TECHNOLOGY: EVOLUTION BY OTHER MEANS

When a scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

--Arthur C. Clarke's three laws of technology

A machine is as distinctively and brilliantly and expressively human as a violin sonata or a theorem in Euclid.

--Gregory Vlastos

WHAT IS TECHNOLOGY?

As technology is the continuation of evolution by other means, it shares the phenomenon of an exponentially quickening pace. The word is derived from the Greek tekhn¯e, which means "craft" or "art," and logia, which means "the study of." Thus one interpretation of technology is the study of crafting, in which crafting refers to the shaping of resources for a practical purpose.

The Inevitability of Technology

Once life takes hold on a planet, we can consider the emergence of technology as inevitable. The ability to expand the reach of one's physical capabilities, not to mention mental facilities, through technology is clearly useful for survival. Technology has enabled our subspecies to dominate its ecological niche. Technology requires two attributes of its creator: intelligence and the physical ability to manipulate the environment.

A Planetary Affair

The introduction of technology on Earth is not merely the private affair of one of the Earth's innumerable species. It is a pivotal event in the history of the planet. Evolution's grandest creation--human intelligence--is providing the means for the next stage of evolution, which is technology. The emergence of technology is predicted by the Law of Accelerating Returns. The Homo sapiens sapiens subspecies emerged only tens of thousands of years after its human forebears. According to the Law of Accelerating Returns, the next stage of evolution should measure its salient events in mere thousands of years, too quick for DNA-based evolution. This next stage of evolution was necessarily created by human intelligence itself, another example of the exponential engine of evolution using its innovations from one period (human beings) to create the next (intelligent machines).

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Evolution
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has been seen as a billion-year drama that led inexorably to its grandest creation: human
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intelligence
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. The emergence in the early twenty-first century of a new form of
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intelligence
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on
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Earth
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that can compete with, and ultimately significantly exceed, human
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intelligence
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will be a development of greater
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import
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than any of the events that have shaped human
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history
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. It will be no less important than the creation of the
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intelligence
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that created it, and will have profound implications for all aspects of human endeavor, including the
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nature
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of work, human
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learning
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,
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government
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,
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warfare
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, the arts, and our
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concept
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of ourselves.
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1 The Law of Connection

Embrace dumb power
</b>

The Network Economy is fed by the deep resonance of two stellar bangs: the collapsing microcosm of chips and the exploding telecosm of connections. These sudden shifts are tearing the old laws of wealth apart and preparing territory for the emerging economy.

2 The Law of Plentitude

More gives more

The fax effect suggests that the more plentiful things become, the more valuable they become. But this notion directly contradicts two of the most fundamental axioms we attribute to the industrial age.

First hoary axiom: Value came from scarcity; diamonds, gold, oil, and college degrees were precious because they were scarce.

Second hoary axiom: When things were made plentiful, they became devalued; carpets no longer indicated status when they could be woven by the thousands on machines.

In the Network Economy, scarcity is overwhelmed by shrinking marginal costs. Where the expense of churning out another copy becomes trivial (and this is happening in more than software), the value of standards and the network booms.

In the Network Economy, more gives more.

3 The Law of Exponential Value

Success is nonlinear

4 The Law of Tipping Points

Significance precedes momentum

5 The Law of Increasing Returns

Make virtuous circles

First, industrial economies of scale increase value linearly, while the prime law increases value exponentially - the difference between a piggy bank and compounded interest.

Second, and more important, industrial economies of scale stem from the herculean efforts of a single organization to outpace the competition by creating value for less. The expertise (and advantage) developed by the leading company is its alone. By contrast, networked increasing returns are created and shared by the entire network. Many agents, users, and competitors together create the network's value. Although the gains of increasing returns may be reaped unequally by one organization over another, the value of the gains resides in the greater web of relationships.

6 The Law of Inverse Pricing

Anticipate the cheap

One curious aspect of the Network Economy would astound a citizen living in 1897: The very best gets cheaper each year. This rule of thumb is so ingrained

in our contemporary lifestyle that we bank on it without marveling at it. But marvel we should, because this paradox is a major engine of the new economy.

Through most of the industrial age, consumers experienced slight improvements in quality for slight increases in price. But the arrival of the microprocessor flipped the price equation. In the information age, consumers quickly came to count on drastically superior quality for less price over time. The price and quality curves diverge so dramatically that it sometimes seems as if the better something is, the cheaper it will cost.

