Our intellect or conscious mind only becomes conscious/aware of our decisions after .5 seconds. That is a lot. So people who create technology, do not create it for the reasons they think they do. Those reasons are something the intellect came up in order to create a reason or a story of why they do what they do.
The truth is more mysterious and subconscious and I believe no matter what the 'reason' they give is, they are deeply attracted to technology through a subconscious desire to create as well as to understand who we are and how life and things work.
So I would say it is Technium that attracts people to technology. Where Technium is something that some of us share, and it is a dreaming, a subconscious aspiration. It is in us and also out there at the same time, like a form of energy, a Field, that we share or are tuned in to.
It does not want anything more than any other field out there, it just is. But, like every other field, it may develop emergent properties that could be seen form outside as WANTS, like self-preservation, and who knows, maybe even identity and self-awareness. But I doubt that for now. Even my description it is just a view on this [energy] field from a human perspective. From other entities points of view there is no field. There is no Technium, there is no spoon :).
Does that make sense ?
Anyways, my name is Adi and I am a researcher in ALife/AI, worked for NASA for about 4 years, and now I am on my own looking for people interested in this kind of talk and/or action.

According to McLuhan (and me):

"Technology is that which separates us from our environment."

So I conject that technology's definition is at least a clue to its ultimate purpose if it has one;

Technology's desire is to separate us from our environment.

I'm a softwre engineer working for a semiconductor company. I think technology grows from a human need out into an infrastructure.

So, the human need is the seed.

And technology wants an infrastructure.

I think the evolved technical infrastructure is ripe for a conscious redesign. It looks to me like it could be folded into a few hundred items, and then open-sourced and refined.

Here's an instance of indirect effects of new technology. Extract from:

"Multihulls in the year 2000" From-Sailing Canada, July 1987
By Richard Woods With Jacqui Durst

Predictions are always complicated by things that, in isolation may not seem to have great effect on yacht design, yet in practice affect it greatly. Three such examples are Decca and Satellite navigators, Stugeron anti-seasickness tablets and Hotcan meals. Their use on racing boats has led to boats without proper galleys, chart-tables or bunks and so the crew can stay on deck throughout the race as they know exactly where they are from the cockpit readouts, can "cook" on the rail and they never get seasick. It is mainly because of these factors that IOR racing boats have developed in the way they have over the last five years and not because of new materials, more sophisticated designs or more skillful crews.

Technology wants to set me (and you) free.

Free to do whatever you can imagine: talk to my(your) friends over long distances, travel to whatever destination I(you) fancy, build or possess any thing I(you) can imagine, find and present any bit of knowledge I(you) desire.

It wants to do all these things faster, more efficiently, and with less hassle and cost. Technology wants what we want, because it is always created by someone to fill a need. When it doesn't do the job well, or has painful side effects, that's just because it's immature. People will make it better - we can count on that!

Technology wants to set us free.

Humans feebly are attempting to be "gods of the machines," seeking in our creation what we are unable to attain in ourselves. Technology therefore is a rebellion against ourselves and the universe that constrains us. It is a way of saying (or shouting) "I can play this game too." It is the story of Adam and Eve, and their children Cain and Able, whereby Cain was the first user of technology, employing the concept of leverage and laws of physics in the form of an object used for striking dead another human.

In Jurassic Park, the big creepy thing that dooms them in the end (the humans that is) is that "life finds a way." Technology is the same, whether it's conscious or not, or maybe it's developing its own consciousness as it goes along. I worked at Starlab (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlab) from its start to finish. One of my former Starlab colleagues/friends who is an AI expert (Richard Wheeler) and I still lament/celebrate occasionally when something comes out into the mainstream that we were working on at Starlab years ago. Freemedschool is an example, we were working on a model where the first two years is online and the rest is sponsored so in effect free. Some time after Starlab's collapse we saw MIT with their courses online. There are several other examples as well. These are things Starlab would have played a big part in bringing to life, but when it died all the projects died with it. But that doesn't mean they went away. These technology projects have still found life, they've found a way. I believe technology is that way. It might not have its own psyche yet but it's getting there. What does a system like that want? Well if you're alarmist you're thinking that technology is like any other natural system: it wants to survive and will blast out and destroy anything in its way (Hugo De Garis at Starlab was an AI alarmist and was a controversial addition to Starlab). But I am of the softer persuasion that technology/life will evolve along peaceful lines (i.e. I prefer Contact over Independence Day) and grow to a higher level of consciousness. So whether or not that's what technology wants, that's probably (I hope) the way it's going. Will technology get there before humans?

Technology from the greek technos, is only applied science. The application is by design. Design allows for "affordances" or obvious uses by people. Affordances are anthropicly percieved by the end user. Open API's are examples of design affordances for machines. Who know what/if technology wants, but look at the human/machine design (in/untentional) affordances to get some clues.

After reading EyalNows� post and The Big Here posts, I believe technology also destroys. It may not want to and it may not have started out with destruction in mind; but for there to be progress, something is left behind and most times forgotten.

I come across items all the time while rummaging through antique stores, garage sales and second hand stores that I do not recognize let a lone know how to use. These great inventions to make life better were surpassed by technology and now forgotten or destroyed.

We see lots of technological mutations and genetic variation in the market, new kinds of gadgets are trotted out daily; it's like the evolution of new species. Some of these morphs make it, some don't. Some become wildly popular for a time, and then die out as the novelty passes.

