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It is a delight to be here.

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I worked on my speech
at 4 in the morning last night.

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(Laughter)

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And I think it's part
of this criptic code.

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I want to talk about technology.

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Technology surround us, it's everywhere,

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it fills our lives,

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a lot of us work
at making more tachnology.

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The first [letter]
of this conference, TED,

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stands for technology.

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And yet, I don't think we really know
what it is.

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I want to talk about my investigations

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into what technology means in our lives -

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not just our immediate life,
but in the cosmic sense,

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in the kind of long history of the world

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and our place in the world:

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What is this stuff?

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What is the significance?

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And so, I want to kind of go through

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my little story of what I found out.

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And one of the first things
that I started to investigate was

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the history of the name of technology.

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And in the United States
there is a State of the Union address

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given by every president since 1790.

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So we have 220
State of the Union addresses.

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And each one of those is really kind of

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summing up the most important things

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for the United States at that time.

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If you search for the word "technology,"

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it was not used until 1952.

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So, technology was sort of absent
from everybody's thinking

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until 1952, which happened to be
the year of my birth.

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And obviously, technology

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had existed before then,
but we weren't aware of it,

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and so it was sort of an awakening

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of this force in our life.

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I actually did research to find that
the first use of the word "technology"

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was in 1829,

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and it was invented by a guy
who was starting a curriculum,

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a course, bringing together all the kinds

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of arts and crafts, and industry -

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and he called it "Technology."

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And that's the very first use of the word.

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Obviously this thing in our life
has been going on a lot earlier.

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So, what is this stuff

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that we're all consumed by,

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and bothered by?

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Alan Kay calls it, "Technology is anything

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that was invented after you were born."

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(Laughter)

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Which is sort of the idea that we
normally have about what technology is:

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It's all that new stuff.

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It's not roads, or penicillin,

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or factory tires; it's the new stuff.

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My friend Danny Hillis
says kind of a similar one,

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he says, "Technology is anything
that doesn't work yet."

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Which is, again, a sense
that it's all new.

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But we know that it's just not new.

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It actually goes way back,
and what I want to suggest

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is it goes a long way back.

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So, another way to think about technology,
what it means,

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is to imagine a world without technology.

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If we were to eliminate every single bit
of technology in the world today -

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and I mean everything,

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from blades to scrapers to cloth -

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we as a species would not live very long.

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We would die by the billions,
and very quickly:

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The wolves would get us,
we would be defenseless,

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we would be unable to grow enough food,
or find enough food.

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Even the hunter-gatherers
used some elementary tools.

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And so, they had minimal technology,

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but they had some technology.

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And if we study those
hunter-gatherer tribes

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and the Neanderthal,
which are very similar to early man,

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we find out a very curious thing
about this world without technology,

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and this is a kind of a curve
of their average age.

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There are no Neanderthal fossils
that are older than 40 years old

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that we've ever found,

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and the average age of most of these

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hunter-gatherer tribes is 20 to 30.

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There are very few young infants

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because they die - high mortality rate
- and there's very few old people.

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And so the profile is sort of for your
average San Francisco neighborhood:

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a lot of young people.

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And if you go there, you say,
"Hey, everybody's really healthy."

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Well, that's because they're all young.

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And the same thing with
the hunter-gatherer tribes and early man

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is that you didn't live
beyond the age of 30.

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So, it was a world without grandparents.

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And grandparents are very important,

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because they are the transmitter
of cultural evolution and information.

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Imagine a world and basically
everybody was 20 to 30 years old.

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How much learning can you do?

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You can't do very much
learning in your own life,

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it's so short,

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and there's nobody to pass on
what you do learn.

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So, that's one aspect.

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It was a very short life.

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But at the same time anthropologists know

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that most hunter-gatherer tribes
of the world,

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with that very little technology,
actually did not spend

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a very long time gathering the food
that they needed:

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three to six hours a day.

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Some anthropologists call that
the original affluent society.

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Because they had banker hours basically.

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So, it was possible to get enough food.

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But when the scarcity came

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when the highs and lows
and the droughts came,

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then people went into starvation.

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And that's why they didn't live very long.

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So, what technology brought,

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through the very simple tools
like these stone tools here -

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even something as small as this -

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the early bands of humans
were actually able

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to eliminate to extinction

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about 250 megafauna animals

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in North America when they first arrived
10,000 years ago.

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So, within several generations,

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a couple thousands of years,

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that little bit of technology 
eliminated all those animals,

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so we've been actually affecting
the planet on a grand scale

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from a very early age.

