Kelly's book is a must read for technologists and anybody interested in the future of the Web. In this post I'll explore a few of the main themes of the book, in particular as they relate to the evolving Web. (there won't be any spoilers, for those of you in the middle of reading it or if you haven't yet read it!) Two of the main themes are how technology will evolve and how we - humanity - can guide it and make the best use of it.

The book literally starts from The Big Bang, proceeds through 4 billion years of our planet's evolution, and finally looks ahead to how technology will evolve.

The Technium: a Living System of Technology

Key to the book is a new term that Kelly invents: the technium. He spends about 6 pages explaining the term, but at it's most basic it means a system of technologies. It includes not only what we ordinarily think of as specific technologies (such as cars, radar, computers), but the entire system around technology - culture, art, social institutions, "the extended human" and more.

A key to grokking the technium is that it's a living system, which evolves in a similar way to humans. On page 45, Kelly explains that "the technium can really only be understood as a type of evolutionary life." He goes on to suggest that technology evolves in a mix of inevitable and chance ways, just as humans have done. His point being that we can fairly accurately predict the macro evolution of the technium (that computers will eventually acquire a level of intelligence akin to a human, for example), but not the micro details of that evolution.

We've been writing about the Internet of Things, when real world objects become connected to the Internet, for the past couple of years on ReadWriteWeb. Kelly's book reinforces what a profound change in the Web this is. As everyday objects get connected to the Internet, they almost become 'alive' to us. They might not be able to think for themselves, yet, but billions of 'things' in the world will be able to sense and compute information about the world.

Living With Technology's Increasing Power

On page 254, Kelly writes that "technologies are nearly living things." So we will need to adjust to this and figure out how best to utilize - and live with - technologies. Kelly lists five "proactions" that humanity should take to assess and engage with technologies:

1. Anticipation
2. Continual Assessment
3. Prioritization of Risks, Including Natural Ones
4. Rapid Correction of Harm
5. Not Prohibition but Redirection

At one point he compares technologies to children. As parents we aim to guide our children to reach their potential and contribute something to the world. "We can't really change the nature of our children," Kelly writes on page 257, "but we can steer them to tasks and duties that match their talents." Likewise, he suggests, we can guide and steer technology.

Was The Unibomber Right?

Kelly spends a significant part of the book exploring the moral and ethical issues around an ever more powerful technium. Is it wise for humanity to continue to let technologies evolve, until the technium is more intelligent than humanity?

A whole chapter is devoted to the theories of the infamous Unibomber, Ted Kaczynski. Kaczynski wrote a manifesto about destroying modern technology before it destroys us. He killed 3 people with mail bombs, while attempting to carry out his manifesto. Kelly at first defends Kaczynski's theories, but he ends the chapter by attacking him on a moral level. Kelly writes (page 212-213):

"But despite the reality of technology's faults, the Unibomber is wrong to want to exterminate it, for many reasons, not the least of which is that the machine of civilization offers us more actual freedoms than the alternative [...] so far the gains from this ever-enlarging technium outweigh the alternative of no machine at all."

The Optimistic View of Technology

Ultimately 'What technology Wants' is an uplifting and optimistic book about the future of technology. It contrasts in many ways to another thought-provoking technology book, which I read and reviewed a year ago: You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto; by Jaron Lanier. In that book, Lanier argued that technology reduces our humanity - for example by promoting the 'hive mind' over individual expression. Interestingly, Lanier is quoted on the jacket of Kelly's book. He recommends you read this book, "even though I profoundly disagree with aspects of it."

It's always beneficial to have skeptics about technology, so there's a place for Lanier's arguments. Both of Lanier's and Kelly's books are stimulating and well worth reading. However, I find myself much more swayed by Kelly's theories. Whereas Lanier dismisses the Internet as meaningless in and of itself, Kelly essentially argues that the technium (of which the Internet is a part) is a hugely important evolving system. It's as much a living system as humanity is. That, I suspect, is one of the aspects that Lanier would disagree with. But I find Kelly's theory to be compelling - and helpful as an approach to the increasing power of technology.

The book concludes that technology is ultimately good for humanity. Admittedly that was Kelly's pre-destined outcome - back in November, 2004, when he began writing the book, he blogged: "I sense that overall, technology is a good thing." However the end result of his 7 year quest, the book, compellingly makes that case. I think this line near the end of the book sums it up beautifully:

"How can technology make a person better? Only in this way: by providing each person with chances."

