Technology is anything invented after you were born. Technology is anything that doesn’t work yet. I love these two half-comic definitions quoted by Kevin Kelly in this TED talk.
Paraphrasing Kelly: The real tricks are exploring the exploration. Technology is about better ways to evolve. The infinite game. A cosmic force begun at the big bang. It’s the expansion of options, possibilities, differences, freedoms. Technology wants a trillion zillion species individuals discovering differences. It’s a way of playing the game by playing all the games.
Every person here has an assignment. Your assignment is to spend your life discovering what your assignment is. That recursive nature is the infinite game. If you play that well, you’ll have other people involved so that that game extends and continues even when you’re gone.
That is the infinite game, and what technology is, is that medium in which we play that infinite game. And so I think we should embrace technology because it is an essential part of finding out who we are.
I love it. What a freeing view of technology. An assignment to discover.
I think that’s great, too. A friend turned me on to the TED thing awhile back – I really like checking out the videos when I feel like taking a break and web surfing for a bit.