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So, long before the industrial age

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we've been affecting the planet
on a global scale,

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with just a small amount of technology.

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The other thing
that the early man invented was fire.

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And fire was used to clear out, and again,

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affected the ecology of grass
and whole continents,

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and was used in cooking.

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It enabled us to actually eat
all kinds of things.

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It was sort of, in a certain sense,
in a McLuhan sense,

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an external stomach,

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in the sense that it was cooking food
that we could not eat otherwise.

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And if we don't have fire,
we actually could not live.

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Our bodies have adapted
to these new diets.

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Our bodies have changed
in the last 10,000 years.

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So, with that little bit of technology,

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humans went from a small band
of 10,000 or so -

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the same number
as Neanderthals everywhere -

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and we suddenly exploded.

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With the invention of language
around 50,000 years ago,

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the number of humans exploded,

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and very quickly became
the dominant species on the planet.

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And they migrated into the rest
of the world at two kilometers per year

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until, within several
tens of thousands of years,

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we occupied every single
watershed on the planet

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and became the most dominant species,

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with a very small amount of technology.

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And even at that time,
with the introduction of agriculture,

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8,000, 10,000 years ago

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we started to see climate change.

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So, climate change is not a new thing.

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What's new is just the degree of it.

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Even during the agricultural age
there was climate change.

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And so, already small amounts
of technology

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were transforming the world.

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And what this means,
and where I'm going,

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is that technology has become
the most powerful force in the world.

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All the things that we see today

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that are changing our lives,
we can always trace back

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to the introduction
of some new technology.

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So, it's a force
that is the most powerful force

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that has been unleashed on this planet,

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and in such a degree that I think

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that it's become who we are.

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In fact, our humanity, and everything
that we think about ourselves

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is something that we've invented.

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So, we've invented ourselves.

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Of all the animals
that we have domesticated,

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the most important animal
that we've domesticated

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has been us. Okay?

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So, humanity is our greatest invention.

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But of course we're not done yet.

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We're still inventing, and this is
what technology is allowing us to do -

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it's continually to reinvent ourselves.

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It's a very, very strong force.

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I call this entire thing -
us humans as our technology,

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everything that we've made,
gadgets in our lives -

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we call that the technium.

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That's this world.

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My working definition of technology

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is "anything useful
that a human mind makes."

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It's not just hammers and gadgets,
like laptops.

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But it's also law.

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The system of law is a kind of technology.

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And of course cities are ways
to make things more useful to us.

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But - and this is the point of my talk -

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While this is something
that comes from our mind,

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it also has its roots deeply

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into the cosmos.

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It goes back.

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The origins and roots of technology
go back to the Big Bang,

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in this way, in that they are part of this
self-organizing thread

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that starts at the Big Bang

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and goes through galaxies and stars,

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into life, into us.

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And the three major phases
of the early universe

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was energy, when the dominant force
was energy;

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then as it cooled
the dominant force became matter;

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and then, with the invention of life,
four billion years ago,

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the dominant force in our neighborhood
became information.

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That's what life is:
It's an information process

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that was restructuring
and making new order.

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So, those energy, matter
Einstein show were equivalent,

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and now new sciences of quantum computing

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show that entropy and information
and matter and energy

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are all interrelated,
so it's one long continuum.

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You put energy
into the right kind of system

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and out comes wasted heat, entropy

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and extropy, which is order.

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It's the increased order.

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Where does this order come from?
Its roots go way back.

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We actually don't know.

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But we do know
that the self-organization trend

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throughout the universe is long,

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and it began with things like galaxies;

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they maintained their order
for billions of years.

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Stars are basically
nuclear fusion machines

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that self-organize and self-sustain
themselves for billions of years,

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this order against the entropy
of the world.

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And flowers and plants
are the same thing, extended,

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and technology is basically
an extension of life.

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One trend that we notice
in all those things is that

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the amount of energy per gram per second

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that flows through this,
is actually increasing.

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The amount of energy is increasing
through this little sequence.

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And that the amount of energy per gram
per second that flows through life

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is actually greater than a star -

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because of the star's long lifespan,

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the energy density in life
is actually higher than a star.

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And the energy density
that we see in the greatest

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of anywhere in the universe
is actually in a PC chip.

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There is more energy flowing through,
per gram per second,

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than anything that we have
any other experience with.

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What I would suggest
is that if you want to see

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where technology is going,
we continue that trajectory,

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and we say, "Well what's going to become
more energy-dense,

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that's where it's going."

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And so what I've done is, 
I've taken the same kinds of things

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and looked at other aspects

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of evolutionary life and say,

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"What are the general trends
in evolutionary life?"

