looks out through the eyes of this global technological system to discover "what it wants." Kelly uses vivid examples from the past to trace technology's long course, and then follows a dozen trajectories of technology into the near future to project where technology is headed.
This new theory of technology offers three practical lessons: By listening to what technology wants we can better prepare ourselves and our children for the inevitable technologies to come. By adopting the principles of pro-action and engagement, we can steer technologies into their best roles. And by aligning ourselves with the long-term imperatives of this near-living system, we can capture its full gifts.
Reviews of What Technology Wants
The Economist, September 30, 2010[What Technology Wants] is a sweeping theory of technology that presents it not as a series of inventions by humans, but as a living force with its own needs and tendencies. It might sound facile to ask what technology "wants", but Mr Kelly, who was founding editor of Wired magazine, makes a case for the desire of the "technium", as he dubs the ecosystem of technologies, to grow in complexity and colonise new areas, just like life itself. He argues that just as water "wants" to flow downhill and life tends to fill available ecological niches, technology similarly "wants" to expand and evolve. We have no choice but to embrace it, he says, because we are already symbiotic with it; technology underpins civilisation.
Mr Kelly is not alone in his belief that technology is an unstoppable force of nature. A similar position was taken by Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber. In a chapter entitled "The Unabomber Was Right" Mr Kelly looks in detail at Mr Kaczynski's writings to explain how they start from very similar views about the nature of technology, but arrive at very different conclusions.
The Unabomber was a terrorist who targeted scientists in an effort to derail runaway technological development. Mr Kelly, by contrast, is optimistic that by understanding the nature of technology, mankind is in a better position to benefit from its development and to make sensible choices about which technologies to adopt. "By aligning ourselves with the imperative of the technium, we can be more prepared to steer it where we can and more aware of where we are going," he writes. "By following what technology wants, we can be more ready to capture its full gifts."
It is daring of Mr Kelly to invite such a direct comparison of his theories to the ramblings of a madman. Though some parts of his argument are more convincing than others, and he veers towards New Age-speak at times, his book is consistently provocative and intriguing: for instance, when he visits an Amish community to find out how their technology choices are made (they turn out to be surprising enthusiasts for genetically modified maize). And although he is an optimist, Mr Kelly has a clear-eyed view of the drawbacks of technology and the difficulty of striking the right balance, at both a personal and societal level, in its adoption.