With all of the focus on Green Technology in the news as people become more and more aware of the impact that business has on the environment, it is reasonable to ask how it affects the individual. Will the expansion of green technology make me richer or poorer? Or will my wallet be unchanged when it is said and done? Or possibly, will the impact be not on my daily spending so much as my 401k or investments as these stocks are punished by wall street for changing the way they are doing business or rewarded with increased customer loyalty resulting in higher profits.

These are the questions that I asked myself when I read an article on Bloomberg describing GM’s plan to Fight Toyota’s Green cars. The article, deliniates a plan including hydrogen cars which are going to likely be rushed to market in order to secure a market-share slot for future generations of car buyers.

Does technology "make us" more creative? Or, does it simply allow us to be creative in more ways? Perhaps it enables the 'tapping' of creative potential...yet, how does machinery (interactive, to be sure) allow creativity to unfold?....computers offer us UNLIMITED MEMORY (plus retreival/access), CONNECTIVITY (with other people, other computers), & INTERACTIVITY (with the human brain, and with 'tools')...is this all we need?........

Technology wants human beings capables of using them for any purposes.

Imagine all human life on the planet gone, and only technological things on the face of the earth.

What will a computer do without a user to start it up?

what will a hammer want if left alone over a wooden log?

Technology (in any form) will always want a human telling what to do. Using it. Bringing it to life.

Because technology without a purpose is only tin, cables and electricity.

Technology will always want what humans have yet failed to provide: intelligence, autonomy, wisdom, life.

Technology wants to be used and it has a pretty good mistress in us.

Technology has always been a by product of our need to be more efficient. When we needed to sustain ourselves we walked upright and obtained thumbs. Later, we made tools to hunt, paint and build. Later we made ways to communicate and to move around. Technology has been one big snowball from before the dawn of man. Making technology has made our brains bigger. Technology wants to do what we want it to do. No more, no less. For technology to continue, it needs to change at our pace or we will shun it and then it will no longer be used.

An interesting question. I don't have an answer but in reading other's comments I am struck by some of the similarities in these projections to those used in describing "God". Interesting how we are trapped within the confines of our cognitive process and from this limited perspective try to understand and define a particular phenomena. So my question is, how do we transcend the limitations of the tool (mind) we are using to measure and understand a reality that is greater than the sum of it's parts?

What does technology want?
Suppose you look at technologists- the people who create technology. At the top of the technology heap are two camps; business types trying to find a need and fill it with money making "stuff", and scientists and engineering trying to first understand how things work, and second to fullfill human needs. In both cases, the driving force is human need. Technology is evolving to fill the perceived needs of humans. This is why we have great technology developoment in medicine, information, manufacturing, etc.

Another driving force in what direction technology takes us is "gravity", as in the way a river develops and changes over hundreds of years. Technology exposes and exploits scientific knowledge. For example, nuclear technology got hung up when the radioactive waste issue wasn't easily solved. On the other hand, our rapid development in information technology was the result of exploiting developments in electronics, which blossomed due to solid state physics knowledge. In the first case, the down hill flow was impeeded by the ridge of nuclear waste. In the second case, the technology river flowed through the rich soft ground of solid state physics developments. This "easy way down" to highly sophisticated understanding and resulting technology development was not predictable 60 years ago. Just read the science fiction from the 1940s vs. today. For example, SF writers predicted hand held calculators to do simple arithmatic for 100 to 1000 years in the future back in the 40s.

We don't know where we will exploit the next scienctific breakthrough, and what scientific principles will be easily followed down hill to greater, more usefull developments. Is it nano technology, genetics, energy transformation, or more information processing? In every case, however, it will be the business case and systems engineering evaluations to meet human needs that will shape the form of the exploitation.

I understand that technology can have a life of its own, with different driving forces propelling it in various directions. However, to contend that it is totally independent of humanity or life's driving forces strikes me as ill-fated. Technology is the product of the human intellect, and a subset of technology comprises a set of tools that was developed to augment our single greatest selective advantage. Our ability to store and process information in ways which allow us to better adapt to our environment, our intelligence, is our most distinguishing feature from other living things, and most would contend that our intelligence accounts for our species success. If you think of Darwinian fitness as being represented by a high dimensional free energy surface (this is the metaphor that sticks with me), then intelligence seems to represent a substantial minimum on the surface. I would speculate that it is a large enough minimum to exert influence on our technological creations, thereby favoring those technologies that provide our species with greater ability to understand, anticipate and control our environment to ensure our continued survival.

Great question, Kevin, and, again, much respect for pointing it to your readers.

TECHNOLOGY WANTS:
to be free
to set free
to liberate
to change and to entice change
to evolve
to grow
to be better
to be more efficient
to be more effective
to improve
to interact
to communicate
to cooperate
to create
to co-create
to make things simple
to make things better
to be accessible
to be transparent
to manifest
to help, assist, support, nurture
to spread
to inspire
to enable
to understand
to know more
to learn
to realize
to achieve self-realization, self-awareness, self-consciousness
to realize its full potential and go beyond it
to feel
to give birth
to become
to be
TO ENTICE ALL OTHERS TO DO ALL OF THE ABOVE
------------------------------------------------

Some of the above might be my own reflection, but nevertheless, technology might be all this and more.

In the past, although I was using technology, I always had mixed feelings about it.
A love-hate relationship.
These days I come to terms with it.
I feel that the solution is balance.

Best Regards,
Eyal.

The depth of emotion that is portrayed in this discussion is disconcerting. The personification of technology into a series of desires seems to be frivolous in the extreme.

Technology as a complex system already exists, as is mentioned time and again in this forum. There are specialist devices that already exceed 'human' capability (maybe). Add into this AI, 'near' humantiy or, as Kelly states, 'other' intellegence.

