Technology's epic story | Kevin Kelly | TEDxAmsterdam

In this wide-ranging, thought-provoking talk, Kevin Kelly muses on what technology means in our lives -- from its impact at the personal level to its place in the cosmos.

It is a delight to be here.

I worked on my speech
at 4 in the morning last night.

(Laughter)

And I think it's part
of this criptic code.

I want to talk about technology.

Technology surround us, it's everywhere,

it fills our lives,

a lot of us work
at making more tachnology.

The first [letter]
of this conference, TED,

stands for technology.

And yet, I don't think we really know
what it is.

I want to talk about my investigations

into what technology means in our lives -

not just our immediate life,
but in the cosmic sense,

in the kind of long history of the world

and our place in the world:

What is this stuff?

What is the significance?

And so, I want to kind of go through

my little story of what I found out.

And one of the first things
that I started to investigate was

the history of the name of technology.

And in the United States
there is a State of the Union address

given by every president since 1790.

So we have 220
State of the Union addresses.

And each one of those is really kind of

summing up the most important things

for the United States at that time.

If you search for the word "technology,"

it was not used until 1952.

So, technology was sort of absent
from everybody's thinking

until 1952, which happened to be
the year of my birth.

And obviously, technology

had existed before then,
but we weren't aware of it,

and so it was sort of an awakening

of this force in our life.

I actually did research to find that
the first use of the word "technology"

was in 1829,

and it was invented by a guy
who was starting a curriculum,

a course, bringing together all the kinds

of arts and crafts, and industry -

and he called it "Technology."

And that's the very first use of the word.

Obviously this thing in our life
has been going on a lot earlier.

So, what is this stuff

that we're all consumed by,

and bothered by?

Alan Kay calls it, "Technology is anything

that was invented after you were born."

(Laughter)

Which is sort of the idea that we
normally have about what technology is:

It's all that new stuff.

It's not roads, or penicillin,

or factory tires; it's the new stuff.

My friend Danny Hillis
says kind of a similar one,

he says, "Technology is anything
that doesn't work yet."

Which is, again, a sense
that it's all new.

But we know that it's just not new.

It actually goes way back,
and what I want to suggest

is it goes a long way back.

So, another way to think about technology,
what it means,

is to imagine a world without technology.

If we were to eliminate every single bit
of technology in the world today -

and I mean everything,

from blades to scrapers to cloth -

we as a species would not live very long.

We would die by the billions,
and very quickly:

The wolves would get us,
we would be defenseless,

we would be unable to grow enough food,
or find enough food.

Even the hunter-gatherers
used some elementary tools.

And so, they had minimal technology,

but they had some technology.

And if we study those
hunter-gatherer tribes

and the Neanderthal,
which are very similar to early man,

we find out a very curious thing
about this world without technology,

and this is a kind of a curve
of their average age.

There are no Neanderthal fossils
that are older than 40 years old

that we've ever found,

and the average age of most of these

hunter-gatherer tribes is 20 to 30.

There are very few young infants

because they die - high mortality rate
- and there's very few old people.

And so the profile is sort of for your
average San Francisco neighborhood:

a lot of young people.

And if you go there, you say,
"Hey, everybody's really healthy."

Well, that's because they're all young.

And the same thing with
the hunter-gatherer tribes and early man

is that you didn't live
beyond the age of 30.

So, it was a world without grandparents.

And grandparents are very important,

because they are the transmitter
of cultural evolution and information.

Imagine a world and basically
everybody was 20 to 30 years old.

How much learning can you do?

You can't do very much
learning in your own life,

it's so short,

and there's nobody to pass on
what you do learn.

So, that's one aspect.

It was a very short life.

But at the same time anthropologists know

that most hunter-gatherer tribes
of the world,

with that very little technology,
actually did not spend

a very long time gathering the food
that they needed:

three to six hours a day.

Some anthropologists call that
the original affluent society.

Because they had banker hours basically.

So, it was possible to get enough food.

But when the scarcity came

when the highs and lows
and the droughts came,

then people went into starvation.

And that's why they didn't live very long.

So, what technology brought,

through the very simple tools
like these stone tools here -

even something as small as this -

the early bands of humans
were actually able

to eliminate to extinction

about 250 megafauna animals

in North America when they first arrived
10,000 years ago.

So, within several generations,

a couple thousands of years,

that little bit of technology
eliminated all those animals,

so we've been actually affecting
the planet on a grand scale

from a very early age.

So, long before the industrial age

we've been affecting the planet
on a global scale,

with just a small amount of technology.

The other thing
that the early man invented was fire.

And fire was used to clear out, and again,

affected the ecology of grass
and whole continents,

and was used in cooking.

It enabled us to actually eat
all kinds of things.

It was sort of, in a certain sense,
in a McLuhan sense,

an external stomach,

in the sense that it was cooking food
that we could not eat otherwise.

