Are new ideas and new inventions inevitable? Are they driven by us or by a larger force of nature?
In this conversation recorded as part of the New York Public Library series, Steven Johnson (author of Where Good Ideas Come From) and Kevin Kelly (author of What Technology Wants) try to convince Robert that the things we make—from spoons to microwaves to computers—are an extension of the same evolutionary processes that made us. And we may need to adapt to the idea that our technology could someday truly have a mind of its own.
Listen to this 20 minute discussion and consider the following questions for our next session:
- What does technology want?
- According to Kevin Kelley, what is the “technium”? What does it want? What are its tendencies?
- Where do good ideas come from? How do “eureka moments” figure into good ideas?
- What are the relationships between technology and good ideas?
- How does this connect to the philosophy of Emergence?
- How, if at all, might technologies evolve along with human/social evolution? Is there an “inevitable” correlation between these evolutionary processes? Inherent in this question is another question: how might the history of technology and the history of humankind inextricably intertwined?
- Does technology “invent” us as much as we invent technology?
- What is the adjacent possible? What might be the implications of this concept?
- How have humans created themselves? How has technology created the human experience?
- Can we understand the universe without advanced technology?