(which incidentally echoes my own thoughts after I read Lanier's book: "[...] Lanier glosses over the benefits of web 2.0 - that it gives everyone who has a computer (and nowadays a smart phone) a publishing platform with which to explore their creativity and have their say.")

I gave Kelly's book 5 out of 5 stars on Goodreads, because ultimately it provides useful advice on how to think about and deal with technology. Perhaps aspects of the book can be challenged on scientific or philosophical terms, as some have argued. But that seems beside the point. I think we'd all agree that technology is evolving incredibly fast. We need to try and understand the changes. We need strategies to get the best out of technology (and, by extension, ourselves). That's what Kevin Kelly wants; and in my view the book achieves it.

Photo credit: Doc Searls

Collaboration over the Web is still evolving. One way it might be immediately improved is by adding more women to collective intelligence projects and by shutting up the loud mouths. I'm not idly speculating here, those were the findings of a recent study by MIT's Center for Collective Intelligence.

Back to what Kelly wrote. He posits that more previously impossible things will emerge thanks to "large-scale collaboration, or immense collections of information, or global structures, or gigantic real-time social interactions." He continues:

"Just as a tissue is a new, bigger level of organization for a bunch of individual cells, these new social structures are a new bigger level for individual humans. And in both cases the new level breeds emergence. New behaviors emerge from the new level that were impossible at the lower level. Tissue can do things that cells can't. The collectivist organizations of wikipedia, Linux, the web can do things that industrialized humans could not."

This thinking dovetails nicely with the MIT report. Carnegie Mellon's Anita Woolley explains the findings more in this video:

The implications of all of this for any company doing online business is clear: optimizing groups with more women and more democratic discussion is just as important as casting your crowdsourcing net far and wide. As Aaron Saenz at Singularity Hub put it: "With enough research the crowds of tomorrow may be optimized for the best possible amounts of collective intelligence. Not just huge amounts of thought-power, but efficiently organized huge amounts of thought-power."

It's also something that tech conference organizers should bear in mind. I for one could do with less loud, opinionated people dominating group discussions - as often those people are the least thoughtful.

Kevin Kelly concludes that "humanity is migrating towards its hive mind." Whether or not you agree with that somewhat extreme position, collective intelligence will continue to be a big driver of Web innovation. We just need more women and less loud mouths, don't you think?

Photo credit: I Love Milwaukee

However, we've entered an age where we have multiple Internet-connected devices within our grasp. Many of these are specialist devices, such as the Kindle and Xbox. We'll see many more examples soon, as specialist household objects such as toasters and fridges get connected to the Internet. So, does that mean specialization will win out over convergence? That's what Kevin Kelly argues in his latest book What Technology Wants. But many technologists still believe in convergence.

"At the moment computers seem to be headed in the opposite direction. They seem to becoming evermore general purpose machines, as they swallow more and more functions. [...] This convergence is amplified by cloud computing, where the actual work is done on the net as a whole, and the tool at hand merely becomes a portal to the work."

However, he goes on to argue that specialization will eventually be the rule:

"This convergence is temporary. We are still in the early stages of computerization - or rather intelligenation. [...] Silly as it now sounds, we will put artificial intelligence into hammers, dental picks, fork lifts, stethoscopes, and frying pans. All these tools will gain new powers by sharing the universal intelligence of the network. But as their newly augmented roles become clear, the tools will specialize. We can see the first glimmers in the iPhone, Kindle, Wii, and netbooks."

Kelly concludes:

"Technology is born in generality and grows to specificity. Technology wants specialization."

It's a good argument, but I'm not sure it's completely true. While a hammer is certainly going to remain a specialist tool, how about a tool like an eReader? Kelly actually names the Kindle as a device that specializes. That it does. However I'd suggest that the Kindle is a likely contender for extinction, because of convergence.

Nobody would argue that the multi-functional iPad of 2011 is a better eReader than the specialist Kindle device. The Kindle is clearly superior. It's lighter and also you can read your Kindle outside, whereas the iPad screen has glare issues in sunlight. But over time, it's possible that the iPad - and other tablets - will evolve good enough eReader functionality that they force specialist eReaders into extinction.

In other words: with reading, technology may actually want convergence.

You can see glimpses of that kind of convergence happening with smartphones and consumer cameras. The Flip video camera has already declared itself obsolete, due to the smartphone.

Convergence will also happen in reverse though, albeit on a smaller scale. The future camera device we explored last week might make the smartphone an unneeded device for some people. For a certain segment of the population - professional photographers and passionate photography hobbyists - the 'smart camera' will do the job of both camera and phone. That won't make the smartphone extinct, by any means - but it is a form of convergence that will survive.