And if we don't have fire,
we actually could not live.

Our bodies have adapted
to these new diets.

Our bodies have changed
in the last 10,000 years.

So, with that little bit of technology,

humans went from a small band
of 10,000 or so -

the same number
as Neanderthals everywhere -

and we suddenly exploded.

With the invention of language
around 50,000 years ago,

the number of humans exploded,

and very quickly became
the dominant species on the planet.

And they migrated into the rest
of the world at two kilometers per year

until, within several
tens of thousands of years,

we occupied every single
watershed on the planet

and became the most dominant species,

with a very small amount of technology.

And even at that time,
with the introduction of agriculture,

8,000, 10,000 years ago

we started to see climate change.

So, climate change is not a new thing.

What's new is just the degree of it.

Even during the agricultural age
there was climate change.

And so, already small amounts
of technology

were transforming the world.

And what this means,
and where I'm going,

is that technology has become
the most powerful force in the world.

All the things that we see today

that are changing our lives,
we can always trace back

to the introduction
of some new technology.

So, it's a force
that is the most powerful force

that has been unleashed on this planet,

and in such a degree that I think

that it's become who we are.

In fact, our humanity, and everything
that we think about ourselves

is something that we've invented.

So, we've invented ourselves.

Of all the animals
that we have domesticated,

the most important animal
that we've domesticated

has been us. Okay?

So, humanity is our greatest invention.

But of course we're not done yet.

We're still inventing, and this is
what technology is allowing us to do -

it's continually to reinvent ourselves.

It's a very, very strong force.

I call this entire thing -
us humans as our technology,

everything that we've made,
gadgets in our lives -

we call that the technium.

That's this world.

My working definition of technology

is "anything useful
that a human mind makes."

It's not just hammers and gadgets,
like laptops.

But it's also law.

The system of law is a kind of technology.

And of course cities are ways
to make things more useful to us.

But - and this is the point of my talk -

While this is something
that comes from our mind,

it also has its roots deeply

into the cosmos.

It goes back.

The origins and roots of technology
go back to the Big Bang,

in this way, in that they are part of this
self-organizing thread

that starts at the Big Bang

and goes through galaxies and stars,

into life, into us.

And the three major phases
of the early universe

was energy, when the dominant force
was energy;

then as it cooled
the dominant force became matter;

and then, with the invention of life,
four billion years ago,

the dominant force in our neighborhood
became information.

That's what life is:
It's an information process

that was restructuring
and making new order.

So, those energy, matter
Einstein show were equivalent,

and now new sciences of quantum computing

show that entropy and information
and matter and energy

are all interrelated,
so it's one long continuum.

You put energy
into the right kind of system

and out comes wasted heat, entropy

and extropy, which is order.

It's the increased order.

Where does this order come from?
Its roots go way back.

We actually don't know.

But we do know
that the self-organization trend

throughout the universe is long,

and it began with things like galaxies;

they maintained their order
for billions of years.

Stars are basically
nuclear fusion machines

that self-organize and self-sustain
themselves for billions of years,

this order against the entropy
of the world.

And flowers and plants
are the same thing, extended,

and technology is basically
an extension of life.

One trend that we notice
in all those things is that

the amount of energy per gram per second

that flows through this,
is actually increasing.

The amount of energy is increasing
through this little sequence.

And that the amount of energy per gram
per second that flows through life

is actually greater than a star -

because of the star's long lifespan,

the energy density in life
is actually higher than a star.

And the energy density
that we see in the greatest

of anywhere in the universe
is actually in a PC chip.

There is more energy flowing through,
per gram per second,

than anything that we have
any other experience with.

What I would suggest
is that if you want to see

where technology is going,
we continue that trajectory,

and we say, "Well what's going to become
more energy-dense,

that's where it's going."

And so what I've done is,
I've taken the same kinds of things

and looked at other aspects

of evolutionary life and say,

"What are the general trends
in evolutionary life?"

And there are things moving towards

greater complexity,
moving towards greater diversity,

moving towards greater specialization,

sentience, ubiquity and most important,
evolvability:

Those very same things
are also present in technology.

That's where technology is going.

It is moving towards more complexity,
diversity, specialization,

more mindfulness

more evolvability.

In fact, technology is accelerating
all the aspects of life,

and we can see that happening;
just as there's diversity in life,

there's more diversity in things we make.

Things in life start out
being general cell,

and they become specialized:
you have tissue cells,

you have muscle, brain cells.

And same things happens with, say
a hammer, which is general at first

and becomes more specific.

So, I would like to say
that while there is six kingdoms of life,

we can think of technology basically

as a seventh kingdom of life.

It's a branching off from the human form.

But technology has its own agenda,

like anything, like life itself.

For instance, right now, three-quarters
of the energy that we use

is actually used
to feed the technium itself.

In transportation,
it's not to move us, it's to move

the stuff that we make or buy.

