One of the arguments that Kevin Kelly makes about the growth of technology is that its growth is killing nature. He is right to claim that the industrial processes of first-world countries are more efficient in the destruction of the environment. However, I have to disagree that technological growth can only result in such devastation. Kelly points to the fact that “lumber is taken by cutting down forests” (194). These lumber companies do have the ability to clear entire forests, but large corporations also have the capacity to give back to the environment. First-world countries have the wealth and the technology to replace a portion of the forests that are cut down. Some third-world countries that only practice slash and burn agriculture effectively put down their forests permanently. This argument that first-world countries relying on technology can have the same ecological footprint as less technologically evolved countries reaches over to the other examples outlined by Kelly such as “lakes poisoned, rivers dammed, jungles flattened, air dirtied…” (195). The truth is that even those countries without technology can still have disastrous effects. Disease and starvation are more prevalent in those poorer countries for a reason. Their pollution problems are born from the fact that they are incapable of giving back to the environment due to technological constraints (knowledge/machinery that can help with farming or safer production practices) while the first-world problems come from the excess in which they use resources.

Though I disagree about Kelly’s assumptions on environmentalism and its relation to technology, I do agree with his stance on humanity’s relation to technology. Kelly believe that we are at a “second tipping point” where “the technium’s ability to alter us exceeds our ability to alter the technium” (197). He adds that the growth of technology will lead to “competition between Homo sapiens and machine” (197). I find this to be true because of how ignorant today’s youth is towards the past. Many kids and preteens these days will have full knowledge of social media websites, the newest smart phones and the most powerful game consoles. However, they lack the practical knowledge of how to survive without technology. With Google maps we have lost our ability to navigate on our own. With search engines we have lost our ability to conduct traditional research. Even something as simple as a laundry machine has left us without knowledge to clean our clothes ourselves. As we become more familiar with new technologies, we become more ignorant of the simpler devices we created in the past. Kelly is right in the fact that modern advancements often dictate what we learn and how we operate in life.

Discussion question: Given that modern machinery and computers can outperform people in many ways, does there still exist one human trait that machines cannot replicate?

In Chapter 5 of What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly, I found the “choice of returning to our early state” particularly interesting. “Citizens in developing countries can merely take a bus back to their villages, where they can live with age-old traditions and limited choice. They will not starve. In a similar spirit of choice, if you believe that the peak of existence was reached in Neolithic times, you can camp out in a clearing in the Amazon. If you think the golden age was in the 1890s, you can find a farm among the Amish. We have lots of opportunity to revisit the past, but few people really want to live there.” (80). The urban city is the land of choice and technology. As Kelly states, they are “technological artifacts” (81). We are so accustomed to a technology-based society that it is almost impossible to imagine our lives without the ease and comfort we derive from it. When I was a junior in high school, we went on a camping trip to a hill station in India. It was a remote part of town, so we had no access to the Internet. Even our phones and laptops were confiscated. It was certainly refreshing to experience the simplistic life of the area, but soon all of us were agitated and restive to use our hand held devices or use the Internet. We wanted to check our Facebook profiles, our twitter pages and so on. Soon the once refreshing and charming hill station became a place of nightmare because we could not live without modern technology. Thus, although one may criticize industrious cities with “rapacious appetites for energy materials and attention,” life in the city is considered the most desirable as people voluntarily “leave the balm of a village and squat in a smelly, leaky hut in a city slum” (82). With cities, individuals also experience freedom not present in a rural society and are confronted with a vast range of choices and opportunities for their development. In short, the “city as a whole is wonderful technological invention” (84).

In addition, the theory of inevitability is also interesting and thought provoking. The theory states that when “the necessary web of supporting technology is established, then the next adjacent technological step seems to emerge as if on cue” (138). However, I find this idea very problematic as it disregards human ingenuity and the efforts of great inventors such as Nikola Tesla, Edison, Marconi and so on. In Chapter 7, Kelly provides the example of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter. Before Harry Potter was released in 1997, several versions of the story were published by authors such as Neil Gaiman, who worte a comic book about a dark-haired English who discovers he is a wizard on his 12^th birthday, and Jane Yolen, who wrote about a boy named Henry who attends a magical school for young wizards and must vanquish an evil wizard (146). Although there are certain similarities between these stories and that if Harry Potter, Rowling’s work cannot be discredited and written off as a mere inevitability. The intricate and particular details of the world of Harry Potter have been created and written by none other than Rowling (146) On the other hand, even though I find the theory of inevitability flawed and problematic, I concede to the fact that it highlights a broad framework of future technologies based on existing inventions.

DISCUSSION QUESTION: If, according to the notion of inevitability, most modern inventions and discoveries are either improvements or based on supporting technologies, is it possible to invent technology independent of past ideas?