What Does Technology Want?

Summary

Radiolab: “What Does Technology Want?”

Original air date: November 16, 2010
Location: Live at the New York Public Library

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Episode Overview

This lively episode of Radiolab, hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, explores the provocative idea that technology, as a complex system, may have its own tendencies and “wants”—borrowing the language of biological evolution to understand the past, present, and future of human innovation. The conversation features special guests Kevin Kelly (author of What Technology Wants) and Steven Johnson (author of Where Good Ideas Come From), who engage in a spirited, sometimes skeptical, and always curious debate about technology’s trajectory, inevitability, autonomy, and the parallels between technological and biological evolution.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Does Technology Want?

[01:26–04:12]

• Kevin Kelly introduces the concept of “the technium”—the entire web of interdependent technologies as a superorganism:

  “All the spoons and everything else connected together...does form something that does begin in a very small way to have the slimmest bit of autonomy.” [02:40]

• Technology is more than the sum of its parts; its evolution and growth reflect patterns beyond any single new gadget.

2. The Nature of Innovation and the Myth of “Eureka”

[04:12–07:00]

• Steven Johnson discusses the “slow hunch” model of creativity:

  “The breakthrough idea...is incubating for a very long period of time. It actually builds upon other ideas by other people. It’s more of a...remixing of other people’s concepts and...fades into view over a much longer period of time.” [05:13]

• Kevin Kelly notes “multiple discovery” is common, where big ideas or inventions often arise independently and nearly simultaneously:

  “The telephone: patents were submitted by Alexander Graham Bell and [Elisha] Gray within three hours of each other.” [07:01]
  “The light bulb that we associate with Thomas Edison...he was the last of 23 other people.” [07:15]

3. The “Adjacent Possible”

[08:19–09:09]

• Both guests are fans of Stuart Kauffman’s concept of the “adjacent possible,” where, given the current state, only a set of next-step innovations are possible.

  “You cannot invent a microwave oven in 1650, just as you cannot invent an automobile in ancient Egypt.” —Steven Johnson [08:41]

4. Technology as Evolution

[11:00–16:20]

• Kelly draws direct parallels between technological development and biological evolution:

  “The things that we make are really just an extension of the same evolutionary processes that made us.” [14:36]

• He shares the example of evolutionary trees tracking both trilobites (ancient sea creatures) and cornets (the musical instrument), showing the similar branching structures, hinting at similar processes.

5. The “Seventh Kingdom” — Life or Not?

[15:11–16:20]

• Kelly provocatively proposes the technium as a “seventh kingdom” of life:

  “I place again, the question I’m asking in a larger context is what is this stuff that we’re making and surrounding ourselves with? ... It’s really part of something that’s been going on for a long time.” [15:54]

6. Creepy Destinies: Autonomy and Inevitability

[16:24–21:30]

• The hosts grapple with the unsettling idea that technology might have inner logics not fully under human control:

  “Technology creates itself, using humans to do its bidding. Or humans cannot direct or prevent technology’s course, at least not in the long run. Like water contained behind a dam, relentlessly seeking escape, technology will eventually find its own way. Doesn’t that creep you out…?” —Robert Krulwich [17:23]

• Kelly responds:

  “No, you’re part of technology too. Don’t you understand that we humans have made, have invented ourselves...We have domesticated ourselves. We are going to continue doing that. So...you are technology. Does that bother you?” [18:07]

• Discussion of current-day internet as a proto-autonomous system:

  “Now, if we wanted to [turn the Internet] off, it would be extremely difficult...” —Jad Abumrad [19:21] “It’s impossible.” —Kevin Kelly [19:29]

7. Are We Making Minds Beyond Ourselves?

[21:30–23:17]

• Kelly sees technology’s “want” as part of evolution’s drive toward diverse forms of intelligence:

  “I think what we are doing is we’re kind of evolution’s way to invent minds that evolution, biological evolution could not make. ...Our mind alone is probably not sufficient to completely comprehend the universe. We need other species of thinking.” [22:05]

• Johnson and Kelly differ on timescale optimism:

  “Kevin is saying, absolutely. On the 10,000 year scale, we’re going to be great.” —Jad Abumrad [23:08]
  “But next year?” —Kevin Kelly
  “What about next Tuesday? Both are valid concerns.” —Jad Abumrad [23:17]

8. Memorable Closing and Optimism

[23:26–23:56]

• Kelly breaks into a rendition of Monty Python’s “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” encapsulating his generally optimistic outlook on technological growth.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Kevin Kelly on autonomy:

  “The technium, which is the word I use to distinguish this whole superorganism of technology, it's leaning in certain directions. It has certain tendencies. So it wants to go in certain directions.” [03:21]

• Steven Johnson on myth of single genius:

  “You find is, in fact, that the idea was incubating for a very long period of time...It actually builds upon other ideas by other people. It’s more of a kind of a remixing.” [05:13]

• Robert Krulwich’s skepticism:

  “You are saying that living systems...the logic of living systems also belongs to these inanimate things. The history of technology sounds like, from both of you, sounds suspiciously like the history of life.” [13:12]

• Kelly’s defense of technology as kin to life:

  “We have this external stomach, we call it cooking, that has...changed our teeth, our jaws. We have remade ourselves. When we become literate, our brains are rewired, we think differently. ...We have domesticated ourselves.” [18:07]

• On the future:

  “We’re going to populate the universe as far as we can with other ways of thinking so that collectively we can comprehend the universe.” —Kevin Kelly [22:05]

• Closing optimism:

  “Always look on the bright side of life.” [23:26]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:26] – Kelly introduces the “superorganism” idea
• [04:12] – Johnson explains “slow hunch” and innovation
• [07:01] – Multiple discovery: telephone & light bulb examples
• [08:19] – Adjacent possible concept
• [11:00] – Parallels between evolution of nature and technology
• [15:54] – “Seventh kingdom” argument
• [17:23] – Concerns about technology’s autonomy “creeping us out”
• [18:07] – Humans as part of technology and self-domestication
• [19:21] – The un-shut-Downable Internet
• [22:05] – The need to “populate the universe with minds”
• [23:26] – Musical optimism with Monty Python

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Overall Tone and Style

The tone of the episode is inquisitive, playful, and skeptical, with moments of philosophical awe and existential unease. Kelly’s optimism about the creative potential and inevitability of technological evolution is balanced by Krulwich’s and Abumrad’s pointed, sometimes humorous, challenges about autonomy, unpredictability, and the possible loss of control.

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For Listeners Who Missed the Episode

If you haven’t listened, this episode offers a thoughtful and entertaining debate about whether technology simply responds to human needs or follows deeper currents comparable to biological evolution. The guests challenge the myth of the lone genius and push listeners to consider their place within the accelerating, interconnected technosphere—and what it might mean to be both the author and effect of ongoing technological change.

Transcript

[Jad Abumrad]

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[Robert Krulwich]

Oh, wait, you're listening.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay.

[Kevin Kelly]

All right.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay.

[Robert Krulwich]

All right.

[Jad Abumrad]

You're listening to Radiolab, Radio Lab Sharks from WNYC and npr. All right, three, two, one. Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert Krilwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Radiolab, the podcast.

[Robert Krulwich]

This week we are going to going live. You were going live from the New York Public Library where they have a program called New York Public Library Live. So let's just get the introductions done.

[Jad Abumrad]

When was it, by the way?

[Robert Krulwich]

When was it? It was in November.

[Jad Abumrad]

Was it on a Monday or a Thursday?

[Robert Krulwich]

I don't remember the day, but I do remember the people who are on the stage with me. They are wonderful but irritating. They are Steven Johnson, who's got a new book called Where Good Ideas Come From. And then there's Kevin Kelly with a book that he entitles what Technology Wants.

[Kevin Kelly]

So that's.

[Robert Krulwich]

Kevin, that's just a weird question, right? I mean, what does if I met a spoon, I know what it wants. It wants whatever I want. I take it, put it in the soup, bring it to my mouth, suck on it, put it down. When it's down, it's just nothing. It doesn't want anything. So at least that's my notion. So when you ask this question, or actually you don't even ask it, your book title answers it, what Technology Wants. What does that mean?