8 The Law of the Allegiance

Feed the web first

7 The Law of Generosity

Follow the free

9 The Law of Devolution

Let go at the top

The natural question is how companies are to survive in a world of generosity. Three points will help.

First, think of "free" as a design goal for pricing. There is a drive toward the free

- the asymptotic free - that, even if not reached, makes the system behave as if

it does. A very small flat rate may have

the same effects as flat-out free.

The harsh news is that getting stuck is a certainty in the new economy. Sooner, rather than later, a product will be eclipsed at its prime. While one product is at its peak, another will move the mountain by changing the rules.

There is only one way out. The organism must devolve. In order to go from one high peak to another, it must go downhill first and cross a valley before climbing uphill again. It must reverse itself and become less adapted, less fit, less optimal.

10 The Law of Displacement

The net wins

If money and information flow through something, then it's part of the Network Economy.

In the Network Economy, the net wins. All transactions and objects will tend to obey network
logic.

11 The Law of Churn

Seek sustainable disequilibrium

Ironically, only by promoting churn can long-term stability be achieved.

This notion of constant churn is familiar to ecologists and those who manage large networks. The sustained vitality of

a complex network requires that the net keep provoking itself out of balance. If the system settles into harmony and equilibrium, it will eventually stagnate and die.

Innovation is a disruption; constant innovation is perpetual disruption. This seems to be the goal of a well-made network: to sustain a perpetual disequilibrium. As economists (such as Paul Romer and Brian Arthur) begin to study the Network Economy, they see that it, too, operates by poising itself on the edge of constant chaos. In this chaotic churn is life-giving renewal and growth.

Nonetheless, in the coming churn, the industrial age's titans will fall. In a poetic sense, the prime task of the Network Economy is to destroy - company by company, industry by industry - the industrial economy. While it undoes industry at its peak, it weaves a larger web of new, more agile, more tightly linked organizations between its spaces.

Effective churning will be an art. In any case, promoting stability, defending productivity, and protecting success can only prolong the misery. When in doubt, churn. In the Network Economy, seek sustainable disequilibrium.

12 The Law of Inefficiencies

Don't solve problems

In the end, what does this Network Economy bring us?

Economists once thought that the coming age would bring supreme productivity. But, in a paradox, increasing technology has not led to measurable increases in productivity.

This is because productivity is exactly the wrong thing to care about.

The Internet teaches us to see the value of diversity and plurality. All the opinions of all the people matter. Fundamentalism teaches that there is only one path, one story, and one author. Whether they are attacking the free market, women's rights activists, civil libertarians, or homosexuals, and whether they are using purchased airwaves or hijacked airplanes, such fundamentalists are fighting a losing battle.

For we are the network, and we will include them-which is how we will win.

There is only one
time in the history of each planet when its inhabitants first wire up its innumerable parts to make one large Machine. Later that Machine may run faster, but there is only one time when it is born.
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You and I are alive at this moment.
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GEOFFREY
MILLER

Evolutionary Psychologist,
University of New Mexico; Author, The
Mating Mind

Runaway
consumerism explains the Fermi Paradox

The
story goes like this: Sometime in the 1940s, Enrico Fermi was
talking about the possibility of extra-terrestrial intelligence
with some other physicists. They were impressed that our galaxy
holds 100 billion stars, that life evolved quickly and progressively
on earth, and that an intelligent, exponentially-reproducing
species could colonize the galaxy in just a few million years.
They reasoned that extra-terrestrial intelligence should be common
by now. Fermi listened patiently, then asked simply, "So,
where is everybody?". That is, if extra-terrestrial intelligence
is common, why haven't we met any bright aliens yet? This conundrum
became known as Fermi's Paradox.

STEVEN
PINKER

Psychologist,
Harvard University; Author, The Blank Slate

Groups
of people may differ genetically in their average talents
and temperaments

Now
we have not only action at a distance but something infinitely
more disturbing: these interactions violate conventional notions
of causality because they are non-local. Two particles that have
been joined in an intimate relationship within an atom remain
coherently correlated with one another in their properties no
matter how far apart they may be after emission from the atom.
Einstein could not bring himself to believe that this 'spooky'
implication of quantum mechanics could possibly be real.

The
implied entanglement means that there is a holistic principle
of connectedness in operation at the most elementary level of
physical reality. Quantum fields have subverted our basic notions
of causality and substituted a principle of wholeness in relationship
for elementary particles.