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And there are things moving towards

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greater complexity,
moving towards greater diversity,

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moving towards greater specialization,

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sentience, ubiquity and most important,
evolvability:

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Those very same things
are also present in technology.

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That's where technology is going.

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It is moving towards more complexity,
diversity, specialization,

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more mindfulness

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more evolvability.

252
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In fact, technology is accelerating
all the aspects of life,

253
00:11:57,522 --> 00:12:00,570
and we can see that happening;
just as there's diversity in life,

254
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there's more diversity in things we make.

255
00:12:03,178 --> 00:12:05,310
Things in life start out
being general cell,

256
00:12:05,319 --> 00:12:07,728
and they become specialized:
you have tissue cells,

257
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you have muscle, brain cells.

258
00:12:09,200 --> 00:12:12,521
And same things happens with, say
a hammer, which is general at first

259
00:12:12,521 --> 00:12:13,921
and becomes more specific.

260
00:12:13,921 --> 00:12:17,501
So, I would like to say
that while there is six kingdoms of life,

261
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we can think of technology basically

262
00:12:19,534 --> 00:12:21,533
as a seventh kingdom of life.

263
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It's a branching off from the human form.

264
00:12:23,800 --> 00:12:25,799
But technology has its own agenda,

265
00:12:25,800 --> 00:12:27,799
like anything, like life itself.

266
00:12:28,809 --> 00:12:32,713
For instance, right now, three-quarters
of the energy that we use

267
00:12:32,767 --> 00:12:34,863
is actually used
to feed the technium itself.

268
00:12:34,920 --> 00:12:37,569
In transportation,
it's not to move us, it's to move

269
00:12:37,615 --> 00:12:39,688
the stuff that we make or buy.

270
00:12:40,969 --> 00:12:43,577
On one hand, technology [unclear]

271
00:12:43,597 --> 00:12:46,649
on the other hand, it's blessing us
with all kinds of things.

272
00:12:46,800 --> 00:12:49,835
I use the word "want."
Technology wants.

273
00:12:49,922 --> 00:12:52,939
This is a robot that wants
to plug itself in to get more power.

274
00:12:52,939 --> 00:12:55,760
Your cat wants more food.

275
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A bacterium,
which has no consciousness at all,

276
00:12:58,800 --> 00:13:00,799
wants to move towards light.

277
00:13:00,800 --> 00:13:03,063
It has an urge,
and technology has an urge.

278
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At the same time,
it wants to give us things,

279
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and what it gives us
is basically progress.

280
00:13:07,679 --> 00:13:10,584
You can take all kinds of curves,
and they're all pointing up.

281
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There's really no dispute about progress,

282
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if we discount the cost of that.

283
00:13:15,982 --> 00:13:18,397
And that's the thing
that bothers most people,

284
00:13:18,439 --> 00:13:20,397
is that progress is really real,

285
00:13:20,459 --> 00:13:24,458
but we wonder and question:
What are the environmental costs of it?

286
00:13:24,478 --> 00:13:28,382
But there's no doubt about it,
that it really is present and gives us.

287
00:13:28,403 --> 00:13:32,294
I did a survey of a number of species
of artifacts in my house,

288
00:13:32,349 --> 00:13:33,348
and there's 6,000.

289
00:13:33,369 --> 00:13:35,368
Other people have come up with 10,000.

290
00:13:35,500 --> 00:13:38,499
When King Henry of England died,

291
00:13:38,500 --> 00:13:41,814
he had 18,000 things in his house,

292
00:13:42,300 --> 00:13:45,299
but that was the entire wealth of England.

293
00:13:47,100 --> 00:13:49,806
And with that entire wealth of England,

294
00:13:49,827 --> 00:13:53,021
King Henry could not buy any antibiotics,

295
00:13:53,052 --> 00:13:54,632
he could not buy refrigeration,

296
00:13:54,689 --> 00:13:56,737
he could not buy a trip
of a thousand miles.

297
00:13:56,758 --> 00:13:59,769
Whereas this rickshaw wallah in India

298
00:13:59,814 --> 00:14:01,813
could save up and buy antibiotics

299
00:14:01,834 --> 00:14:03,721
and he could buy refrigeration.

300
00:14:03,738 --> 00:14:07,162
He could buy things that King Henry,
in all his wealth, could never buy.

301
00:14:07,162 --> 00:14:08,854
That's what progress is about.

302
00:14:08,901 --> 00:14:11,655
So, technology is selfish;
technology is generous.