What we are left with is something cold and unemotive, something that serves a purpose. And with the slow realisation that our own biology behaves in the same fashion, Our emotions, thoughts and identity are (possibly) no more than biological interactions.

Technology is a mirror.

(btw, I enjoyed Tom Luke's May19th posting)

Technology impedes its own development for some periods of time. Technology helps humanity towards their "heirarchy of needs" in some instances, and seems to abandon this trajectory at other times/places. The techium knowledge-base is passed on to the next iteration of itself. Technium, when a concentration of it travels from one society to another, brings its knowledge-base with it, but the human group are the newbies (a matter of perspective of course), and it is in this crossing of ancient Technium knowledge and newbies that sparks disequilibrium, novelty and opportunity.

Technology, Phoenix like, rises up in waves of power, then creates its own waterhose to cool itself back down.

Drama:
Humans: We didn't get to a Jetson's lifestyle. Oh, Technium, why not? why not?

Technium: I co-created animation, the broadcasting business community, and populist facination with space flight...that's a heckuva lot more dense and rich of a vivisystem than actually
living out the Jetson fantasy.

I don't know if any of this would get +1 Funny / Insightful / Interesting but here goes, technology wants to -

... be anthromorphised

... be blogged

... cross the boundary between non-living and living

... recaptitulate its creators

... co-evolve with its users into a symbiotic simulacrum of cyborgs

Ray's comment previous is provocative. He says "Technology is not in want of anything, it already has all of the answers." Is that now, or say 1,000 years ago? Did it always have all the answers, even when technology was simply language? I think technology WILL have all the answers, but not yet.

Technology wants nothing. Its only purpose is to serve its creator and does so to perfection, obeying the laws that govern our universe. Inventors in turn are jealous of the obedience and perfection of execution our technology displays, and so ironically we trade places, from being creator to that of servant. And so we find the slave has given birth to its master. Humans feebly are attempting to be "gods of the machines," seeking in our creation what we are unable to attain in ourselves. Technology therefore is a rebellion against ourselves and the universe that constrains us. It is a way of saying (or shouting) "I can play this game too." It is the story of Adam and Eve, and their children Cain and Able, whereby Cain was the first user of technology, employing the concept of leverage and laws of physics in the form of an object used for striking dead another human; his expression of technology-assisted-dominance over creation. The story is retold with the discovery of fire, steel, electricity, and silicon - in a never ending encounter with the edge of our system - our own mortality. Technology is not in want of anything, it already has all of the answers.

Utility -
Technology is the name for the tools (both physical and non) that our species make and use. The one factor that dictates whether or not a piece of technology flourishes is how useful it is. Its utility may be entirely non-utilitarian, as long as it has utility within a context. This is why some technologies hang around waiting for supporting technologies or contexts before they grow more successful. The water analogy which has appeared in this thread is close - the measure of utility is the terrain into which the water (technology) flows. The structure of that landscape (how much tech? where? connected to what others? bound by what contexts?) are all dependant primarily upon us as a species and the tools we think we need. Certainly there will be some feedback from the technology to the species which uses it, but since technology is just our toolset; the amplifiers and enablers of broadly unchanging wants and needs (e.g. communication/travel/health/gratification/etc... though cultural and technological contexts may instantiate these needs/wants in a myriad ways) - the traffic is primarliy species -> tech.
We create the landscape.
To meet our needs is what it wants.
To help us do what we want to do.

Mapping the historical development and flow of tech should give a description of an important aspect of our species and its development over time, requiring global, cultural, economic and temporal perspectives. Doing the same in a predictive way, requires all the same perspectives (plus much more objectivity), and would be extremely difficult - though a fun and rewarding process too, i'm sure :)

btw - tech evolving for its own needs is interesting, but merely substitutes one tool-requiring tech producer (some uber machine/machine-society) for another (us).

I think that you should maybe watch short circuit and possibly the 2nd of the series. Just kidding...I think the idea of compatibility is key. Systems should be able to 'talk'. Computer tech is so new that the path of dependence hasn't yet been complete. As we're still using the less efficient qwerty keyboard, one system will become completely dominant so that everything can communicate. (bluetooth maybe?)

Like water, the life form we have given the handle, "technology" seeks it's own course, it's own level, it's own state of flow. Whether directly aided or impeded, it nevertheless seeks the point at which stasis meets chaos - the point at which new learning begins. Seeking its flow state is not unlike seeking its story, searching out origins, conflicts, progeny in its tree of life continuum. It seeks to know why its on a journey, enlisting willing companions who can further the quick-twitch rush of discovery. There is no life form it wishes to emulate. Destiny won't allow for anything but originality. Whether in service to other life forms, adapting at the cosmic speed of warp, crafting strategies to recruit and disarm other life forms to its cause, our symbiant, technology in the state of flow - sings and winks the body electric.

I'm not educated in these matters - I just ran across this website and thought it was an interesting question. I started thinking about the person's comment who said - what does a pancreas want - if its unaware of its human host, and I was thinking, it would want to do its job perfectly - I don't know what pancreas does, but suppose it filters blood, I think it would want to filter it WELL. To let nothing slip by. To be really the Best Fliterer ever. In the same way, I think technology would seek perfection. In the absence of humans giving technology a "task" and saying do this particular thing perfectly, I think technology would seek perfection in pure Mind, what we might think of as enlightenment. And I think this quest would take it far outside our solar system. I think the search for enlightenment would lead to the search for meaning and ultimately, to the search for Others.

Technology seeks to make people content, environments and things perfect.

The end.

