1a: Technology, Evolution, and God (Kevin Kelly and Ken Wilber - Exploring the Technium)

www.IntegralLife.com

For full description and free download, please visit:

http://integrallife.com/editorial/technology-evolution-and-god

Wired magazine's own "Senior Maverick" talks with Ken Wilber about some of the ideas behind Kevin's blog The Technium, which explores the various ways humanity defines and redefines itself through the interface of science, technology, culture, and consciousness.

As he describes in his blog, Technium is a word he coined "to designate the greater sphere of technology—one that goes beyond hardware to include culture, law, social institutions, and intellectual creations of all types. In short, the Technium is anything that springs from the human mind. It includes hard technology, but much else of human creation as well. I see this extended face of technology as a whole system with its own dynamics." The Technium exists at the interface between science, technology, culture, and consciousness, exploring the various ways humanity has defined and redefined itself through the ages. Within the Technium, technology is not regarded merely as the lifeless artifacts created by a particular species, but as a living matrix of innovation—the infusion of consciousness into inanimate matter, which in turn shapes our personal and cultural experience of the world.

The universe, we are told, is winding down. Nothing escapes the remorseless grasp of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics—and with each passing moment, our world, our solar system, indeed our entire galaxy slowly approaches its inevitable heat-death. But this is not the full story, for while the universe is winding down, it is also winding up, bringing forth new forms from old, adding new layers of complexity where there was once only an empty vacuum. It is what Alfred Whitehead called the "creative advance into novelty," referring to a distinct "tilt" of the universe toward more complexity, more significance, and more wholeness. From atoms, to molecules, to single-cell and multi-cellular organisms, to the reptilian brain, mammalian brain, and the human neocortex—the universe is abound with inexhaustible creativity, pushing deeper and wider towards its own limitless potential. Entropy and evolution: these two "arrows of time" exert their pull upon everything that ever is, was, and will be—one pulling us up toward the eternal light, the other pulling us down toward the infinite black....

About Kevin Kelly:

Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He helped launch Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor until January 1999. He is currently editor and publisher of the Cool Tools website, which gets 1 million visitors per month. From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox technical news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers' Conference, and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985. He authored the best-selling New Rules for the New Economy and the classic book on decentralized emergent systems, Out of Control.

About Ken Wilber:

Ken Wilber is the most widely translated academic writer in America, with 25 books translated into some 30 foreign languages, and is the first philosopher-psychologist to have his Collected Works published while still alive. Wilber is an internationally acknowledged leader and the preeminent scholar of the Integral stage of human development, which continues to gather momentum around the world. His many books, all of which are still in print, can be found at Amazon.com. Some of his more popular books include Integral Spirituality; No Boundary; Grace and Grit; Sex, Ecology, Spirituality; and the "everything" books: A Brief History of Everything (one of his largest selling books) and A Theory of Everything (probably the shortest introduction to his work). Ken Wilber is the founder of Integral Institute, Inc. and the co-founder of Integral Life, Inc.

For full description and free download, please visit:

http://integrallife.com/editorial/technology-evolution-and-god

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Kevin Kelly
• Ken Wilber
• Technium
• Wired Magazine
• Evolution
• Technology
• Spirituality
• Integral Life
• Google
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computers
• Consciousness
• science fiction
• futurism

[Mennedy1]

Ha Ha on us!

A video from Kevin Kelly and Ken Wilbur on,

TA DA: TECHNOLOGY

with a STILL PICTURE for the entire posting?

Come on guys.

[IntegralNaked]

Well, it was a telephone interview, so i am not sure how else i could translated it for YouTube. Unfortunately we couldn't quite afford CGI approximations of Ken and Kevin, so we just went with the still images.

[Mennedy1]

As Kelly said in his TED talk, there is a drift towards complexity in technology. You can now record video via a Skype call.

[IntegralNaked]

Understood, and good suggestion. Unfortunately, it's not what we did for this interviews--or any of our audio interviews, for that matter. I think there is still an advantage to producing audio-only interviews (as we do every week), especially since its a medium that does not require that you sit in front of your computer the entire time--you can put them on your ipod, burn to CD, etc. These were put on YouTube just to try to get them out to audiences that might not discover them otherwise.

[bangNL94]

Let me put it this way:

Both Religion and science were started by men. Religions were there to explain the unexplainable, but sciences were there to try to understand the unexplainable.

Get it? We don't need religion! Pretty much everything can be learned through science!

[spiveyhowitzer]

extropy is novelty. Terrence Mckenna developed this idea a long time ago.

[CoachAlvar]

Wow, just found this. Ken Wilber (big fan!) and Kevin Kelly (Awesome!) talking a few hours with each other!? That's like the Wilber/Robbins interview. Thanks for sharing.

[nemirn]

Does Ken Wilber ever talk about his ideas in a way that doesn't just sound like "woo"?

[nemirn]

Watch the series "God Quality Control" by GreatBigBore for excellent use of images with a voiceover track.

[nemirn]

@Democracyplz

Is this satire?

You demonstrate a very typical (willful?) ignorance of evolution.

I recommend you check out talkorigins dot o r g

[alliant]

science is a naturalphilosophy. philosophizing is analyzing this world and life critically, using this strange reason nature has provided us with, to make sense of things. you make a distinction as if science was some kind of new activity. it's just a particular method of philosophy - which is an ongoing activity.

[bangNL94]

@alliant What do you mean, exactly? Can't philosophers only explain the universe in a subjective way?

[alliant]

@bangNL94

err sorry, you chose an immature and unintelligent definition of philosophy

[bangNL94]

@mcSnoski Scientists want to oppress?

And you are wrong anyway, because spirituality, theosophy and philosophy can only explain the understanding of the universe in a subjective way. Science tries to explain everything as objective as possible, but philosophers don't use the scientific method, you know, they only philosophize.

That's why I would not even remotely compare science with philosophy, because science is way more objective and accurate and true, in every possible way.