[Kevin Kelly]

So I think we view technology generally to mean all this new stuff, this gadget stuff and stuff that's in our pockets and kind of around our household. But I wanted to look at it, not the individual objects, because as a single object doesn't want really anything, as you're suggesting. I wanted to look at the way in which that object, say that iPhone, that iPhone requires thousands of different technologies to make that one other technology. So there is a web of technologies that are kind of interdependent, interweaving to produce what I think of as sort of a superorganism of technology.

[Robert Krulwich]

You mean all the spoons, all the forks, all the knives and all the telephones?

[Kevin Kelly]

All the telephones, all the factories, all the roads, everything together and us together form a new thing that, like other superorganisms, have an emergent kind of agenda that is beyond just the spoon. So the spoon itself is sort of like the bee or the ant in the colony. It doesn't really mean much. But together, all the spoons and everything else connected together, all the little chips, all the wires, all the roads, it does form something that does begin in a very small way to have the slimmest bit of autonomy, autonomy that wasn't there in the individual pieces.

[Robert Krulwich]

Autonomy and some kind of will.

[Kevin Kelly]

Well, so want, that's a strong word when I use the word want, because we immediately think of what you want and what I want and say deliberately thinking about, hmm, what do I want? But I mean, want, in the way in which that flower, when it was alive, it's sort of hanging on, wanted light. And so it kind of leans towards the light a little bit. It has a drift, has a tendency towards the light. It's not intelligent, it's not conscious. But the plant itself wants light. It leans toward the light. So the technium, which is the word I use to distinguish this whole superorganism of technology, it's leaning in certain directions. It has certain tendencies. So it wants to go in certain directions.

[Robert Krulwich]

We'll get to the directions where it may want to go. Let me ask you. Your question is a little more modest than his.

[Jad Abumrad]

I aim a little lower.

[Robert Krulwich]

This is Steve Johnson.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's been. My career path is to aim just a little lower than Kevin, figure out where Kevin is going, and just steer right underneath me.

[Robert Krulwich]

So your question is, where do good ideas come from? So for you, let me look at the word idea free. When you use that word, what do you mean?

[Jad Abumrad]

Everything from scientific breakthroughs, technological breakthroughs, breakthroughs in the creative arts, and also just kind of ordinary breakthroughs in our lives where we have a good idea that helps us live a little bit better, be a little bit better in our jobs. Human innovation.

[Robert Krulwich]

But when you use the word innovation or idea. So for most people in the cartoon version, that's the light bulb going on. So some guy is sitting there thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, Bing. And then they think, oh, E equals MC squared or something like that. So for you, when you look into a brain, you don't see anything coming out of nothing. There's something a little bit more.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, that's one of the biggest things I think you have to kind of undo when you approach a topic like this, which is this idea that the breakthrough idea, the light bulb moment, is a single thing Happening in a single mind, and that it happens in an instant. For some reason, we want to tell the story that way. There's this kind of innate desire. I mean, as a storyteller, I want to tell the story that way, too. And people do tend to build these elaborate fictions about their moments of epiphany. But when you go back and look at the historical record and kind of rewind the tape and play it slowly and so many of these breakthrough, Allegedly kind of breakthrough epiphanies, what you find is, in fact, that the idea was incubating for a very long period of time. It actually builds upon other ideas by other people. It's more of a kind of a remixing of other people's concepts and other people's tools. And it kind of fades into view over a much longer period of time. This is what I call the slow hunch in the book that it's not this kind of gut impression or this sudden moment of clarity, but this much more evolutionary, more kind of lingering process.

[Robert Krulwich]

Do you have the sense that there is never a eureka moment, or do you have one eureka moment and 50 slow, small intro?

[Jad Abumrad]

I think that there are moments where you do kind of advance in some clear fashion and you suddenly do see things in a new way. A lot of them come in dreams. Actually. The book talks a lot about how many amazing empirical, scientific discoveries actually occur to people in dreams. But I guess part of what I'm trying to do with this argument Is to kind of correct that the emphasis.