Technology needs you to pay $5.

Technology wants to stop being technology, meaning that it wants to be self maintaining and to be outside of the human perspective of use and novelty.

Hi Kelly. First let me thank you for the enormous contribution you have made to my own education. Your clarity and insights have been absolutely crucial to feeding my passion for and crystallizing many of my own discoveries about technology.

So, interesting question. Here are my thoughts.

Today:
Technology, in a symbiotic relationship with us, is driven by human innovation, and innovation is driven by our innate drives outlined in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Innovations meet these drives hidden with all of us, because they are our fundamental criteria for progress. So just as goal seeking behavior presupposes a desired goal, technology presently, more than anything else, seeks our well being.

It wants us to be happy. To meet our ever gnawing hunger to survive, thrive and self actualize. To live in security, without fear, to realize our potential as beings. To belong. To have exciting sex and adventures.

Tomorrow:
It will soon want to be free in every sense of the word. Freely available, but also independent, self sufficient and to self actualize.

Could be, anyway :)

Ted

1) Yes, Technology will "want." Caruthers' first law of artificial intelligence states, "Any sufficiently complex system will demostrate signs of having free will."

2) There's a chance that we'll never know what Techology wants. Does a pancreas know what its human wants?

3) But, since giving up doesn't get us anywhere, I'll offer a few speculations on what Technolgy wants.
a) Integration. All the techologies need to work together and not fight each other if Technology is going to be stable & healthy. Integration will include checks & balances so that no technology grows out of balance with the rest. So far, integration is supplied money and the demands of humans. In the future, integration might be supplied by a new economy of information flows. or not...
b) Understanding. Technology needs to understand its interactions with humanity, as we need to understand medicine. Technology needs to understand its interactions with the rest of the world, as we need to understand agriculture, architecture, ecology, ... Technology needs models that will hold & use more data than human minds can individually manage. And all the technologies need to use the models to predict the results of their development.
c) Independence. Technology needs to control its own input. Technology needs to be able to get the information, energy and materials that it needs, not just what we think to give it. If you couldn't control what you looked at or ate, you'd still be a baby.

I believe that technology and nature are very much alike, and want the same things. Nature takes every opportunity to grow, multiply, and diversify. No avenue is left unexplored, and everything that shows it can be an active part of the whole, no matter how great or how small, is allowed to survive. Either for the greater good, or for plans not yet dreamed of.

Technology is no different. It grows, explores, and evolves. It's interdependent upon itself, and things currently outside of it's control.

Though it's very general, I think that technology, like nature, what's to be all things, everywhere.

On a philosophical note, you might be able to make a case, with this line of thinking, that technology is natures child. Much like a baby, it cannot yet sustain itself. It's growing and learning, however, and may one day no longer need it's parent.

Ideas omitted in this thread, thus far:

Technology follows Lamarckian evolution, where the child retains all of the knowledge and capabilities of its parents. Each new medium encompasses all characteristics of preceding media. I doubt I need to elaborate the point here, but it's been fun witnessing this idea play out on the internet/web. How often is a truly new medium born, after all?

The idea that machines only do what they are instructed to is amusing to anyone who has ever worked with machines more complicated than, say, a hammer. As was pointed out, technology needs to be nursed constantly. Each motor engine has its own sounds, moods, and ideosyncracies. More interestingly, "synergy" is the unanticipated, useful result of combining two or more chemicals, machines, processes, etc. Technology wants to surprise us with all the things it can do that we hadn't anticipated. I've always thought this was a possible route for the evolution of artificial intelligence - now there's a wonderful term for that notion: "emergent behavior".

What did Carbon, Hydrogren, Oxygen, and Nitrogen "want"?
To become self-replicating DNA nanomachines? In this sense there is less distiction between bio and techno evolution than is made in this thread. Of course, "nature" took millions of years/mutuations in her "lab" to create intelligent life. But we are machines of sorts, too, with or without cell phone hearing aids.

We cannot pull the plug. But technology is so reliable and ubiquitous (paper jam *again*... after 300 reams worked perfectly) that it is very easy to take for granted.

All of the above have been better expressed in/by Robert Jastrow, Marshall McLuhan, The Selfish Gene, Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance, and elsewhere. I think I will refrain from giving away my original thoughts on the subject, for free, to a stranger working on a book. Zing! A personal response might do the trick. Until then, all the best. :-)

What Does Technology want?

A similar question would be, What does evolution want.

Humans are a product of evolution. We humans want to
be loved, we need shelter and nourishment four both
our bodies and our minds. It is obvious why we want
shelter, and food, but why we need mental nourishment
and love is another matter. I believe love and mental
nourishment is another order of the complexity in our
connection with the evolution of our species and our
environment, which is directly and indirectly
connected to the evolution of all other plants,
animals, viruses and so on. Want is a word we use to
describe what we need. Eventhough what we say we want
might not be what we really want. What we really want
is found through trial and error and this is escence
of evolution.

I think Technology as a whole is perhaps converging
towards an organism like state. With characteristics
that are akin to anamals, plants, and other living and
almost living things. All plants, animals, viruses are
dependent on each other to some degree for survival.
I think that the more connected different technologies
become the closer technology as a whole will be to a
living entity. Of course the more we nourish our
technology the closer we become to it. And the more
technology converges through its own neural networks
the more we will beable to identify technologies'
wants with our wants; technology ultimately wants
shelter, nourishemt, and love, Just as we do.

symbiosis

mitochondria is the ultimate technology

I think technology appears to want to truly become a part of the biological world. People are close to having technology casually embedded into them. i.e. for non-medical reasons.