303
00:14:11,655 --> 00:14:15,298
That conflict, that tension,
will be with us forever,

304
00:14:15,298 --> 00:14:17,714
that sometimes it wants to do
what it wants to do,

305
00:14:17,714 --> 00:14:19,911
and sometimes
it's going to do things for us.

306
00:14:19,911 --> 00:14:22,326
And that's where we get 
this sort of feeling,

307
00:14:24,551 --> 00:14:28,099
we have confusion about what
we should think about a new technology.

308
00:14:28,100 --> 00:14:29,800
Right now the default position

309
00:14:29,800 --> 00:14:32,079
about when a new technology
comes along, is -

310
00:14:32,100 --> 00:14:34,243
people talk about
the precautionary principle,

311
00:14:34,263 --> 00:14:36,567
which is very common in Europe,

312
00:14:36,588 --> 00:14:38,718
which says, basically, "Don't do anything.

313
00:14:38,762 --> 00:14:40,741
When you meet a new technology, stop,

314
00:14:40,782 --> 00:14:43,194
until it can be proven
that there's no harm."

315
00:14:43,216 --> 00:14:45,559
I think that really leads nowhere.

316
00:14:45,580 --> 00:14:48,407
But a better way is to,
what I call proactionary principle,

317
00:14:48,460 --> 00:14:51,002
which is: you engage with technology.

318
00:14:51,023 --> 00:14:52,375
You try it out.

319
00:14:52,401 --> 00:14:56,558
You obviously do
what the precautionary principle suggests,

320
00:14:56,579 --> 00:14:59,299
you try to anticipate it,
but after anticipating it,

321
00:14:59,320 --> 00:15:00,942
you constantly asses it,

322
00:15:01,005 --> 00:15:02,879
not just once, but eternally.

323
00:15:02,957 --> 00:15:05,956
And when it diverts from what you want,

324
00:15:06,700 --> 00:15:09,839
we prioritize risk,
we evaluate not just the new stuff

325
00:15:09,862 --> 00:15:11,246
but the old stuff.

326
00:15:11,300 --> 00:15:14,299
We fix it, but most importantly,
we relocate it.

327
00:15:14,900 --> 00:15:16,899
And what I mean by that is that

328
00:15:16,900 --> 00:15:18,879
we find a new job for it.

329
00:15:21,018 --> 00:15:24,489
Technologies are sort of like children.

330
00:15:25,000 --> 00:15:29,276
Nuclear energy, fission,
is really bad idea for bombs.

331
00:15:29,316 --> 00:15:32,249
But it may be a pretty good idea -

332
00:15:32,384 --> 00:15:35,735
relocated into
sustainable nuclear energy -

333
00:15:36,200 --> 00:15:38,825
for electricity, instead of burning coal.

334
00:15:38,890 --> 00:15:42,904
When we have a bad idea,
the response to a bad idea

335
00:15:42,925 --> 00:15:45,924
is not no ideas,
it's not to stop thinking.

336
00:15:46,980 --> 00:15:49,817
The response to a bad idea -

337
00:15:50,055 --> 00:15:51,999
like, say, a tungsten light bulb -

338
00:15:52,000 --> 00:15:53,999
is a better idea. OK?

339
00:15:54,999 --> 00:15:58,658
So, better ideas is really -
always the response

340
00:15:58,679 --> 00:16:00,203
to technology that we don't like

341
00:16:00,243 --> 00:16:02,586
is basically, better technology.

342
00:16:02,636 --> 00:16:04,332
And actually, in a certain sense,

343
00:16:04,358 --> 00:16:08,008
technology is a kind of a method
for generating better ideas,

344
00:16:08,016 --> 00:16:09,794
if you can think about it that way.

345
00:16:09,794 --> 00:16:12,850
So, maybe spraying DDT on crops
is a really bad idea.

346
00:16:12,873 --> 00:16:16,094
But DDT sprayed on local homes,

347
00:16:17,506 --> 00:16:20,606
there's nothing better
to eliminate malaria,

348
00:16:20,628 --> 00:16:24,154
besides insect DDT-impregnated
mosquito nets.

349
00:16:24,382 --> 00:16:27,685
But that's a really good idea;
that's a good job for technology.

350
00:16:27,720 --> 00:16:29,493
So, our job as humans

351
00:16:29,541 --> 00:16:32,024
is to parent our mind children,

352
00:16:32,754 --> 00:16:34,599
to find them good friends,

353
00:16:34,600 --> 00:16:36,429
to find them a good job.

354
00:16:36,472 --> 00:16:38,945
And so, every technology
is sort of a creative force

355
00:16:38,993 --> 00:16:40,543
looking for the right job.

