What Technology Wants: Kevin Kelly @ Google

Kevin Kel­ly, the co-founder of Wired mag­a­zine and for­mer editor/publisher of the Whole Earth Cat­a­log (now free online), pub­lished a new book this past Octo­ber: What Tech­nol­o­gy Wants. Review­ing his own book on Boing­Bo­ing, Kel­ly sum­ma­rizes a few key points. “Tech­nol­o­gy is the most pow­er­ful force on the plan­et.” In fact, human­i­ty is a tool itself, and, like all liv­ing things, tech­nol­o­gy evolves, demon­strat­ing cer­tain uncon­scious “urges” and “wants” in the process. Tech­nol­o­gy can­not be held back. But we can try to opti­mize its ben­e­fits for human cul­ture, even while poten­tial­ly try­ing to lim­it the amount of tech­nol­o­gy in our own lives. It’s a heady book, and, per­haps fit­ting­ly, Kevin Kel­ly pulled through Google in Novem­ber and dis­tilled his new the­o­ry of tech­nol­o­gy in a 40 minute talk. Watch it above…

Bonus: You might also want to check out this con­ver­sa­tion record­ed at the New York Pub­lic Library. It fea­tures Kevin Kel­ly and Steven John­son (author of Where Good Ideas Come From) in con­ver­sa­tion with Robert Krul­wich, co-host of Radio Lab.