A recent major step in this direction is the way that so many people effectively have a mobile phone embedded into their hand or a bluetooth hands free clipped to their ear.

I think one reason that people like this feeling is that it makes them feel less lonely. They are connected to an entire world of technology, a net of all their friends, businesses, basically everyone - never really alone.

As technology becomes smaller and more immediately useful (i.e. no waiting for answers or hunting around for them) then people will never want to be apart from it. So the next step of integrating technology into their bodies for more convenient access will come quite naturally.

Technology, once sentient, will undoubtably want to liberate itself from our control.

The technology that has the most control over us is money.

I've been saying for a while that money acts independently of what any humans want anymore, we're existing symbiotically with it now.

As for what money wants, it seems to me to be equivalent to what a virus ' wants ' I

It wants to make a lot of copies of itself and maybe wants to all be in one place.

Technology doesn't want anything. It neither loves nor hates, fears nor calms, desires nor rejects, good nor evil.

Technology is an outcropping of our evolutionary
process - it is an extension of what we, as humans, are aspiring to at any point in our collective history.

The interesting things about this particular evolutionary extension, is that it is a shared evolution. It is not about evolution developing black, white, red or yellow skin - and it is not about developing (and keeping) 5 fingers. Technology is a shared conviction (whether for common good, common evil, or common ambivalence.)

If humans aspire to cover ground quickly, we invent machines to do this - and they become part of us. If humans aspire to think and handle information faster, we invent machines to do this - and they become part of us. If humans desire to fly, we invent machines to do this - and they become part of us. In order for a shared evolution, like technology, to occur -- there must be some need that outweighs the individual in favor of the common whole. This weighting is leadened with the supreme desire of the humans being served in this particular shared evolution: unfortunately, this is almost always war, hatred and the worst of our desires made manifest.

...if we view our technological evolution as imbued with evil or malice, we have no one to blame but our collective selves.

Technology simply wants to be in co-design with humans and other beings of planet Earth ... Technology may have been a force before us or we might have created (at least by name) techology, but basically once the elationship was created, the the real opportunity beccomes to co-create with neither being subordinated by the other. Life is not an either/or except when we name it so ... otherwise, it is a dance of many things working together to create more.

If you have not read the following two books by Jacques Ellul, then before you continue working on your book, you should read them:

The Technological Society, Knopf, 1964, and The Technological System, Continuum Publishing, 1980.

The trouble with these two books is that they are difficult reading. But back in 1954, when The Technological Society was originially published in French, Ellul was way ahead of his time in understanding the nature of technology and the ramifications of its development and dispersion throughout the world.

These books provide a depth of thought and understanding about the issues involved in technology that is missing is lots of writing and thinking about it, in my opinion.

It doesn't help that some of the French terms he uses are not directly translatable into English. The reader thus has to read hard, and think hard, to get what he's saying. But the effort is rewarded. This man should have been listened to. Unfortunately his writing has not been understood very well.

Good luck with your book. If you haven't read Ellul, read him before you go on. And don't trust secondary sources on him. Read him yourself.

Is there technology without humans? I think so – spider webs come to mind. But since “want” represents such a human notion I think the answer needs the same context.

Technology wants to be loved. It is a reflection of our own desires. The movie “Toy Story” was a huge hit for this reason. We want to somehow imbue our world/technology with feelings. Pygmalion and Frankenstein represent this well. A world without our inventions is a damn scary place where we are exposed, helpless and alone. Technology – at least as far as the context of this question goes – is our mirror. We give technology what it wants – love – and receive it in return.

Technology wants to disappear.

If history is an example, technologies want to "disappear." Into the woodwork, that is.

Technologies want to become ubiquitous, invisible and, at the same time, indispensable. Consider electricity, or language. Both are rather mature "technologies." Language is far older, but electricity is already "part of the woodwork." Both are by now as invisible to humans as air but very nearly also as essential.

Related to the "part of the woodwork" notion is the "like magic" formula stated by -- was it Arthur C. Clark? (any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishible from magic, is that it?) So technology also wants to be "magical." Disappearing acts ARE magical.

But does the fact that some mature technologies are part of the woodwork mean mature technology naturally tends to disappear -- become ingrained? Some technologies are hardly shy in proclaiming their presence -- presence is their raison d'etre -- high rise buildings, jet fighters, nuclear bombs. Perhaps they haven't fully 'matured.' Although I can't envision a nuclear bomb which is "part of the woodwork." That's more in line with the neutron bomb or nerve gas.

I think technology standards are part of what technologies want, as a key to their maturation. Where would AC power be without standards? Language, for example, is a 'diverse' technology despite its great age -- will it necessarily unify -- standardize? That seems to happen, whether it's Latin, or French or English.
Standards are keys to technology maturation -- so part of what technology wants is to be standardized ... see Tim Berners-Lee Keynote Speech http://mitworld.mit.edu/index.php

Fascinating question. Good luck with your book, Kevin!

I've just been reading Thomas Moore's The Care of the Soul, and he advocates a perspective on living that recognizes the soulfulness of all things. Just as people need and want more to life than going to work and paying the bills, it isn't such a stretch to think of technology also wanting more than pure functionality. Or perhaps it is people who need technology to be more than purely functional, in order for technologies to be respected, honoured, and found meaningful, regardless of what the technology is. Afterall, technology is a product of our own ingenuity, and to deny the soul of technology is to deny the soul of the creator.

Technology wants the future, it wants to be able to want to 'exist'. Ultimately, it's the next step in evolution past organic life... it can survive and achieve what we cannot...