356
00:16:40,600 --> 00:16:42,599
That's actually my son, right here.

357
00:16:42,600 --> 00:16:44,079
(Laughter)

358
00:16:44,359 --> 00:16:46,843
There are no bad technologies,

359
00:16:46,864 --> 00:16:48,748
just as there are no bad children.

360
00:16:48,793 --> 00:16:51,535
We don't say children are neutral,
children are positive.

361
00:16:51,535 --> 00:16:53,917
We just have to find them the right place.

362
00:16:54,000 --> 00:16:56,866
And so, what technology gives us,

363
00:16:56,896 --> 00:16:59,787
over the long term,
over the sort of extended evolution -

364
00:16:59,811 --> 00:17:01,342
from the beginning of time,

365
00:17:01,378 --> 00:17:05,117
through the invention
of the plants and animals,

366
00:17:05,142 --> 00:17:08,141
and the evolution of life,
the evolution of brains -

367
00:17:08,162 --> 00:17:10,285
what that is constantly giving us

368
00:17:10,319 --> 00:17:14,173
what technology is giving us
after we weigh the pros and cons,

369
00:17:14,387 --> 00:17:19,343
is increasing differences -
which was mentioned this morning -

370
00:17:20,000 --> 00:17:22,409
it's increasing diversity,
it's increasing options,

371
00:17:22,409 --> 00:17:24,499
it's increasing choices, opportunities,

372
00:17:24,500 --> 00:17:26,499
possibilities and freedoms.

373
00:17:26,500 --> 00:17:29,499
That's what we get from technology
all the time.

374
00:17:29,500 --> 00:17:31,499
That's why people leave villages

375
00:17:31,500 --> 00:17:33,643
and go into cities,
is because they are always

376
00:17:33,663 --> 00:17:37,499
gravitating towards
increased choices and possibilities.

377
00:17:37,500 --> 00:17:39,916
And we are aware of the price.

378
00:17:39,916 --> 00:17:42,869
We pay a price for that,
but we are aware of it, and generally

379
00:17:42,869 --> 00:17:45,026
we will pay the price
for increased freedoms,

380
00:17:45,026 --> 00:17:46,943
choices and opportunities.

381
00:17:46,968 --> 00:17:49,967
Even technology wants clean water.

382
00:17:51,351 --> 00:17:53,350
Is technology
diametrically opposed

383
00:17:55,369 --> 00:17:57,778
to nature?

384
00:17:58,735 --> 00:18:01,787
I have a couple of slides, 
two slildes left -

385
00:18:01,807 --> 00:18:06,018
I would say high technology 
needs clean water

386
00:18:06,038 --> 00:18:08,474
as much as we do, if not more than we do.

387
00:18:08,563 --> 00:18:11,399
Because technology
is an extension of life,

388
00:18:11,400 --> 00:18:14,324
it's in parallel and aligned
with the same things

389
00:18:14,364 --> 00:18:16,399
that life wants.

390
00:18:16,400 --> 00:18:18,399
So that I think technology loves biology,

391
00:18:18,400 --> 00:18:20,399
if we allow it to.

392
00:18:20,419 --> 00:18:24,652
So, all these things - complexity,
diversity - are the long strand,

393
00:18:24,701 --> 00:18:29,731
the great movement
that is starting billions of years ago

394
00:18:29,900 --> 00:18:31,948
is moving through us
and it continues to go,

395
00:18:31,968 --> 00:18:34,295
and our choice, so to speak,

396
00:18:34,316 --> 00:18:36,843
in technology,
is really to align ourselves

397
00:18:36,901 --> 00:18:38,949
with this force much greater
than ourselves.

398
00:18:38,969 --> 00:18:41,899
So, technology is more
than just the stuff in your pocket.

399
00:18:41,900 --> 00:18:43,234
It's more than just gadgets;

400
00:18:43,235 --> 00:18:45,378
it's more than just things
that people invent.

401
00:18:45,398 --> 00:18:47,899
It's actually part of a very long story,

402
00:18:47,900 --> 00:18:50,610
a great story,
that began billions of years ago.

403
00:18:50,610 --> 00:18:53,039
And it's moving through us,
this self-organization,

404
00:18:53,039 --> 00:18:55,069
and we're extending and accelerating it,

405
00:18:55,069 --> 00:18:57,491
and we can be part of it
by aligning the technology

406
00:18:57,491 --> 00:18:58,899
that we make with it.

407
00:18:59,664 --> 00:19:02,899
I really appreciate your attention today.
Thank you.

408
00:19:02,920 --> 00:19:05,521
(Applause)