The system dynamics of technology

Kevin Kelly is one of the original founders of Wired magazine and a true iconoclast:

"I fully embrace the transforming power of technology.

Yet our family of five still doesn't have TV. I don't have a pager, or PDA, or cam-phone. I don't travel with a laptop, and I am often the last in my 'hood to get the latest must-have gadget. I find a spiritual strength in keeping technology at arm's length.

At the same time I run a daily website called Cool Tools where I review a broad range of highly selected consumer technology. A river of ingenious artifacts flows through my studio; a fair number never leave. Despite my detachment, I continue to deliberately position myself to keep technological options within reach."

This paradoxical relationship to technology is the subject of his next book. You can preview some of the thinking at The Technium:

"I'm calling this site The Technium. It's a word I've reluctantly coined to designate the greater sphere of technology - one that goes beyond hardware to include culture, law, social institutions, and intellectual creations of all types. In short, the Technium is anything that springs from the human mind. It includes hard technology, but much else of human creation as well. I see this extended face of technology as a whole system with its own dynamics.

On this site I aim to investigate the Technium. What does it want? Why do we embrace it? Is it possible to reject it? How does it relate to God, if at all? What kind of control do we really have on the pace and future path of the Technium itself?"