What Technology Wants

Last updated
What Technology Wants
What Technology Wants, Book Cover Art.jpg
First edition
Author Kevin Kelly
LanguageEnglish
Subjects Culture, Human, Life, Technology
Publisher Viking Press
Publication date
2010
Media typePrint (Hardback)
Pages416
ISBN 978-0-670-02215-1

What Technology Wants is a 2010 nonfiction book by Kevin Kelly focused on technology as an extension of life.

Contents

Summary

The opening chapter of What Technology Wants, entitled "My Question", chronicles an early period in the author's life and conveys a sense of how he went from being a nomadic traveler with few possessions to a co-founder of Wired . [1] [2] The book invokes a giant force – the technium – which is "the greater, global, massively interconnected system of technology vibrating around us". [3] [4]

In November 2014, Kelly gave a SALT talk (Seminars About Long-term Thinking) for the Long Now Foundation titled "Technium Unbound", [5] where he explained and expanded upon the ideas from his books What Technology Wants and Out of Control .

Criticism

Kelly's book has been criticized for espousing a teleological view of biological evolution that is rejected by some scientists, and for promoting a "bizarre neo-mystical progressivism"(Jerry Coyne). [3]

Editions

See also

Related Research Articles

<i>Wired</i> (magazine) American technology magazine

Wired is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and has been in publication since March/April 1993. Several spin-offs have been launched, including Wired UK, Wired Italia, Wired Japan, and Wired Germany.

Superorganism

A superorganism or supraorganism is a group of synergetically interacting organisms of the same species. A community of synergetically interacting organisms of different species is called a holobiont.

Radical transparency is a phrase used across fields of governance, politics, software design and business to describe actions and approaches that radically increase the openness of organizational process and data. Its usage was originally understood as an approach or act that uses abundant networked information to access previously confidential organizational process or outcome data.

Stewart Brand American writer

Stewart Brand is an American writer, best known as editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. He founded a number of organizations, including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation. He is the author of several books, most recently Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto.

Louis Rossetto

Louis Rossetto is an Italian-American writer, editor, and entrepreneur. He is best known as the founder and former editor-in-chief / publisher of Wired magazine. He was also the first investor and the former CEO of TCHO chocolate company.

Peter Thiel German-American entrepreneur and venture capitalist

Peter Andreas Thiel is a German-American billionaire entrepreneur and venture capitalist. A co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, he was the first outside investor in Facebook. He was ranked No. 4 on the Forbes Midas List of 2014, with a net worth of $2.2 billion, and No. 391 on the Forbes 400 in 2020, with a net worth of $2.1 billion. In 2016, Thiel confirmed that he had funded Hulk Hogan in the Bollea v. Gawker lawsuit because Gawker had previously outed him as gay. The lawsuit eventually bankrupted Gawker.

John Corrigan "Jonathan" Wells is an American author, theologian, and advocate of the pseudoscientific argument of intelligent design. Wells joined the Unification Church in 1974, and subsequently wrote that the teachings of church founder Sun Myung Moon, his own studies at the Unification Theological Seminary and his prayers convinced him to devote his life to "destroying Darwinism." The term Darwinism is often used by intelligent design proponents and other creationists to refer to the scientific consensus on evolution. He gained a PhD in religious studies at Yale University in 1986, then became Director of the Unification Church's inter-religious outreach organization in New York City. In 1989, he studied at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a PhD in molecular and cellular biology in 1994. He became a member of several scientific associations and has published in academic journals.

Kevin Kelly (editor)

Kevin Kelly is the founding executive editor of Wired magazine, and a former editor/publisher of the Whole Earth Review. He has also been a writer, photographer, conservationist, and student of Asian and digital culture.

Jerry Saltz

Jerry Saltz is an American art critic. Since 2006, he has been senior art critic and columnist for New York magazine. Formerly the senior art critic for The Village Voice, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2018 and was nominated for the award in 2001 and 2006. Saltz served as a visiting critic at School of Visual Arts, Columbia University, Yale University, and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the New York Studio Residency Program, and was the sole advisor for the 1995 Whitney Biennial.

Kirkpatrick Sale is an author who has written prolifically about political decentralism, environmentalism, luddism and technology. He has been described as having a "philosophy unified by decentralism" and as being "a leader of the Neo-Luddites," an "anti-globalization leftist," and "the theoretician for a new secessionist movement."

