Response to Intro + Concluding chapters of Kevin Kelley's What Technology Wants
I'm writing this approximately 1 week after I've done the reading. My thoughts and feelings were fresher a week ago, but it took me a day to process the latter half of his conclusion. I don't have much to say about the first part of chapter one, I enjoyed his analogies of technology to natural systems, and the educational discourse on how humans had begun to differentiate between "tech" and "art", etc. 'What does Technology want?' is an interesting question, especially given the word choice 'want' as opposed to 'need.' Kelly did not get into the epistemological differences and varying interpretations and analogies that springs from thinking about what technology wants vs what technology needs. Regardless, it's unconventional, fun, and challenging to apply 'want' to machinery. I wrote notes on the side. I ask myself: 'What is my want? Beyond my body.' If the technium is an extension of ourselves, and thereby our wanting, isn't it important to first be able to answer what our collective want is? Is it really simply "more possibilities" as Kelly suggests? This goes back to human existentialism. But Kelly remains grounded in manifest reality with regards to these questions. Kelly argues that "a good choice is to increase choices" and that's ultimately what the technium wants. The justification being that to increase choices means "more opportunities, more connections, more diversity, more unity, more thought, more beauty, and more problems." He asks us to think of what would have been if Van Gogh were born before the invention of oil paint, of Mozart before the piano, etc. I think that argument is nice and dramatic but not convincing of technology's absolute worth. I wonder if our innate talents and creativity are so specific to existing technologies. Can not have Van Gogh's same creative energies manifested else-how using what was available at the theoretical time of before-paint technology? Is it such a tragedy if his talents had manifested through other mediums, which may have been equally as great? Does it matter if art goes unwitnessed? (If a tree falls in a forest and no one's there to see or hear it... does it matter?(does this work?lol)) This retrospective seems too romanticized / contrived to support his argument that more is better. I understand the excitement over the expansion of opportunities into infinity. I think his enthusiasm is beautiful and joyous and it all comes through in his writing, and as a consequence I was reeling on pure energy for several hours before being able to verbalize my disagreements. It's hard not to be swept into excitement by such earnest narrative of technium's beneficial potential. I like his optimism, and I wish all of us the best when it comes to technology's rapid development and saturation into the hows of whats we do. I don't know if he pays any attention to this in other parts of his book, but I think it crucial for him to acknowledge the dangers of abusing technology and its downsides alongside its positive potential. I equate abuse of technology as lack of mindfulness when engaging with technology which I am afraid more people are guilty of more often than not. I think the biggest thing to discuss when speaking of technology is not whether or not it's good or bad or scary, but about how we use it and become addicted unquestioningly, unaware of other realities we forego in the process. As much as the technology creates more and more, it destroys just as much, just as fast. This loss is not necessarily a bad thing, sure, but I do believe we will not benefit if we do not reflect on this loss, and I don't believe we reflect enough, or are even able to, because at the rate of which our lives are changing due to technological progress. We can only truly be mindful of technology and its benefits if we are aware of what other realities are like without it. And we can't know what these other realities are if technology is destroying old opportunities, spaces, places, and times in which we might be able to experience alternatively. If we are not aware of its alternatives, we consequently become dependent on technology, which as kelly discusses, creates its own problems and require new technology to address those problems, ad infinitum. That Kelly does not discuss technology's irreparable destruction of the old at unprecedented rates makes me uneasy. The imbalance of technology distribution in favor of first world countries (imperialist nation states such as the US and UK) makes this rapid destruction of alternatives (at the same rate at which it *creates* more) sociopolitically loaded. As a bi(or, at least two)cultural citizen of Western and Eastern sensibilities, a self-dubbed global citizen (I suppose), and citizen of the earth(this for certain), this directly involves my experiences, memories, and identities, parts of which are growing more null and inaccessible as technology *progresses* [or ravages countries and cultures whole]. This goes back to that testy subject of "hybrid" cultures. Sometimes what we call "hybrid" is really a culture in the process of it dying /being colonized. What is truly hybrid denotes both factors which are being hybridized have equal say/power in giving and taking, shaping and forming, changing and compromising. #freedoms2017
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