What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly

What Technology Wants

Finally I read What Technology Wants, by Kevin Kelly.

My notes.

The technium is a word Kevin Kelly invented to indicate the autonomous self-enforcing system of technologies, machines, tools, ideas.

As such, the technium as a concept reminds me of The Selfish Gene from Richard Dawkins and Harari’s AI concept in Homo Deus.

On the latter: throughout the book I kept wondering why there was no reference at all in Harari’s Home Deus to this book from Kevin Kelly. The technium coincides so much with Harari’s ideas of a developing autonomous AI, that the lack of reference could be called an omission. (What Technology Wants was published in 2010, Homo Deus in 2016.)

A breakthrough evolution in human intelligence was the development of man’s capability of language. This made is possible to improve the food for humans, increasing longevity, which increased learning in the communities of humans, which improved tools et cetera.

Like we domesticated animals, we ourselves became domesticated with technology. Our lives today are symbiotic with technology.

Technology over time developed from substance and energy-focused to organization and control of information.

Technology is the extended body of human for ideas.

The major transitions in the technium (in parallel to the major transitions in biology)

  • Primate communication -> language
  • Oral lore – Writing/mathematical notation
  • Scripts – Printing
  • Book knowledge – Scientific Method
  • Artisan production -> Mass production
  • Industrial culture -> ubiquitous global communication

Which seems a logical development, but it begs the question: what is the next step in such an evolution? Some higher form of intelligent interconnection between societies?

Development of technology has a benefit over biological development in that it can backtrack to developments from the past and reuse those. In biology, paths that have died out can not be integrated in active branches of biological development.

The technium’s information mass is ever-increasing and growing.

The relationship with population growth: population growth drives progress. More people means more minds, these minds can be working on more problems.

Now, the question arise what happens when the earth population declines.

Evolution converges to recurring forms. Some forms have  come out of evolution through independent paths (eyes, for example).

Also for the technium, independent, simultaneous evolution is the rule.

Convergent evolution (of technology and biology) is adaptive: changes to circumstances, contingent: based of luck, inevitable: evolves in a direction.

The inverted pyramid of invention (by Daniel Hillis): everyone can have an idea, executing on it is the most important thing.

It is our fate we have become connected with our technology. Only by embracing it we can steer its direction.

Technology does not answer world issues like war. New problems will arise with tech, always.

Technology seems to eat human dignity. Is that a misanthropic view?

Infamous tech-opponent the Unabomber was right: “Machine made decisions will bring better result than man-made ones.”

But even opposers of tech don’t give it all up. Nobody goes all the way: why?

  • Because tech is addictive?
  • Because tech covers its drawbacks to us?
  • Because in the end we chose to, after balancing pro’s and con’s.

We need to make better decisions about tech. And to be able to do so, we need more tech.

Kelly tells the story of how the Amish can teach us how we could weigh the benefits and evaluate the ways of using technology minimally.

We need to make minimum use of technologies because our time and attention are limited.

But that does not mean we should minimize technology development.

My question on this subject is: could it be that technology becomes so embedded in culture that also the conscious use of technology becomes part of our culture? Are we only in the early phases of adopting technology and is this a maturing process we have to go through. And realize that addicts (of technology) may always be there?

We have to live with technology, convivial.

We don’t see the potential of technology before it becomes mature. And it’s always different than anticipated.

We don’t need to proactively approve technology. We should monitor and adopt policy to technology developments.

We have to make technology convivial, compliant with life. For this, Kevin Kelly defines a number of characteristics technologies should adopt:

  • Promote collaboration.
  • Transparency, on ownership and origins. No asymmetrical knowledge for some users.
  • Decentralized, not monopolized.
  • Flexible, easy to modify, adapt, and easily given up by users.
  • Redundant, having several options, not monopolized.
  • Efficient, impacting ecosystems to the minimum.
  • Complexity of our life will continue to increase and we will continually need to manage this.
  • Diversity.
  • Specialization: technology grows towards the long tail of niches.
  • Ubiquity. Everyone will eventually get his hands on technology. More interesting to worry about is what to do when everyone has a technology, rather than how to give everyone a technology.
  • Freedom. The more complexity, the more freedom.
  • Mutualism, the collaborative nature, dependence creates a crucial social relationship between people and technologies.
  • Beauty. Technology evolves to the beauty that people love so much in the natural world.
  • Sentience. Technology will increase sentience. Not into a super mind, but into a form of distributed specialized minds.

