What Technology Wants »

Kevin Kelly is Executive Editor of Wired, the new bible of the techno-culture. Formerly Publisher and Editor of Whole Earth Review, he has been instrumental in helping launch a number of cultural innovations: The Hacker’s Conference; Cyberthon; the first virtual-reality jamboree; and the WELL, model way station on the information superhighway.

A refreshing view of technology as a living force in the world.

This provocative book introduces a brand-new view of technology. It suggests that technology as a whole is not a jumble of wires and metal but a living, evolving organism that has its own unconscious needs and tendencies. Kevin Kelly looks out through the eyes of this global technological system to discover "what it wants." He uses vivid examples from the past to trace technology's long course and then follows a dozen trajectories of technology into the near future to project where technology is headed. This new theory of technology offers three practical lessons: By listening to what technology wants we can better prepare ourselves and our children for the inevitable technologies to come. By adopting the principles of pro-action and engagement, we can steer technologies into their best roles. And by aligning ourselves with the long-term imperatives of this near-living system, we can capture its full gifts. Written in intelligent and accessible language, this is a fascinating, innovative, and optimistic look at how humanity and technology join to produce increasing opportunities in the world and how technology can give our lives greater meaning.

The Barnes & Noble Review

By "technology," Kelly, a co-founder of Wired, doesn't strictly mean machines or the Internet. He means the fruits of human creativity, everything from UNIX code to Hamlet to "philosophical concepts." Though he claims to "dislike inventing words," he proposes technium to denote "the greater, global, massively interconnected system of technology vibrating around us." Forgive the obligatory Gladwellian neologism (hey, at least it condenses "fruits of human creativity" into eight letters) and one finds that Kelly delivers an absorbing, if occasionally credulous, account of the technium's progress.