John F. Haught American theologian

John F. Haught is an American theologian. He is a Distinguished Research Professor at Georgetown University. He specializes in Roman Catholic systematic theology, with a particular interest in issues pertaining to physical cosmology, evolutionary biology, geology, and Christianity.

Jerry Coyne American biologist

Jerry Allen Coyne is an American biologist known for his work on speciation and his commentary on intelligent design. A prolific scientist and author, he has published numerous papers elucidating the theory of evolution. He is currently a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago in the Department of Ecology and Evolution. His concentration is speciation and ecological and evolutionary genetics, particularly as they involve the fruit fly, Drosophila.

Tim Ferriss American entrepreneur, investor, author, and podcaster

Timothy Ferriss is an American entrepreneur, investor, author, and lifestyle guru.

<i>Transcendent Man</i> 2009 documentary film by Barry Ptolemy

Transcendent Man is a 2009 documentary film by American filmmaker Barry Ptolemy about inventor, futurist and author Ray Kurzweil and his predictions about the future of technology in his 2005 book, The Singularity is Near. In the film, Ptolemy follows Kurzweil around his world as he discusses his thoughts on the technological singularity, a proposed advancement that will occur sometime in the 21st century when progress in artificial intelligence, genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics will result in the creation of a human-machine civilization.

Kelly Ripa American actress and talk show host

Kelly Maria Ripa is an American actress, dancer, talk show host, and television producer. As an actress, Ripa's best known roles are Hayley Vaughan on the ABC daytime soap opera All My Children and Faith Fairfield on the ABC sitcom Hope & Faith (2003–2006). Since 2001, Ripa has been the co-host of the syndicated morning talk show Live! with Kelly and Ryan in various formats. Ripa and her husband, Mark Consuelos, own a New York-based production company, Milojo. In 2014, The Hollywood Reporter named her one of the Most Powerful People in Media.

Is Google Making Us Stupid? Magazine article by technology writer Nicholas G. Carr

Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains! is a magazine article by technology writer Nicholas G. Carr, and is highly critical of the Internet's effect on cognition. It was published in the July/August 2008 edition of The Atlantic magazine as a six-page cover story. Carr's main argument is that the Internet might have detrimental effects on cognition that diminish the capacity for concentration and contemplation. Despite the title, the article is not specifically targeted at Google, but more at the cognitive impact of the Internet and World Wide Web. Carr expanded his argument in The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, a book published by W. W. Norton in June 2010.

<i>The Social Network</i> 2010 film by David Fincher

The Social Network is a 2010 American biographical drama film directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin. Adapted from Ben Mezrich's 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires, it portrays the founding of social networking website Facebook and the resulting lawsuits. It stars Jesse Eisenberg as founder Mark Zuckerberg, along with Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Saverin, Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker, Armie Hammer as Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and Max Minghella as Divya Narendra. Neither Zuckerberg nor any other Facebook staff were involved with the project, although Saverin was a consultant for Mezrich's book.

Larry Sanger American Internet project developer and Wikipedia co-founder

Lawrence Mark Sanger is an American Internet project developer and philosopher who co-founded the online encyclopedia Wikipedia along with Jimmy Wales, for which he coined the name and wrote much of its original governing policy. Sanger has worked on other online encyclopedias such as Nupedia, Citizendium, and Everipedia.

<i>Endless Forms Most Beautiful</i> (book)

Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo and the Making of the Animal Kingdom is a 2005 book by the molecular biologist Sean B. Carroll. It presents a summary of the emerging field of evolutionary developmental biology and the role of toolkit genes. It has won numerous awards for science communication.

<i>The Inevitable</i> (book) 2016 nonfiction book about technology trends

The Inevitable is a 2016 nonfiction book by Kevin Kelly that forecasts the twelve technological forces that will shape the next thirty years.

References

  1. Kelly, K. (2010). What Technology Wants pp. 1-17. New York: Penguin Group.
  2. "Wired Co-Founder Kevin Kelly on 'What Technology Wants'". 7x7 Bay Area. 2010-10-24. Retrieved 2019-12-19.
  3. 1 2 Jerry Coyne (November 5, 2010). "Better All the Time". The New York Times . Retrieved December 18, 2019.
  4. Susan Jane Gilman (October 26, 2010). "'What Technology Wants' Tracks The Tech Evolution". NPR . Retrieved December 18, 2019.
  5. Technium Unbound