The technium organizes the structure of knowledge, connecting different pockets of knowledge.

The technium keeps evolving, making rapid changes possible.

So why is this all better for humans?

It increase choices, including those for the good.

Allows humans to participate in new ideas.

A good device increases choices

Napoleon Hill en public domain boeken

Ik las op aanraden van meerdere mensen het al vrij oude boek Think and Grow Rich van Napoleon Hill. Wonderlijk actueel.

Het boek is public domain en te lezen en downloaden van meerdere sites. Bijvoorbeeld https://archive.org/details/NapoleonHillThinkAndGrowRich_201706 en van Amazon.

Geïnteresseerd in public domain boeken, dacht ik een lijstje te maken van sites waar je public domain boeken kunt vinden, maar dat is er natuurlijk al: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qvq99b/how-to-download-the-books-that-just-entered-the-public-domain bijvoorbeeld.

This Is Marketing

This is Marketing

Waarschijnlijk het beste, maar in ieder geval het leukste en meest leesbare boek over marketing in het internet-tijdperk: Seth Godin’s This Is Marketing. Heel eerlijk samengevat op de laatste pagina van het boek zelf.

Verplichte kost.

Figuring – Maria Popova

Maria Popova schreef het uitzonderlijke Figuring. Het verhaalt op een schijnbaar ongerichte manier de relaties tussen denkers en doeners van de 16e tot en met de 20e eeuw. Beginnend bij Keppler doorlopend naar Margareth Fuller. Popova beschrijft de persoonlijke en ideële up-hill battles van deze doorgaans nogal non-conformistische denkers. Geweldig verslavend boek. Figuring

Popova schrijft al heel lang een van de beste blogs ter wereld: Brainpickings.

4321 – mogelijke levens

4321 van Paul Auster is een verhaal over de schrijver van het verhaal, en drie andere mogelijke levens van de schrijver. Zo krijgen we viermaal het verhaal van Archi Ferguson de zoon van een naar de VS geëmigreerde

Joodse man. Geschreven in een meeslepende vorm van enorm lange zinnen, die zich van begin tot eind vullen met gedetailleerde beschrijvingen van de belevenissen en gedachtespinselen van Archie, met name tijdens de roerige jaren 60, waarvan je aan het eind vaak niet meer weet hoe ze aan het begin zijn begonnen maar die toch blijven boeien en je door deze dikke pil slepen.

Het laatste hoofdstuk vat het hele boek zelf het beste samen. Denkbare levens.

Don’t Be A Wimp. Robin Williams – The Non-Designers’s Design Books

The Non-Designer's Design Book

A guy called Robin Williams (not thé Robin Williams) wrote The Non-Designer’s Design Book. The book helps non-designer’s understand what is important in design.

There are four guiding principles of design:

  • Proximity, meaning: put stuff together that belongs together.
  • Alignment: elements should be (visually) connected to something else, consistently. Use lines to draw connections (or to identify lack of connections). Centered alignment should be avoided, and only applied very consciously.
  • Repetition: tells us to repeat elements to unify and strengthen a piece. Take a repetitive element for example and repeat it to emphasize it’s importance. But don’t overdo it.
  • Contrast: draw attention by making things (more) different. If things are not the same, do not make them look the same.

The Fifth Principle: Don’t Be A Wimp. Meaning: do not be afraid to be different.

Colors

The color wheel: primary colors + others. Complementary colors. Triads: at a third of the wheel.
Shades and Taints: add black resp white to the color.
Warm/cool colors have red resp blue in them.

