Edge Conversations

On Stage: Stewart Brand (On Climate and Future), George Dyson (Science Historian on "Turing's Cathedral", Kevin Kelly (On "What Technology Wants")
Moderator: John Brockman (Edge.org)

John Brockman of edge.org opened the session with thoughts and anecdotes about the mantra “Information wants to be free” before introducing the first speaker, Stewart Brand.

On Climate and Future
“We are now trying to protect civilization from natural environment.”
Stewart Brand has been an environmentalist for 60 years now. He talked about the increasing importance of cities, and that cities are actually green - because they lead to decreasing population. Children are an asset in the country, but a liability in town.

“In 2011, over 50% of the worlds population is urbanized.”

Villages are emptying out - which is good news ecologically speaking, because natural environments grow back quickly.

The challenge we face it the question of energy supply. Brand talked very detailed about various form of power plants - from coal over wind over solar to atomic - and their environmental properties. The solution may lie in fusion plants.

Further on, Brand talked about genetically manipulated foods and grains, and that genetics are a lot greener than we had thought before. He also mentioned the positive affects of biofortified foods such as peanuts free of allergy or rice with cholera vaccine or so on.

Finally, he switched to the topic of Geo-engineering - working with natural infrastructure such as rivers. He is of the opinion that we have to use Geo-engineering to optimize nature in a climate-friendly way - for example using volcanos or stratoshields to cool down the atmosphere by some degrees.

“The green task is to learn how to terraform. We cannot stop terraforming, so we have to do it well.”

What technology wants
Next, Kevin Kelly, author of “What technology wants”, explained his theory. He mentioned a common definition of technology: Anything that was invented after you were born. But we have to go further. Nowadays, we have objects that are networks of technology: For example a mouse compared to a stone uses various subtechnologies. These networks of technologies form a superorganism of technology, called “The Technium”.

“The technium is the seventh kingdom of life”.

The Technium has its own agenda. Kelly compares the development of technology to the development of evolution, that is characterized by two trends:

• increasing diversity in time
• movement towards complexity

Technology follows the same general trends like evolution. General trends in evolution over time are:

• Diversity
• Complexity
• Ubiqutiy
• Mutualism
• Speccialisation
• Evolvability
• Exotropy
• Sentience

Most of the problems in todays world are technogenic. When we invented that first hammer, we invented the choice to use it for good or bad, for killing or building, that choice didn’t exist before. But choice is good. If we just build 1% more than we destroy we are building up a civilization.

“The proper response to bad technology is not less technology, it’ s better technology.”

What technology wants:

• Differences
• Diversity
• Options
• Choices
• Opportunies
• Possibilites
• Freedom

“What would Mozart have done without pianos, Van Gogh without the invention of oil paints and Hitcock without cinematography?”

We have an obligation to increase the amount of technology in the world for enabling new generation of geniuses to express their talent.

Turing's Cathedral
George Dyson talked about the history of computing. In 1951, the first computer was completed, and it worked with a 32x32 bit array with spots. This array was the first digital thing ever - it was the first moment, where numbers didn’t just stand for something but could actually DO things. The question is: Where are we going next?

“We have already gone into a new phase: We are going back to analog.”

In the world of brains there is no digital code, everything is done in an analog way with varying frequencies. New media companies use digital code to produce analog machines: For example, you wouldn’t be able to keep track of the changing relationships of a single highschool - but Facebook manages it for millions of people - it’s a huge analog machine, a map of relations. Another example mentioned is pulse frequency coding.