How Did We Get Here?

This has been an interesting, intense year for technology and those of us who attempt to follow it.

Sometimes we find ourselves wrapped up in fear, even leading to shades of doom.

How much of what we are experiencing now is really new? How much of it really warrants the fear?

I can't just react to the superficial, wide-ranging discussions we are exposed to on a daily basis to answer even those basic questions. I really need to fall back on some context - maybe by looking at how we got here.

Even though I have been wrapped around the technology "axle" for several decades, I still can't claim to have done the in-depth research required to have enough of that context (our lifetimes are not that representative). We certainly see enough self-proclaimed experts that do make that claim, but I respect the complexity of the subject enough to suggest that very few of us actually have the big picture.

I am influenced by a few good books though, which basically all have the common theme of the inevitability of technology advancement coupled with at least some sense of optimism for the future. It might be a different future, but not necessarily a bad one.

I mention these books not so much for their conclusions or even the huge specificity of the context they provide in order to arrive at those conclusions. But rather, each offers a different glimpse of the complexity of the subject itself. Each offers a very interesting historical perspective giving its own unique view of how we got here.

Taken together, the collection should at least warn against oversimplifying the subject.

• "What Technology Wants", written by Kevin Kelly, the co-founder of Wired magazine was published in 2010. In this book, Kelly explores the nature of technology, or what he calls the "technium," and its relationship with humanity and life itself.
• Ray Kurzweil's book "The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology" was published a few years before Kelly's but is even more extensive in both the vision that he casts and the depth of historical perspective he supplies to support that vision.
• "A Theory of Everyone: The New Science of Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We Are Going", written by Michael Muthukrishna was published in October of 2023 and explores evolution and the impact of energy technology breakthroughs.

I will provide a very brief summary here, but admit that I cannot possibly do them justice (together they contain over 1500 pages of material). If I pique your interest enough to read them, then this served my purpose.

I don't know to what degree I subscribe personally to Kelly's concepts but do tend to think that most aspects of technology aren't going to be easy to "put a lid on".

Kelly posits that technology is a living, evolving entity that has its own wants and needs. He sees the technium as adhering to the same evolutionary principles as biological organisms. He views it as an extension of organic life, with its own inherent biases and tendencies.

The central theme of the book is what Kelly calls the technium's "inherent direction," which pushes it towards increasing complexity, diversity, specialization, ubiquity, freedom, mutualism, beauty, sentience, structure, and evolvability. These are what he argues technology "wants."

The different aspects of this "inherent direction" seem contradictory. But they are interconnected within the framework of the technium's development:

• Complexity and Specialization: As technological systems develop, they often become more complex. This complexity is partly a result of specialization, where different technologies or parts of a technology perform very specific functions. As in biological evolution, where complex organisms arise from simpler ones through specialized adaptations, technological evolution also sees a similar pattern of increasing complexity through specialization.
• Diversity and Ubiquity: Diversity in technology refers to the wide range of technologies that are developed for various purposes. Ubiquity comes into play as successful technologies spread and become commonplace. As different technologies proliferate (diversity), they often become more integrated into daily life (ubiquity).
• Freedom and Structure: Freedom in the technium can refer to the capacity for technology to be used in ways not intended by its creators, allowing for innovation and repurposing. Structure, on the other hand, is necessary for technology to function reliably. These are not so much contradictory as complementary: structure provides a stable foundation upon which creative freedom can be exercised.
• Mutualism and Sentience: Mutualism in technology describes the reciprocal relationships between different technological systems or between technology and humans. As technology becomes more sophisticated (and possibly sentient), it may be able to engage in even more complex forms of mutualism, such as responding to human needs in dynamic ways. If technology were to achieve a form of sentience or advanced intelligence, it might be able to participate in these mutualistic relationships more actively.
• Beauty and Evolvability: Beauty in technology is often seen in the elegance of design, efficiency, and simplicity that can emerge from complex systems. This aesthetic dimension can drive the adoption and further development of technologies. Evolvability refers to technology's capacity to develop and improve over time. A design that is considered beautiful might also be more adaptable or easier to iterate upon, thus promoting evolvability.

These qualities describe a dynamic system where technology perpetually evolves, influenced by human use and societal needs, but also influencing human evolution in return.

