According to Kevin Kelly, the most important feature of technology and the technium as a whole is its ability to create new choices and opportunities. While we may be a bit disconcerted by the notion of an unstoppable driving force causing certain technological concepts to be inevitable, Kelly reminds and reassures us that a large part of the process is malleable and very influenced by us, Sapiens. Through analysis and constant regulation, we can learn to harness these technologies and appropriate them to more useful tasks if they seem ineffective or wrong in their current use. Kelly strays into some murky waters when he begins to analyze the Unabomber’s anti-civilization manifesto and agrees with portions of the logic. However, he ultimately uses the Unabomber’s and the Amish’s somewhat hypocritical beliefs to further prove his point about the necessity of new technology. Rather than living off the land, the Unabomber’s shack in the woods was chock-full of products purchased from Wal-Mart and other department stores. The Amish, similarly, wouldn’t be able to maintain their lifestyle of selective technological use were it not for the modern civilization right outside their towns. Kelly describes how increased technology in mega-cities like NYC, Shanghai, Mumbai, etc., attracts millions of people yearly from the countryside. Increased technology and civilization offers a plethora of choices and opportunities not present outside of it. The well-researched example of Amish life, though, gives the reader some useful insight; the idea that technology can be selected carefully and methodically on the individual level so that we aren’t overwhelmed. Kelly doesn’t want to decrease technological progress, though, claiming that, “To maximize our own contentment, we seek the minimum amount of technology in our lives. Yet to maximize the contentment of others, we must maximize the amount of technology in the world. Indeed, we can only find our own minimal tools if others have created a sufficient maximum pool of options we can choose from.” (238) In our search for conviviality with the technology we create, and our correlated investigation into the possible harms deriving from it, Kelly believes that it’s near impossible to calculate these harms, but that this shouldn’t stop us from still creating and implementing them. He believes that the best method for testing a technology is by rendering it ubiquitous; by suggesting this he also rejects the Precautionary Principle (which I was taught in AP Enviro. and didn’t question until this book). Another key tool that we have in affecting technology is deciding which direction it’ll go in in terms of transparency and decentralization. While it’s true that technology decreases privacy, we can structure it so that it increases government and corporate transparency. We can hold active roles in the modification of the new tech because of how it is structured, therefore decentralizing the power that one owner/director/company might have.  Kelly believes that an innate search for complexity, diversity, specialization, ubiquity, freedom, mutualism, beauty, sentience, structure and evolvability details the path that technology will take in the coming years. Ultimately, Kelly asserts that technology “brings to us individually of finding out who we are, and more important, who we might be.” (349) We are the curators of the art which is technology. We (NYU kids specifically) are the “haves” that can perfect, reduce the cost of and share the technology needed to expand the lives of the “have-laters.” We have the opportunity to play the infinite game where we play with boundaries rather than play within them. (353) While the negative consequences of our industrialization and construction of ridiculous amount of technology are very apparent, we must not forget that we are lucky to live in this era of choice and opportunity, and that there is the possibility to do all of this on a much cleaner/greener platform.

My provocation question is: What do you think about Kelly’s eventual reflection on religion? He almost gives the possibility that these scientific laws we’ve discovered, which drive evolution and technology, are made by a God. Or that this increasing complexity is God organizing and building himself. Or that we must be modeled after a great creator because we have created this child which is technology. This book was a mind trip but I loved it and I’m looking forward to hearing all of your insights in the next class discussion.