[Kevin Kelly]

We place on those things and the other thing about those eureka moments Is that they make, and often usually do occur to at least 10 other people at the same time, which diminishes the eureka ness of it.

[Robert Krulwich]

For example?

[Kevin Kelly]

For example, every single invention that we know about, for example, the telephone. The patents for the telephone Were submitted by Alexander graham, Bell, and gray within three hours of each other.

[Robert Krulwich]

Really?

[Kevin Kelly]

Yes. And the light bulbs were the light bulb that we associate with Thomas Edison. He was the last of 23 other people.

[Robert Krulwich]

To me, there was no light bulb, no light bulb, no light bulb, no light bulb, no light bulb, no light bulb, then pewm.

[Kevin Kelly]

Within a matter of a couple of years, Light bulbs. Everybody had the light bulb idea.

[Robert Krulwich]

And what would explain the sudden ubiquity of an idea After a long, eternal silence?

[Kevin Kelly]

The precursor inventions that are required for that next step have all been done. So it's a kind of. It's like a growth where you need to go through a certain stage to get to the next stage. You have to have all the parts. And because no idea is alone, the light bulb required whatever is 100 other sub inventions to sustain it, to even conceive of it. And when they're in place, and then it's like the next idea is just there. And so being too early with an idea is really bad or worse than being too late.

[Jad Abumrad]

So we both use this. Kevin and I are both kind of fans of this phrase from Stuart Kaufman, this idea of the adjacent possible.

[Robert Krulwich]

The adjacent possible, Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

I mean, just bear with me. It's a good. It's useful. And the idea is, at any given time. Oh, come on. This is a very literary crowd. They could handle a set of syllables. So the idea is, at any given time, both in the evolution of life and in the evolution of technology, there are kind of, given the state of the current system, there are a finite set of moves that are possible. So imagine it like a chessboard, right? You're in the middle of a game, there's a certain number of moves that are possible, a much larger set of moves that are not possible. The same is true of, you know, technological history. You cannot invent a microwave oven in 1650, just as you cannot invent an automobile in ancient Egypt.

[Robert Krulwich]

Just to make sure. You could imagine one, but you can't build it.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yes, although it is remarkably hard to imagine one. That's part of the point here. I mean, when I saw this in detail in Invention of Air, the book about your friend Joe Priestley, who. I like that you colloquial.

[Robert Krulwich]

He killed a lot of mice, so.

[Jad Abumrad]

So Priestley is most famous for inventing isolating oxygen for the first time, which is another case of a multiple discovery where three other people kind of discovered it right around the same time, independently, more or less. And the point was that they were able to think about isolating oxygen for the first time, partially because there were tools, that there were scales and things that made it easier to kind of realize that this element was there. But the biggest one was a conceptual leap, which it only had become possible a couple of years before, to even think about the air as being something you wanted to investigate scientifically. Up until that point. They were like, well, I want to investigate wood and bodies and hearts and brains and rocks. But the air was pure. The air was clean. Why would we study that? There was nothing there. Right? And it was because of a number, partially because they discovered vacuums where they were like, not the cleaners, but the empty air, the lack of air, that they were like, okay, this is a vacuum. So there must be Something in normal air that we can actually study and understand. And so conceptually, the. That became a platform that enabled Priestley to kind of think in a way, and his compatriots to think in a way that it was much harder to think even five decades before us.

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, do you think that when the environment is ready, in some sense, then it will happen? So it's almost as if the technium. Your phrase is kind of whispering now, right? Yeah.

[Kevin Kelly]

Yes, it is. It is. It is an environment that we're in. And it is.

[Robert Krulwich]

It's creepy to me.

[Kevin Kelly]

It is creepy. And it's also. Because it's inevitable, too. That's also another creepy word that people get spooked by.

[Robert Krulwich]

Inevitable.

[Kevin Kelly]

Inevitable, Right.

[Robert Krulwich]

Do you believe that? Do you believe that a spoon is an inevitable. An inevitable thing that's bound to happen if you're hungry and you invent soup?

[Kevin Kelly]

Yes, definitely. So the question is, I don't think.