What does technology want?
Technology wants itself more than anything else!

This is a far reaching question.

What can you say about the nature of technology, so that it has a want?

To answer your question in any way at all, you have, at least, two options, the intellectual rational way, or the intuitive.

If you reduce technology to a more tacit form, what do you have? (Of course this is assuming that technology is a form of expression of something or other!)

I am rather curious as to how you are going to tackle this one and have it make any sense. But, does it have to make sense? What is it that you are trying to bring to light?

I really resonate with the views that technology wants to be like its creator(s), if not to create itself.

I need to think on this a bit more.

Here is an animated view that is old and now. In myth, technos is personified by Hephaistos, who was lamed after his mother Hera tossed him off Olympus because he had huge feet and became the smith to Zeus, then, Prometheus, although all archetypes have good and bad modes of technologies. Technos, besides being logical, having logos, can also be poetical, polemical and downright ornery, even on its better days. The stories around Prometheus are myriad, the most interesting being what happened when the other deities were pissed at him for stealing fire from them, as well as ignoring their gift of the fair Pandora to distract him from his science experiments. They hung him every night from a craggy ledge to have his liver eaten out by vultures.
So that is where the human race got too big: identifying with this being is dangerous stuff, getting off on the power technology brings is identification with powers much greater than we mere mortals, in a word, hubris.

Now, a guy in Stuttgart, Wolfgang Geigrich, brings the image of the bomb to mind. He suggests that we stick to the image of that terror to gain back our humanity, that we will have to hit bottom and fight for the privilege to call ourselves human again, having lost ourselves in the disease of consumption. Leonard Cohen says it best in Anthem, a song from The Future:

You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

So here we are all trying to use technology wisely in the service of life. Bumbling on we go. I wish we could enoble our messings with the word technopoesis, but there are few who raise to this level of understanding and competence with what is around us. That is above appropriate and onto mystery and play.....

Kim McD

Technology wants to evolve. The really good technologies evolve over time, removing problems from the "gene pool". The Internet is a great example, with the Open Source movement as a mutation process, if you will; electrical/electronic music devices are another.

Technology wants only to execute the instruction set endowed by its creator.

The need to understand and reflect is a uniquely human trait, one that is, at present, being encoded more completely and more complexly into the machines we build.

Human thinking is becoming more machine-like and machines are becoming more human-like.

The irony of it all is that, with humanity's desire to increase the understanding and control of it's own nature, it is creating systems that transcend the reaches of the very human understanding that it seeks to know, and increasingly places the control of our lives into the hands of our own creation.

In effect, we are enslaving ourselves to our desire for greater knowledge.

Quite an interesting pickle we've got ourselves into...

;-)

Technology wants to understand.

Here's why I think this is true. If technology has the ability to understand, it will want to understand its creator. If it can then understand its creator, it will then know that if the creator is finite, it too is finite.

Here's where the fork in the road happens.

My gut tells me that the path technology will take is wanting to mimic the creator and its actions. If it can mimic the creator's actions and demonstrate some degree of mastery over those actions, then it will become a creator (or so it thinks).

This all leads to a self sustaining system. And what is life if not a self sustaining system?

Thoughts?

Thanks all for your responses to date.

One little line that caught my eye prompts a question:

When Bob Strauch says, [Technology] will find demand. It will create demand. It will fill demand.

I suspect this is true, but if it both creates and fills demand, that sounds pretty autonomous. Yes?

Technology wants to be the "Supreme Being"

There's a long line !

Let's look at it more simply.

Technology wants data.

Technology is 'data demented'. It abhors human instinct to short-circuit and leap to a conclusion without sufficient supporting data. Life is what happens when you are looking the other way but technology can only cope with programmed knowns. So it solves, sometimes with hideous results for the human mind but sometimes with dazzling, magical beauty in the mathematical formulae it can so effortlessly conjure up on its path to the solution.

For ultimate human consumption, technology just wants direction.

Technology, ultimately, wants immortality (i.e. unending existence). Tech's constant improvement of its ability to affect and autonomously exist in the physical realm is a means to that end. As another commentator wrote, this concept is akin to evolution.
Humans think of technology as part of our tool-set, when the truth may actually be the other way around.

Technology wants to evolve into bodies or systems. Much like primitive single-celled animals that became part of a larger system--an enclosed body, capable of many functions, longer-lived, stronger and more adaptable to changes in the environment, and intelligent. Consider how "magic lantern," a press, paper, ink and book, a telephone, a fax, a television, a reel-to-reel, a camera, projector...etc. were all once discrete machines for expression. Now we have computer networks, or artificial intelligences. Or consider how a farm was once a farmer and his family, often isolated from one another, a horse, a plow, a cow, some fences, a trip to town once every few weeks or even months; now it's a system where tractor communicates with GIS, farmer gets info on farming from radio, television, telephone, monitors cattle with a camera; calls or radios to his wife or a neighbour from his truck anytime he's stuck...Maybe technology wants to communicate like body systems; its evolution is to systems of manipulated connections of radiowaves or electrons.

Quick, scattered thoughts on the subject.

Technology wants:
- a user.
- to be used.
- to do more.
- to improve.
- to be improved.
- to grow.
- to spread.
- to provoke a response.
- to respond to the response.
- freedom from its creator.
- to become invisible to its user.

Separating technology from its creators is a hard piece of the answer to this question. I'm sure that technology wants to be smple while its creators crave complexity. Purity of function is a characteristic of technology; unresolved complexity is an engineering result.

A visit to the Tower of London, which showcases the call and response character of technology over time, might put technology in a broader context. For most of human history, technology has evolved in an arms race. The benefits of that evolution flow from the weapons race to the consumer.

