Intrigued by the title and a review of What Technology Wants, I never expected to discuss it as part of a blog post. Provocative and difficult to read are only a few of the characteristics of this book. Kevin Kelly challenges those of us who embrace technology to think about its role in our lives. To those of us who rebel against technology, he suggests that we carefully choose which aspects of it we will reject in our lives and how we can adapt to its intrusions when unavoidable.

Technology’s dominance in modern-day life is the major theme in What Technology Wants. Its major premises are:

• technology is a net benefit to mankind,
• technology has a direction and is not random,
• technological solutions to problems do not spread around the world,
• similar technologies are invented independently on different continents, and
• these solutions evolve in slightly different forms on each continent.

Kelly notes that people who are most anti-technology use their birthdate as the beginning of the age of technology. I have had the opportunity to tour historical homes such as the Biltmore House, Swan House, and Fort Hill. Although each was a mansion owned by wealthy families, a visit to each kitchen suggests that most current home cooks would not wish to prepare a meal on their premises.

The book describes the evolution of a technology. The reason for developing a specific technology does not usually provide its greatest impact on society. Each initial attempt is shaped by earlier technical developments, a culture’s technological history, and selective choice by early adopters. Successful technologies become superorganisms. They can’t be controlled, but they can be steered. A new technology usually creates more problems than it solves. We dream of its benefits while disregarding its dangers. Adapting to a technology changes our habits and frequently our lives.

Hunter gatherers is a topic of interest in What Technology Wants. The author suggests that life is not as complex as we might think. The view here is not as rosy as Eating to Extinction suggests. Hunter gatherers work in fits and starts. They live a disposable lifestyle. Instead of accumulating stuff, they design and make tools needed for the time and location. When they move on, they discard those tools. He describes their life as “affluence without abundance.” Yet all hunter gatherers have hungry season when they find themselves on the edge of malnutrition with food scarce. It is a life best suited for young adults. Everyone in the community is young and healthy with a prime age of 15-35. The elderly population is disposable as well.

Technology in the current food production system. As we proceed to the end of the book, Kelly moves from historical and theoretical perspectives to practical applications. Up to this point he had me. I bought into his theory and stopped being so suspicious of technological calamity. One example he uses is the current food production system. Major difficulties include:

• too many monocultures,
• too few staple crops,
• too many interventions with drugs, pesticides and soil disturbance, and
• an overreliance on fossil fuels.

For such a stark difference in the perspectives in this and the previous post, these conclusions share a remarkable similarity.

The book suggests areas of focus to improve food production systems. More than minor tweaks to current technology will be needed to head off climate change. Such changes are unlikely to make the needed difference between now and the year of reckoning, 2050. The pessimistic outlook of Eating to Extinction appears to be more realistic than the optimism of What Technology Wants.

Technological trajectories include the direction of most technologies. Kelly lists 13 of these trajectories which increase as the technology matures. I will focus on four of the ones described.

Technologies increase complexity of the mechanisms and mechanics of the tasks they handle. The machinery needed to produce the technology becomes more complex as does the expertise of the operator and repair personnel. This increasing complexity thrills those who find novel ways to use it but frustrates those who just want to perform a simple task. Such complexity leads to specialization. Specialists are hired to run the equipment, write operating manuals, and develop marketing plans for needed equipment and potential applications.

Technology interacts with science to provide structure. Science leads the way in helping develop cause-and-effect relationships. Technology causes problems leading to development of solutions or ways around the difficulties. Structure helps lead to standardization of techniques prior to further complexity and specialization. The other involves enhancing diversity [wait a minute! Didn’t we conclude in the last post that technology destroys diversity?]

Time out!! I was a member of an interdisciplinary research team that won a national award. Interdisciplinary research is hard. University administrators support these projects with words but not so much with additional funds. Scientific journals shy away from publishing studies that challenge disciplinary principles and protocols. Scientists from different disciplines speak different languages. Further complicating our team’s research was that it included economics and engineering. One of the most challenging roadblocks was terminology. It was not the use of new terms that caused problems. We could look up the new term and study its implications. It was the use of the same words that had different meanings that caused the real problems. When we thought we understood each other but did not, such terms sent us down many blind alleys. For example, it took weeks for me to realize that what the economist meant by hedonics when it came to price functions was not related to what I meant by hedonics when it came to sensory evaluation.

So, does technology enhance or destroy food diversity? Answering this question requires another question—“diversity of what?” What Technology Wants mentions diversity in terms of products. Technology generates new products and variations of items around single products. Eating to Extinction talks about the diversity of resources to produce products. As trajectory of a technology produces a diversity of new products and selections of fruits or vegetables in the marketplace, the standardization of crops acceptable for processing decreases diversity of crops grown. Thus, we have resulting increases in complexity and specialization.  

Take home lesson. Technology wants more connections, diversity, opportunities, options, thought, and unity. We can choose to adapt our lives to specific technologies or to opt out. Once a technology takes over a society, technology becomes impossible to defeat. Technology helped decrease hunger and food insecurity around the globe leading to increases in world population. Increased human populations accelerated global climate change. We are probably past the point of decreasing global climate change by fighting current technology. Time is running out. Solutions to the crisis will require more sophisticated, smarter technology.

Coming soon: Confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, staying curious