The controversial remake of RoboCop for the likely direction of José Padilha and the third in a series of Iron Man, expected for 2013 (against all predictions on the imminent end of the world) can not avoid the feeling that the very concept of the cyborg is point to move to a better life. The cyborg has had its day, with its heavy aftertaste twentieth century. No denying it. The very name calls to mind the unintentionally awkward Borg of Star Trek, the surrogates of Philip K. Dick, Ruggero Vasari's rise or protoplasmic robot Karel Čapek.
The third millennium is worth much more, is ready to welcome something new, charming, wonderful, awful. And here is looming on the horizon "Technium".
What will never be the "Technium"? It is primarily a neologism guessed it, certainly is intended to replicate like a virus, but primarily it is the central concept of What he wants technology, the latest book by Kevin Kelly just released for the code editions in Italian . A book since, as the journalist and writer Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired, ecological assault is already a celebrity in his field since the release of Out of Control, a classic of its kind, in which he examined the derives almost uncontrollable imposed by the tumultuous changes in technology, in discussing it, However, a new and supposedly "Biology of Machines".
respect to the contents of that book now remote (we were in 1994, almost prehistoric) the Technium concept has value that goes beyond the virtues or the limits of the analysis of Kelly. The Technium would be visible all the technologies and organizations intangible, conceived as bodies in a mutual relationship: a complex that includes all artifacts, from the metropolis to the media, from web content to legal and financial systems.
In other words, the Technium is the well-known technosphere, from which humans ultimately depend on no less than by nature. But - according to Kelly - the complex system would be transformed over time, following the same basic patterns of biological evolution and Darwinian evolution.
Hence the idea that this complex heterogeneous button is neither more nor less than the seventh order of living systems, equal in dignity ontological bacteria, protists, plants. At stake is therefore the survival of the entire set-technology man, because every innovation carries with it changes, but also imbalances. "Purpose" of the Technium is to increase the complexity, accelerate development, increase exploration and connections, exploiting every possible form of energy, develop a vaguely defined "density of meaning" and expand the "area of \u200b\u200bopportunity" concept - it - borrowed from the thought of the molecular biologist Stuart Kauffman, and of which we are already busy on these pages. There
matter for wonder and awe. At a first reading. But, in hindsight, where is the news? The technology is evolving as a body that is very old theme. Already talked about Samuel Butler in Erewon , and in 1871! Without disturbing the great-grandmother died one hundred and ten years ago, we know that science fiction is crammed with these myths. Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and legions of other authors have grappled with the same concept, and there is even a case in which, nearly forty years ago, the work of pure imagination actually hallucinatory key advance in a recent, serious and accredited scientific theory. This is Hellstrom's Hive, Frank Herbert, while the scientific theory mentioned above is that of the "superorganism", which discusses Edward O. Bert Hölldobler and Wilson in his book soon to be released for Adelphi. Do not forget that Wilson, the father of sociobiology discussed, it is not any one, nor does it seem foolish to jump which he does in this book through analysis of insect societies to human communities.
If not that, even the term "superorganism" is not exactly new, indeed it is the title of the most well-known text of the famous American anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, who, in turn, derived the idea from Herbert Spencer. Therefore, although the ideas of each thinker are even diametrically opposed, despite the identical terminology, it certainly can not cry in front of stunned amazement conceptual epiphany.
But back to Kelly and the application that forms the title of the book and explains the work plan. What it wants, in his view, the technology? String, you can say that the "purpose" of hi-tech is to multiply indefinitely the complexity of games and life, which would lead mankind, of course, through endless trial and error, often painful, toward more democratic forms of organization and respectful of nature. Well, scratch the skin of the speculation, check the utopia, in which case a new technological utopia, which replaces the now aged and decayed metaphors of 'collective intelligence "or" meme machines. "
"Technium" wins a lexical enviable record for being a single term and to be evocative, but its content is not very different from all the metaphors that the American philosopher Daniel Dennett together under the concept of "algorithm evolution ", for which, once given the variation, inheritance and selection, evolutionary pressures will be generated in any system under consideration, was also a totally artificial, or a mixture of organic and artificial.
short, we are always within a tautological thinking, and a frame of reference in the name of humanitarianism lies on the outskirts of systems, the human person. But any technological application raises obvious ethical problems of identity and politics. From where comes this or that new invention? What do obey? How and to what extent transformed relations, psychology, the emotions of human beings? How much of these transformations is imposed, therefore, directed to a purpose, and how much will be expected? What new desires, beliefs, aspirations and dreams provides a new technological paradigm?
From a different point of view in the background intelligent and often fascinating publications dedicated hi-tech, there is always the subject of his audience never explicitly thematized. In fact, even before producing content, the writer must take into account the expectations and collective sensitivity. And so his first step is the construction of a conventional language, which forms a frame of reference. Terms and concepts of "collective mind", "superorganism" "Meme machines" and now the new and amazing "Technium" obey the need to encourage forms of integration and acceptance.
For its part, the public want the writer to create a kind of framework legislation to dissolve the doubts, the tensions and concerns about unstable environment in which we live. The public calls for short, that these elements are not brought back live in patterns comprehensible to the dismay, apprehension, even terror to the cumulative effects of technology, to be replaced by reassuring regularity, although forces from "outside" man .
But if we examine the same issues in terms less abstract, one may note that the source of the deepest human behavior, individual and collective, are not technology, but psychology. If anything, the technology (eg technologies, namely the "nervous system" of the world) have a profound effect on the size and persistence of psychological responses, individual and collective, as shown by the recent avalanche effect chain of revolutions.
Posted March 4, 2011
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