On one hand, technology [unclear]

on the other hand, it's blessing us
with all kinds of things.

I use the word "want."
Technology wants.

This is a robot that wants
to plug itself in to get more power.

Your cat wants more food.

A bacterium,
which has no consciousness at all,

wants to move towards light.

It has an urge,
and technology has an urge.

At the same time,
it wants to give us things,

and what it gives us
is basically progress.

You can take all kinds of curves,
and they're all pointing up.

There's really no dispute about progress,

if we discount the cost of that.

And that's the thing
that bothers most people,

is that progress is really real,

but we wonder and question:
What are the environmental costs of it?

But there's no doubt about it,
that it really is present and gives us.

I did a survey of a number of species
of artifacts in my house,

and there's 6,000.

Other people have come up with 10,000.

When King Henry of England died,

he had 18,000 things in his house,

but that was the entire wealth of England.

And with that entire wealth of England,

King Henry could not buy any antibiotics,

he could not buy refrigeration,

he could not buy a trip
of a thousand miles.

Whereas this rickshaw wallah in India

could save up and buy antibiotics

and he could buy refrigeration.

He could buy things that King Henry,
in all his wealth, could never buy.

That's what progress is about.

So, technology is selfish;
technology is generous.

That conflict, that tension,
will be with us forever,

that sometimes it wants to do
what it wants to do,

and sometimes
it's going to do things for us.

And that's where we get
this sort of feeling,

we have confusion about what
we should think about a new technology.

Right now the default position

about when a new technology
comes along, is -

people talk about
the precautionary principle,

which is very common in Europe,

which says, basically, "Don't do anything.

When you meet a new technology, stop,

until it can be proven
that there's no harm."

I think that really leads nowhere.

But a better way is to,
what I call proactionary principle,

which is: you engage with technology.

You try it out.

You obviously do
what the precautionary principle suggests,

you try to anticipate it,
but after anticipating it,

you constantly asses it,

not just once, but eternally.

And when it diverts from what you want,

we prioritize risk,
we evaluate not just the new stuff

but the old stuff.

We fix it, but most importantly,
we relocate it.

And what I mean by that is that

we find a new job for it.

Technologies are sort of like children.

Nuclear energy, fission,
is really bad idea for bombs.

But it may be a pretty good idea -

relocated into
sustainable nuclear energy -

for electricity, instead of burning coal.

When we have a bad idea,
the response to a bad idea

is not no ideas,
it's not to stop thinking.

The response to a bad idea -

like, say, a tungsten light bulb -

is a better idea. OK?

So, better ideas is really -
always the response

to technology that we don't like

is basically, better technology.

And actually, in a certain sense,

technology is a kind of a method
for generating better ideas,

if you can think about it that way.

So, maybe spraying DDT on crops
is a really bad idea.

But DDT sprayed on local homes,

there's nothing better
to eliminate malaria,

besides insect DDT-impregnated
mosquito nets.

But that's a really good idea;
that's a good job for technology.

So, our job as humans

is to parent our mind children,

to find them good friends,

to find them a good job.

And so, every technology
is sort of a creative force

looking for the right job.

That's actually my son, right here.

(Laughter)

There are no bad technologies,

just as there are no bad children.

We don't say children are neutral,
children are positive.

We just have to find them the right place.

And so, what technology gives us,

over the long term,
over the sort of extended evolution -

from the beginning of time,

through the invention
of the plants and animals,

and the evolution of life,
the evolution of brains -

what that is constantly giving us

what technology is giving us
after we weigh the pros and cons,

is increasing differences -
which was mentioned this morning -

it's increasing diversity,
it's increasing options,

it's increasing choices, opportunities,

possibilities and freedoms.

That's what we get from technology
all the time.

That's why people leave villages

and go into cities,
is because they are always

gravitating towards
increased choices and possibilities.

And we are aware of the price.

We pay a price for that,
but we are aware of it, and generally

we will pay the price
for increased freedoms,

choices and opportunities.

Even technology wants clean water.

Is technology
diametrically opposed

to nature?

I have a couple of slides,
two slildes left -

I would say high technology
needs clean water

as much as we do, if not more than we do.

Because technology
is an extension of life,

it's in parallel and aligned
with the same things

that life wants.

So that I think technology loves biology,

if we allow it to.

So, all these things - complexity,
diversity - are the long strand,

the great movement
that is starting billions of years ago

is moving through us
and it continues to go,

and our choice, so to speak,

in technology,
is really to align ourselves

with this force much greater
than ourselves.

So, technology is more
than just the stuff in your pocket.

It's more than just gadgets;

it's more than just things
that people invent.

It's actually part of a very long story,

a great story,
that began billions of years ago.

And it's moving through us,
this self-organization,

and we're extending and accelerating it,

and we can be part of it
by aligning the technology

that we make with it.

I really appreciate your attention today.
Thank you.

(Applause)