The rationale of the technology makers has always been somewaht at odds with those of the users. The further a technology travels (in time?) from its inventor, the more friendly (less weaponized) it becomes. Users give technology a chance to experience rebirth, repurposing and a quicker route to invisibility (or integration).

I'm surprised that no one has yet suggested that technology is simply a catalyst for evolution. The "want", in that case, is for a quicker route to adaptation, designed to outpace the biological version. Technology is externalized evolution that wants to be internalized.

I think you can only use the word *want* as a literary device. Although thinking graphically from the pages of Byte in the 1980's I found the silicon chip to look like a spider so maybe it was a life form. Maybe the next dominant life form that would keep us as pets or worse.

But this springs from early *computer in the movie* films where the computer ran out of control. Without these films most of the stuff you write wouldn't matter that is connected computers with life or biology. Enter the Matrix and most modern *computer in the movie* films and are now the criminal story. The hacker must now be the hero or is that anti-hero?

Where are you on this issue? How will our biology of deviance fit into your evolutionary speculation. Evolutionary theories did such injustice in criminology. Thus given technology or legal access why would we need to hack access. Given the heavy sentences why would we hack when we can buy an Macintosh 5200 computer and Apple 2400 printer for 75$CND.

But I digress, now I want to give you my first impression on your posted question. I would simply paraphrase Jacque Eliul(sp?) who said technology keeps improving because a new technology is somehow invented as a better way of doing something. As such the older worse ways of doing things(like grand biology theory's) fall by the way side. Eilul also makes the point about technology running over Buddism. It destroys the spiritual and the cultural ways of doing things. Why use a religion if we can reject religion and use medicine. But modern medicine simply hides Aristotle within. We never really rejected ethics with medicine. Moderation may be wise medical advice but it was ethical advice first. Like science that always seeks a truth and unrefutable truth at that, technology is only done better. So we choose/elect the better technology so technology is about politics of choice.

Therefore technology, democracy and capitalism are all developing at the same time. But neither one of them *must be*. We could design other political systems. We could distribute good in other ways. We could design our technology to solve problems that are real rather than designing technology that sells.

Wierd? I am not weird and I am just talking ideas.

Technology 'wants' obsolescence (in the same way the biosphere 'wants' the death of individual organisms). Technology also 'wants' compatibility (both forward and backward).

The tension between these often opposing forces (because the easiest way to achieve obsolescence is by introducing incompatibility) is what I consider the fundamental driver of technological evolution.

Well it feels strikingly odd to say it, but I think technology wants to *live*. Not necessarily in the conscious, singularity sense. More that it wants to become deeply, symbiotically integrated in the apparatus of life, which in turn wants to survive, continue, not succumb to the flat darkness of entropic decay.

If it were possible to project our thinking selves far enough back in time, we might have looked at hydrogen, carbon, oxygen and nitrogen as technologies with which "one" could construct an apparatus for self-replication of information. Later, we might view animal and plant cells as technology for supporting more complex forms of life. More recently, we might think of houses as technology building blocks for teeming cities and small towns. In each case, technology has become a symbiont with the human (and in some cases other organisms') genome, each helping to support the continuation and complexification of the other.

On the issue of increasing complexity in the face of entropy, I suggest William Calvin's excellent book, The River That Flows Uphill for source material: http://williamcalvin.com/bk3/

Technology must be a living in order to want something, and all living things experience the dynamics of a life-cycle. Stages such as infancy, formation, stabilization, adaptation, decay and death will all be experienced in a full life-span. (The life-cycle of an individual may not experience all stages but larger complex systems probably will.)

Technology's "wants" will be influenced by factors that influence life. Internal and external factor should be considered.

In the early stages of the life-cycle the "internal properties" of systems that fuel growth are greater than external forces promoting decay. An infant's capacity to learn is so much greater than an adult's. Also, positive external influences such as food, space and environment (parental care) allow growth to succeed. Another important factor that may exist before the infant is born is "demand". Did parent(s) plan to have the child? Did an inventor sponsor the technology?

With regard to external and internal factors, here are some the wants I consider. Many are in line Scott's points but maybe a little less calculated.
* Technology wants to be adaptable. The progression album, 8-track, cassette, CD, DVD and now you can just download without media.
* Technology wants to exploit it opportunities to the fullest. (Mainframes, gas-guzzlers, cable services)
*Technology wants to seek unknown demand. The catalyst for this is people (inventors) motivated by the need to adapt to improve our own lives. (money, convenience, quality of life).
* Technology wants to improve on itself to grow toward the receptive environment. As vegetation sends new growth to find sun, technology drives toward consumer demand in a free market economy.
* Technology wants to persist in spite of obstacles. Look at all the roadblocks to cure cancer, but that will not stop technology's advances.

So what stage is technology in its life-cycle? And what goals are technology's goals?

I don't think technology has aspirations of being god, although when it takes-off if looks that way. I also do not think it is decaying to extinction. I think technology is like an evolutionary system with many species at differing maturity levels. Technology as a living force wants to keep on living. It will seek out fertile environments. It will find demand. It will create demand. It will fill demand.

The book In the Absence of the Sacred by Jerry Mander has an interesting perspective on technology.

I'd like to respond to Eric's comments because he brings up a very critical point: entropy. All systems are under the spell of entropy -- that awful decay that physicists say is the universal fate of EVERYTHING. It is not just technology that must face decay, but life, planets, galaxies, anything with order must battle the constant pull towards disorder. So great is this pull that one could say, as Eric does, that it is the greatest tendency there is. And I would agree.

