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Over the past week I read Kevin Kelly's latest book, What Technology Wants. It's a highly ambitious and expansive book, which looks at technology from an evolutionary perspective. Over 350 pages, Kelly outlines and explores technology as a living system, akin to humanity's biological evolution. The title alludes to this - 'What Technology Wants,' as if technology is a living, breathing thing.

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.

Kevin Kelly wrote a thought-provoking post about how "the impossible" is happening more often nowadays, thanks in no small part to large scale collaboration over the Internet. In other words, the hive mind. He cites eBay and Wikipedia as two examples of things he would've thought impossible in decades past.

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.

One of the enduring themes of technology is convergence, when different products evolve to do similar tasks. The smartphone is the prime example of convergence in this era, bringing together voice and data (web) applications. Plus, in recent times, high quality photography and video.

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.

Over the past week I read Kevin Kelly's latest book, What Technology Wants. It's a highly ambitious and expansive book, which looks at technology from an evolutionary perspective. Over 350 pages, Kelly outlines and explores technology as a living system, akin to humanity's biological evolution. The title alludes to this - 'What Technology Wants,' as if technology is a living, breathing thing.

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 always interesting Kevin Kelly published a long post yesterday detailing how any artist -- musical or otherwise -- can make money operating in the long tail. His idea centers around finding 1,000 "true fans," which he defines as people who will do anything to support what you do. Once you've acquired your following of true fans, says Kelly, making a living is doable.