CYMK vs RGB: color schemes for printer resp monitor.

Typography

The second half of the book is a treatment on Typography. When to use quotes, which quotes, spaces, apostrophes, dashes, underlining (never!).

Typographic types & relationships.
Concordant: one type family without much variety. Can be strong.
Conflicting: similar types but not the same. Avoid.
Contrasting: clearly distinct. Complementing. Can be strong when done well.

Types of types: Old style, Modern, Slab serif, Sans serif, Script, Decorative.
Type contrasts: size, weight, structure, form, direction, color.

Basic approach to improve design:
– start with a focal point, with contrast
– group the information, create proximity, strong alignment
– create repetition
– have strong contrasts

Don’t be a wimp!

The 7 Habits -Steven R. Covey

The famous book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  Great, apart from it’s occasional religious dwellings. I do not mean the fact that Covey himself is religious, but the instances where he loses factuality and swerves into wishy washy paragraphs

  1. Be pro-active.
  2. Begin with the end in mind. How you want to be remembered. Personal mission statement. What roles you have and how to fulfill those.
  3. First things first. Quadrant Import / Not important versus Urgent / Not Urgent.We tend to focus on the Urgent side (whether important or not) but we forget the not so urgent but important part (the Quadrant II as Covey calls it). Become a Quadrant II oriented person.
  4. Think Win-Win. Quadrant Consideration slow / high versus Courage low/high. Make Emotional Bank account deposits. You can not just withdraw from the Emotional Bank account.
  5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Diagnose before prescribing.
  6. Synergize. Trust / Cooperation diagram. Diffuse (win/lose or lose/win), Respectful (compromise), Synergize (Win/Win).
  7. Sharpen the Saw. Physical – Mental (Reading, visualizing, planning, writing) – Spiritual (Value clarification and commitment, study, meditate) – Social (Service, Initiative, Empathy, …)

Blinde Wilg, Slapende Vrouw

Ik lees Blinde Wilg, Slapende Vrouw uit. Gisteren dan. Een eenzame student tijdens het einde van zijn middelbare school en zijn studententijd. Verwondert zich om de wereld, maar legt zich daarbij neer. Op een manier die alleen bij Murakami mogelijk is. Verhalen die teruggrijpen naar romans, de tijd van de student op de universiteitscampus, een vriendin die wordt opgenomen in een kliniek, een vakantie in Hawaï. Het is een zachte wervelwind en laat zich alleen maar lezen. En goed ook.

Eddy Posthuma de Boer’s Photo Libretto – because of the joy

Eddy Posthuma de Boer - libretto

Photographs, as Hans Aarsman prefers them, are not taken to make a nice picture but only because they attract the photographer’s attention and because he just feels like taking a picture of them. Photo Libretto van Eddy Posthuma de Boer is full of it.

Or as Winogrand said:

Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed.

I knew Eddy Posthuma de Boer was the photographer who had taken the pictures in Cees Nooteboom’s books.

Cees Nooteboom, photo Eddy Posthuma de Boer

Here and there, the images are shrewd like Elliot Erwitt: black-and-white dalmatians at a crosswalk, an Arab who appears to be trying to fix an overturned car, fiddling with the engine with one hand, but a few meters away lies the rear axle of the car—a huge pile of square blocks of metal from cars pressed together.

Photo Libretto is a calendar. A picture every day of the year. Arranged by themes, or rather collections of photos. Texts on signs on storefronts with spelling mistakes. Means of transportation. French cars are rotting and becoming part of the French landscape. People reading the newspaper. Companies and products with the name Victoria.

Ordinary and remarkable images. Marte Röling’s Star Fighter. A hotel reception in Marseille is unimaginably crowded with wallpaper and carpet with floral designs. The tower of Pisa straightened (and thus the surroundings askew). A hotel room with a bathtub set in the middle of the room with a shower curtain around it (only possible in Belgium, I think).

The most admirable pictures are still the everyday things rendered without further context, which produce insane images. A neat little plant table made of Pepsi crates. Eggleston, then, I think.