What do you think, will specialization win out over convergence? Or will there still be a place for convergence, as I have argued.

Photo credit: David Reber's Hammer Photography

Kelly's book is a must read for technologists and anybody interested in the future of the Web. In this post I'll explore a few of the main themes of the book, in particular as they relate to the evolving Web. (there won't be any spoilers, for those of you in the middle of reading it or if you haven't yet read it!) Two of the main themes are how technology will evolve and how we - humanity - can guide it and make the best use of it.

The Technium: a Living System of Technology

Key to the book is a new term that Kelly invents: the technium. He spends about 6 pages explaining the term, but at it's most basic it means a system of technologies. It includes not only what we ordinarily think of as specific technologies (such as cars, radar, computers), but the entire system around technology - culture, art, social institutions, "the extended human" and more.

A key to grokking the technium is that it's a living system, which evolves in a similar way to humans. On page 45, Kelly explains that "the technium can really only be understood as a type of evolutionary life." He goes on to suggest that technology evolves in a mix of inevitable and chance ways, just as humans have done. His point being that we can fairly accurately predict the macro evolution of the technium (that computers will eventually acquire a level of intelligence akin to a human, for example), but not the micro details of that evolution.

We've been writing about the Internet of Things, when real world objects become connected to the Internet, for the past couple of years on ReadWriteWeb. Kelly's book reinforces what a profound change in the Web this is. As everyday objects get connected to the Internet, they almost become 'alive' to us. They might not be able to think for themselves, yet, but billions of 'things' in the world will be able to sense and compute information about the world.

Living With Technology's Increasing Power

On page 254, Kelly writes that "technologies are nearly living things." So we will need to adjust to this and figure out how best to utilize - and live with - technologies. Kelly lists five "proactions" that humanity should take to assess and engage with technologies:

1. Anticipation
2. Continual Assessment
3. Prioritization of Risks, Including Natural Ones
4. Rapid Correction of Harm
5. Not Prohibition but Redirection

At one point he compares technologies to children. As parents we aim to guide our children to reach their potential and contribute something to the world. "We can't really change the nature of our children," Kelly writes on page 257, "but we can steer them to tasks and duties that match their talents." Likewise, he suggests, we can guide and steer technology.

Was The Unibomber Right?

Kelly spends a significant part of the book exploring the moral and ethical issues around an ever more powerful technium. Is it wise for humanity to continue to let technologies evolve, until the technium is more intelligent than humanity?

A whole chapter is devoted to the theories of the infamous Unibomber, Ted Kaczynski. Kaczynski wrote a manifesto about destroying modern technology before it destroys us. He killed 3 people with mail bombs, while attempting to carry out his manifesto. Kelly at first defends Kaczynski's theories, but he ends the chapter by attacking him on a moral level. Kelly writes (page 212-213):

"But despite the reality of technology's faults, the Unibomber is wrong to want to exterminate it, for many reasons, not the least of which is that the machine of civilization offers us more actual freedoms than the alternative [...] so far the gains from this ever-enlarging technium outweigh the alternative of no machine at all."

The Optimistic View of Technology

Ultimately 'What technology Wants' is an uplifting and optimistic book about the future of technology. It contrasts in many ways to another thought-provoking technology book, which I read and reviewed a year ago: You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto; by Jaron Lanier. In that book, Lanier argued that technology reduces our humanity - for example by promoting the 'hive mind' over individual expression. Interestingly, Lanier is quoted on the jacket of Kelly's book. He recommends you read this book, "even though I profoundly disagree with aspects of it."

It's always beneficial to have skeptics about technology, so there's a place for Lanier's arguments. Both of Lanier's and Kelly's books are stimulating and well worth reading. However, I find myself much more swayed by Kelly's theories. Whereas Lanier dismisses the Internet as meaningless in and of itself, Kelly essentially argues that the technium (of which the Internet is a part) is a hugely important evolving system. It's as much a living system as humanity is. That, I suspect, is one of the aspects that Lanier would disagree with. But I find Kelly's theory to be compelling - and helpful as an approach to the increasing power of technology.

The book concludes that technology is ultimately good for humanity. Admittedly that was Kelly's pre-destined outcome - back in November, 2004, when he began writing the book, he blogged: "I sense that overall, technology is a good thing." However the end result of his 7 year quest, the book, compellingly makes that case. I think this line near the end of the book sums it up beautifully:

"How can technology make a person better? Only in this way: by providing each person with chances."