Kelly suggests that the technium, like any living system, seeks to maximize these qualities, and in doing so, it behaves in a way that is analogous to the behavior of life itself.

Kelly also addresses the moral and ethical implications of this idea. While technology has brought about many benefits, it also has the potential to cause significant harm. He suggests that we need to carefully manage and guide the technium, rather than trying to stop its growth, in order to minimize harm and maximize benefits.

In the end, "What Technology Wants" offers a way of thinking about technology—not as inanimate tools created and controlled by humans, but as a living, evolving entity that has its own desires and tendencies.

Now this book was written over a dozen years ago and reflected Kelly's desire to express the fool's errand of trying to stop technology's growth. Even that dozen years ago, there were forecasts and concerns about the growth and coming prevalence of AI which can be viewed as part of that expansion of the technium. He would probably say that fits within something we "carefully manage and guide" rather than trying to stop it.

If we follow Kelly's line of thought, we can't stop this advancement (we probably can't even slow it down). Rather, we attempt to manage these risks.

We see already attempts toward setting ethical guidelines, creating more transparent AI systems, and encouragement to develop AI that complements human labor rather than simply replacing it.

For an even more extensive technology history lesson, we have Kurzweil's book which was published a few years before Kelly's but is even more extensive in both the vision that he casts and the depth of historical perspective he supplies to support that vision.

The most pertinent of Kurzweil's concepts are the "exponential growth of technology" and the "coming of singularity"

• Kurzweil describes how technological growth follows predictable and exponential trends. He argues that the pace of technological advancement is not linear but doubles in power and efficiency at regular intervals. This is illustrated by his "Law of Accelerating Returns," which predicts that the speed of technological change is accelerating as we are able to compute more information and innovate faster.
• The core of his thesis is the prediction of a future moment known as the Singularity, a point in time where the growth of the capabilities of artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to unfathomable changes in society. He predicts this event will occur by the year 2045.

His Singularity concept maps at least partially to what we are calling Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) in a lot of our discussions today. His book was published in 2005, so he was looking ahead 40 years for this to occur.

He gets into other even more avant garde concepts like the fusion of man and machine, with all of the technologies required to make that possible (nanotechnolgy and biotechnology). Taken together, these technologies effect how we can improve our health while extending our lifespan significantly. Of course to go along with these changes, he forecasted we would see significant shifts in the economy and the job market, requiring rethinking our work and value.

Even more than Kelly's book, Kurzweil does a really interesting job of summarizing the history involved in getting us to 2005 and then extending on to Singularity. He justifies his extensive historical exposition as a way of validating his forecasts.

That brings us to the much more recent book written by Muthukrishna.

As you can tell from the title, it is rather ambitious. As with the other books, the main attraction for me is the history that leads the author to his conclusions and I felt he did a great job in bringing that history alive.

There are two main threads woven throughout that resonated with me. The first was cause/effect relationship between energy breakthroughs with how they led to "periods of abundance" followed by "scarcity and conflict". The second thread relates to evolution, digging into the relationship between our genes (he calls our "hardware") and our cultural heritage (he calls our "software"). The more significant role that our software plays in our evolution was very well presented.

Those two threads are significantly related since our evolution has been driven by energy, its breakthroughs, and our striving for efficiency in its use. Energy and evolution are tightly intertwined. From his introduction:

By understanding the constraints imposed by energy, we will transform the way we think about economics, politics, and conservation. But by deepening our understanding of human behavior, we will develop original insights about how to more effectively exploit energy in ways that help increase our prosperity and reduce the risks of conflict, both within and between societies. By the end we will have a theory that encompasses both; a unified theory of human affairs. A theory of everyone.

His blending of many facets of science, including anthropology and psychology were very enlightening and challenging. He also has an interesting take on certain politics (like taxation, educational reform, etc.) and the effect on our society and its evolution.

This book is so new that it will take some time to see how well it will be received. I did feel that while he did a very expansive job of providing historical context, he might have rushed through with the conclusions (the "where we go from here" aspect). The important thing for me was that he contributed to the "how did we get here" context question.

All three books present an optimistic view of where we can be headed and the rapidity of change that we can expect going forward.

I think we can all guess that by the time Kurzweil's vision for 2045 comes around many aspects of our society will have changed significantly - regardless of which of these "theories" you subscribe to.