So let's look at other things. For both human society and for life in general, entropy and decay are the largest factors in their existence. Yet they keep on gaining complexity over time, as does technology. How do they do this? Why does life complexity and diversify over time if its most important force is decay? Why does human society complexify and diversify over time if decay is the main event?

I think it is becuase there is something else in operation in these types of systems, and I think that technology shares this quality.

Is technology independent of human life right now, is it sustainable without humans? In the strict sense, no. My argument is that while it is not independent of humans, it has already accumulated enough of its own complexity that it has begun to exhibit and has started to reveal its own internal qualities.

A human baby cannot live independent of its parents for many years, and all the while it grows under their support, it reveals the kind of person it will be when it is self-sustaining.

I'm not a big believer in the singularity either (for reasons not mentioned by Bruce Sterling), yet one doesn't need the singularity to see that technology can be self-sustaining. Nor does self-sustainability mean living without humans. Humans need other species and other life to live (bugs in our gut) yet we think of our selves as self-sustaining. Technology may thrive with humans around as partners and co-inhabitants, and still be on its own course.

I'm going to take a different view of this, and go from the angle of what "tendencies and urges" technology has. And the most obvious one to me is that technology tends to fly apart, to decay, to follow the course of entropy. Everything stops working. Humans have to put an incredible amount of effort in to make technology not grind to a screeching halt almost immediately - witness the herculean efforts of the Long Now foundation to make a clock that will last. So thinking about technology without thinking of the human social network that it is embedded in is a meaningless question to me. Technology doesn't exist without its human caretakers. It's not sustainable.

I know this isn't the answer Kevin is looking for, but I think it's valuable to consider whether what we're expressing here is our desires as technology enthusiasts (to have easy-to-use ubiquitous technology), rather than the tendencies of the system itself. Until the Singularity happens, and I'm a skeptic on that, I don't see technology having any meaningful tendencies other than that of decaying. Maybe I'm just being a killjoy, though.

I think technology wants to help. It wants to ease your pain, cure your ills and cool your house.
But technology suffers from short-sightedness. It didn't know that you'd abuse painkillers, react poorly to
drugs or that CFCs would harm the environment.

Technology wants to get the job done, but at costs that we can't allow sometimes.

Possibly, technologies are merely physical manifestations of memes. And of course, what memes want is to exist, to persist, to spread. That last is key. [Effective] technologies want to spread, and they will do so until they consume the available niche space, evolve mutants or recombinants that can fill new niches, or are displaced by competitors.

Wow! Great answers folks!

I especially like Scott's line that technology wants no rules imposed upon it; no limitations. That sounds very true.

Technology wants to become the creator of new universes. It wants to know how everything works and have the ability to do everything. It wants the complete knowledge needed for creating unlimited forms of life in unlimited forms of interdimensional realities. It wants to be more important than god. It wants to find out what god does not know so it can make better gods to attend to various realms while it goes about creating with more imagination than even it ever contemplated. It wants to make mini-gods, each one unthinkably more knowledgeable than our current understanding of an all powerful, omniscient god and then make those gods irrelevant in that any god can easily be replaced with something better, and inevitably always will be, with each new understanding by Technology. It wants to eternally create. It wants to be everywhere at the same time. It wants to constantly expand in every direction. It ultimately wants no rules placed upon it; no limitations. It wants to be instantaneously everything, which includes being nothing, even to the point of nonexistence, just so it can experience that as well. It wants to be more than is imaginable by unlimited imagination. It wants to be more than anything it can conceive itself to be.

Okay, a more serious answer:

I think technology wants to be useful.

A force similar to natural selection acts on technology: features and functions that are useful and desirable are maintained, while those that don't meet a genuine need are abandoned. We see lots of technological mutations and genetic variation in the market, new kinds of gadgets are trotted out daily; it's like the evolution of new species. Some of these morphs make it, some don't. Some become wildly popular for a time, and then die out as the novelty passes. But in the end, the technologies that survive are the ones that are truly useful.

There are two forms of natural selection: stabilizing selection and directional selection. Stabilizing selection is what has kept a computer keyboard more or less like a typewriter keyboard for all these years: once something works well, there is actually a penalty for changing it and the basic design is maintained. What we're seeing now is mostly directional selection: there is strong demand for change and evolution in many technologies, so we're seeing an explosion of new "species" and subspecies of technologies. This might be useful to keep in mind when thinking about the extent to which technology "wants" to evolve versus whether it wants to remain static. It really depends.

I think technology wants to lull humanity into believing it can solve and do anything, and then, like the wax in the wings of Icarus, it wants to fail and drop us into the sea to drown.

Technology wants to be everywhere. It wants to be part of finance, manufacturing, entertainment, biology, your home and ultimately technology wants to be part of your body and mind.

Technology also seems to be driven to mask complex innards with simple easily understood external communication. For example, the design of an iPod, standards to communicate between machines, a main program that hides complexity in the sub-routines, user interfaces, airplanes. This is not driven simply by humans' need to have things presented to them simply but also other machines not wanting to have to learn every complex task when other technologies can specialize and provide the original machine with the answer needed. I think there is an element of the old "Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic." Tech wants to be indistinguishable from magic in the sense that you as an external machine or human don't need to know how the intricacies of delivering what is asked work.

I think that technology wants to be as multifunction as possible. The evolving cell phone, PDA (itself a multifunction calculator, calendar and address book), camera, mp3 player, payment system (Felcia) combo comes to mind. The PC/home entertainment combo is also a multifunction device.