(which incidentally echoes my own thoughts after I read Lanier's book: "[...] Lanier glosses over the benefits of web 2.0 - that it gives everyone who has a computer (and nowadays a smart phone) a publishing platform with which to explore their creativity and have their say.")

I gave Kelly's book 5 out of 5 stars on Goodreads, because ultimately it provides useful advice on how to think about and deal with technology. Perhaps aspects of the book can be challenged on scientific or philosophical terms, as some have argued. But that seems beside the point. I think we'd all agree that technology is evolving incredibly fast. We need to try and understand the changes. We need strategies to get the best out of technology (and, by extension, ourselves). That's what Kevin Kelly wants; and in my view the book achieves it.

Photo credit: Doc Searls

"They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can't wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans."

This is interesting given the Nine Inch Nails release. As commenter Shannon Clark pointed out, very quickly the limited edition signed $300 "super deluxe" package of the new NIN album sold out. While clearly Trent Reznor is working with more than 1,000 true fans at this point (especially considering the "super deluxe" edition was limited 2,500 copies), the same concept is at play. Because his true fans came through for him, whatever else happens, Reznor will likely profit from the Ghosts experiment.

But how hard it is to find those true fans? Reznor had the benefit of a long career backed by major labels that help push his music out to a wide audience. There is an interesting debate raging in the comments of yesterday's NIN post about whether any artist has ever gone from obscurity to mainstream success without help from a major label. Of course, Kelly says mainstream success isn't necessary, with work you can connect on a more local, personal level with your true fans.

I've actually seen this happen up close with a friend of mine who plays music in a rather obscure genre. By doing things like playing free house shows, blogging on MySpace and Facebook, having email and IM conversations with fans, inviting fans to help in the process by doing things like copying CDs and designing case inserts, etc. he has made sure he stays connected to his true fans. The fan base he has cultivated, albeit small by record label standards, ensures that there are enough people who will buy every new CD he puts out and come to his shows and drop $30 on t-shirts and stickers that he can continue to pay his bills.

This is also essentially the same theory employed by music startup Sellaband (our coverage). The web site implores music acts to generate $50,000 from "believers" -- usually in the form of $10 donations from 5,000 true fans. Any band that reaches that goal gets studio time to record a full album and distribution via the site and other retail channels.

Kelly's blueprint for long tail success works because he is talking about goods that you sell directly to your fans. Alex Iskold wrote last year how that blueprint won't work in the blogosphere. Because most blogging is ad supported, and because advertising is based on volume, a small number of true fans won't cut it.

However, though Kelly's argument may not apply to those looking to make money directly from blogging, blogging is probably a good way to make connections with and create a base of true fans. So even though you can't make money directly in the long tail of blogging, as Iskold said, perhaps you can use blogging in the long tail to cultivate a base of fans to make money via other methods (i.e., by selling books or booking speaking engagements).

Kelly is using the PDF Ads for True Films 3.0. Kelly calls the use of the ads an experiment. "If it works with you readers to the same degree that ad-supported blogs have, it is not hard to imagine thousands of books being released for free with ads on the side," writes Kelly on his blog. "To some in publishing this prospect is the end of the world. The final stake in the heart of good old books. Ads-in-books specifically have been a bogeyman too horrible for them to even think about. [...] I am more pragmatic. I actually like the Google contextual ads on Cool Tools. They bring up choices I would have never encountered, yet they are fairly unobtrusive until you are looking. Why not do the same for books?"

But there are a couple of major obstacles to PDF Ads that I see in this initial iteration. The first is that the ads are opt-in. Because Acrobat Reader needs to connect to Adobe to download the ad content, it first asks for permission (the PDF files are scanned by Yahoo!'s content matching system before you download them, so the Yahoo! robot isn't actually scanning a file on your computer, but it will try to connect to Adobe each time you open to the file to attempt to download the most up-to-date ads). Will people really opt-in to view ads? Hardcore supporters of the author might, but since they're paid on a per click basis, if the people clicking on the ads are only doing so out of support for the author, isn't the advertiser losing out? That's not going to likely be high quality traffic.

The other major hurdle is that the content matching sucks. While reading True Film 3.0, I didn't see one ad that had anything to do with film or documentaries or even the subjects that any of the documentaries being reviewed were about. Instead, the ads were about unrelated things like travel and real estate -- they looks more like broadly purchased defaults (low paying inventory filling ads) than actual contextually matched advertisements. In order for PDF ads to warrant any notice from readers, they'll have to get a lot more relevant.