Technical Element-kk interview (end)

of the network culture

Kelly (Kevin Kelly, often referred to as "KK") has multiple identities, writers, photographers, conservationists, and scholars in the Asian culture and digital culture field. But his best known is the idea of technology. He is a spokesperson and observer of Internet culture, with a profound insight into technology. According to the New York Times columnist David Carr, KK's predictions of technology are "grand and correct". He fully believes in what he calls "technical elements" and believes that it is only the beginning of a technological society. As he has done in the past decades, he is still acting as the future prophet and compass for the rest of us, pointing the way for us to find new territories.

Interview on technical Element-kk (i)

Interview of Technical Element-kk (II.)

Interview of Technical Element-kk (III.)

Interview of Technical Element-kk (IV.)

American exceptionalism will be challenged

I go to China 2 times a year. I have been to many places in Asia, like India, Korea and so on, I love the culture here. Ordinary Americans are unaware of how fast these countries are developing, from a resource-intensive cottage culture to an intangible service economy and a shift to innovation. This shift will be faster than most people would expect. This will be followed by the development of military forces, and American hegemony and exceptionalism will be challenged. America's role in the world needs to be restructured, which will benefit Americans and others.

Analog or digital?

Dyson (Freeman Dyson) Raises the question of whether the universe as a whole is discrete or continuous in nature. is its essence a two-state of information or a simulated state of wave or wave-particle duality? I don't know, but it makes a big difference to our understanding of the world. I bet digital wins. Because if you think the world is based on information, it is a two-dollar digital world. This is a huge mystery, but we will gradually reshape and explain physics on the basis of information. Of course I may be wrong, but if I bet, I would bet the world is digital.

Technology comes from life

The pens we use every day seem trivial, but it takes 100 different technologies, including plastic, ink, ball, metal and so on, and each technology itself may require 100 seed technology, and of course there may be cycles in it, For example, the production of the ball may need a pen (note: For example, use a pen to draw the craft diagram?) , like producing generators without electricity, power lines are produced without generators. A hammer must have a hammer and handle, and a saw with a cutting handle will be forged by a hammer, all of which are cyclical, with a network of different support technologies, and all of these things that make up the entire web I call technical elements.

Then I look at the networks of all the technologies in the world, both past and present, which have their own pressing needs and trends in terms of system formation. Like any system, it has a specific way of its own preference, which is inherent in the system and does not have anything to do with whether humans live in the system. My question is, what is the preference for a system that has assembled all the technologies? If we can figure this out, we'll have some idea of the trend. Since I see it as a living system, I think it comes from life, which is not surprising. In other words, the technical element is the same share can self-organization into the life of the extension of power, so the technical elements in nature is not against life. In fact, many of it are derived from life and are compatible with it. It actually perpetuates and accelerates the things that life and evolution do on this planet.

It will develop in a specific direction, not destiny but a direction. Towards complexity, towards more perceptual development, and towards a more specialized direction. Its energy density will be more and more high, life also has a whole set of other development direction. So if we're going to think about 100 or 1000 years of technology, that's the way it's supposed to be, when technology should be more complex and perceptual than it is today, and AI will be ubiquitous. No matter what we build today, there will be a more specialized version in the future. The future will become more symbiotic, and the reliance on technology and technology will be stronger. So will our own society. These things are technically desired, because the system itself has this preference, which is intrinsic, not our human decision.

China invented everything except one of the most important inventions

One thing in ancient China was more interesting. Study history you will find that almost all of the major inventions were invented by China, some even hundreds of years after the introduction of Western Europe or the latter invented. These inventions include paper, printing, steel, gunpowder, compass, rudder, suspension bridge and so on almost everything, in civilization, China has been leading the world for a long time, because it is far earlier than others made these things. But one of the most important inventions in China has not been made, and that is the scientific method.

Why the West, not China, invented the scientific method is still a problem. But only by this invention did the West suddenly have the means to invent and find new things, and the greatness of those new things threw all the great inventions of China behind them and made so many things by virtue of this invention. But the scientific method is not a single thing, but a set of processes with many elements, and the scientific method itself has been changing. At first it was just a very simple process like a control experiment. We tend to think of scientific methods as a whole, but many of the things we assume are only recently invented, some are only about 50 years old, like double-blind experiments, blank control agents, random sampling, and so on. 50 years from now, scientific methods will change much more than in the past 400 years, just like everything else.

So scientific methods are evolving. Scientific methods are also technology, process technology. But it may be the most important process and technology, it will continue to evolve, we will continue to add new things to it. such as triple-blind experimentation, multiple authors, or quantification of the ego, the scientific method itself will continue to improve as technology, and this will affect all other technologies.

Technology is everything that thought produces

My definition of technology is something that any thought produces, a wide range of definitions, so that the first technologies actually come from animals. The common wisdom of termites is to build skyscrapers. Birds can weave nests, beavers can build dams, and we have the outer phenotype of these things in our minds, and we create technology and tools. Everything that is produced by thought is technology, including art, painting, and music, and it refers not to the individual, but to the technology of art, painting and music. All this, in a sense, is technology. They are the product of our thoughts, not just personal expressions, but also useful things, so intangible things like agendas are technology. Software is clearly also a technology. Infrastructure such as roads and libraries is also a technological invention, so the definition of technology is broad. It can be said that when we have robots and artificial intelligence in the future, the invention of these things is also technology.

Tools are also technologies that can be intangible, can be processes, not necessarily hardware. Tools are useful things, and the best tools are tools that enable other tools. They liberate their potential, the potential to release the potential of the future, these are the greatest tools.

Science magnifies our ignorance.

There's something weird about science. Every time we try to use science to answer questions, and to discern things, the answer will always be 2 or 3 new questions. Anyone who engages in science knows that he is constantly discovering new things that they do not know. This increases their ignorance, so in a sense science increases knowledge and expands our ignorance more quickly. It can be said that the main influence of science is the enlargement of ignorance (note: Confucius said, know that it is not known as unknown, Socrates said, I know I do not know).

Google can be said to provide the answer, so Google is constantly increasing the answer, but the interesting thing is that the answer is getting cheaper, almost free, I think the future scarce things will be the problem, the real good question, because the real good problem can cause new problems.

In a sense, in a world dominated by Google, what really matters is a great problem, which means that humans are still better than machines for a long time.

Machines provide answers, while humans ask questions.

The world that Google builds, a world filled with cheap and free answers, makes the answer less important. To ask a great question is the value.