Free What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly

organization above it. And it’s important to note that the major transitions in the technium begin at the level where the major transitions in biology left off: Primate societies give rise to language.
    The invention of language marks the last major transformation in the natural world and also the first transformation in the manufactured world. Words, ideas, and concepts are the most complex things social animals (like us) make, and also the simplest foundation for any type of technology. Thus language bridges the two sequences of major transitions and unites them into one continuous sequence, so that natural evolution flows into technological evolution. The complete sequence of major transitions in deep history runs like this:
    One replicating molecule ➔ Interacting population of replicating molecules
    Replicating molecules ➔ Replicating molecules strung into chromosome
    Chromosome of RNA enzymes ➔ DNA proteins
    Cell without nucleus ➔ Cell with nucleus
    Asexual reproduction (cloning) ➔ Sexual recombination
    Single-cell organism ➔ Multicell organism
    Solitary individual ➔ Colonies and superorganisms
    Primate societies ➔ Language-based societies
    Oral lore ➔ Writing/mathematical notation
    Scripts ➔ Printing
    Book knowledge ➔ Scientific method
    Artisan production ➔ Mass production
    Industrial culture ➔ Ubiquitous global communication
    This escalating stack of increasing order is revealed to be one long story. We can think of the technium as the further reorganization of information that began with the six kingdoms of life. In this way, the technium becomes the seventh kingdom of life. It extends a process begun four billion years ago. Just as the evolutionary tree of Sapiens branched off from its animal precursors long ago, the technium now branches off from its precursor, the mind of the human animal. Outward from this common root flow new species of hammers, wheels, screws, refined metal, and domesticated crops, as well as rarefied species like quantum computers, genetic engineering, jet planes, and the World Wide Web.
    The technium differs from the other six kingdoms in a couple of important ways. Compared to members of the other six kingdoms, these new species are the most ephemeral species on Earth. The bristlecone pines have watched entire families and classes of technology come and go. Nothing we have made approaches the endurance of the least living thing. Many digital technologies have shorter life spans than individual mayflies, let alone species.
    But nature can’t plan ahead. It does not hoard innovations for later use. If a variation in nature does not provide an immediate survival advantage, it is too costly to maintain and so over time it disappears. But sometimes a trait advantageous for one problem will turn out to be advantageous for a second, unanticipated problem. For instance, feathers evolved to warm a small, cold-blooded dinosaur. Later on, these same feathers, once installed on limbs for warmth, proved handy for short flights. From this heat-conservation innovation came unplanned wings and birds. These inadvertent anticipatory inventions are called exaptations in biology. We don’t know how common exaptations are in nature, but they are routine in the technium. The technium is nothing but exaptations, since innovations can be easily borrowed across lines of origin or moved across time and repurposed.
    Niles Eldredge is the cofounder (with Stephen Jay Gould) of the theory of punctuated, stepwise evolution. His professional expertise is the history of trilobites, or ancient arthropods that resemble today’s pill bugs. As a hobby he collects cornets, musical instruments very similar to trumpets. Once Eldredge applied his professional taxonomic methods to his collection of 500 cornets, some dating back to 1825. He selected 17 traits that varied among his instruments—the shape of their horns, the placement of the valves, the