[Robert Krulwich]

But then everyone would think of spoon at the same time.

[Kevin Kelly]

They probably did.

[Jad Abumrad]

Robert, let me try this. We're going to win. So one very active evolutionary theory debate is something like the inevitability of evolution, given enough time, evolving eyes, right? Light is the fastest way to transmit information. And so the idea is that given enough evolutionary time, creatures would evolve the ability to kind of process and make sense of light and to somehow kind of act on that information. And it turns out what we find when we go back is that eyes independently evolved multiple times in completely different lines. Because there was just something about the physics of the world that made that, despite the fact that evolution didn't on some level, want to. There was no intelligent designer saying eyes would be good. Light waves move very fast. That would be a good thing to do. But evolution kept stumbling its way towards that innovation on these separate paths. And I think that's where I 100% agree with that.

[Robert Krulwich]

No one says that eyes wanted to be there. No one said that there was a niche called the eye niche waiting for eyes.

[Jad Abumrad]

The very serious question, which I think is real, is then how do you describe that? How do you describe that inevitability of a system not being directed somehow ending up again and again? If you rewound the tape and ran it again, you would have eyes. Eyes would just keep showing up. So Kevin, I think, has picked this provocative but I think useful way of describing it, which is that there is this tendency of that system to go towards those attractors. There are kind of magnets that the system will gravitate towards.

[Robert Krulwich]

Look what he's done. He's had spoons.

[Jad Abumrad]

No, but then spoons are the point. Eventually people will invent spoons as well. Spoons are an attractor.

[Robert Krulwich]

So, Robert, spoons will get together.

[Kevin Kelly]

Why are you obsessed? Why does this bother you so much?

[Robert Krulwich]

For the obvious reason that you are crossing a line here. You are saying that living systems, which have a logic, which he describes very well, have that the logic of living systems also belongs to these inanimate things. The history of technology sounds like, from both of you, sounds suspiciously like the history of life.

[Kevin Kelly]

Right. And I think.

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, I'm very suspicious of this.

[Kevin Kelly]

Yeah, you should be, because the Mac does not look like a sunflower. But there are tremendous similarities in many ways. And there was a famous evolutionary biologist, Niles Eldridge, or is. He's still alive. And Niles specialty is studying tribalites, mapping the morphology of them as they change. He can make kind of trilobites. Trilobites. He can make trees, genealogical trees, showing them. His hobby is collecting cornets from around the world.

[Robert Krulwich]

Cornets, as in.

[Kevin Kelly]

Exactly. Trumpets. And so he uses the same techniques applied to the forms of these and actually traces out the little heritage trees. And he can show that to a rough degree, the evolution of these technological forms resemble, in many ways, the kind of tracing of life as it forks and speciates. And so there is one sense in which the things that we make are really just an extension of the same evolutionary processes that made us. And that really shouldn't really be a surprise.

[Robert Krulwich]

So, for example, here, let me show you. This is from the book. This is a picture, a graph of what happened to underwater animals in a long time ago, called trilobites. This is how they change. And here next to it is a drawing showing what has happened in the history of cornet making.

[Jad Abumrad]

So I'm seeing here two branching trees, which look kind of similar, actually.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah. So let me ask.

[Jad Abumrad]

I think we're selling you on this.

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, no, now, let me get a little harder. How far are you willing to push this biology pattern? Kevin, it seems to me when I read your book, it seems like you almost think that ideas are kind of alive, or almost alive. You even say that if you were to look at the living systems of the world, the kingdoms of animals and plants and all those little guys of which there are six, you then, like in a little map, you plop this technium thing in. So you call it the seventh kingdom, because the first six are all have mommies and daddies. I'm not sure how to explain the seventh.

[Kevin Kelly]

Yeah. So I call it the seventh? Because I think it is. I mean, I place again, the question I'm asking in a larger context is what is this stuff that we're making and surrounding ourselves with? It is not just little bunches of gadgets, it's just not wires. We have to see that it's really part of something that's been going on for a long time.

[Robert Krulwich]

There's a very big difference between a spoon and a whale.

[Kevin Kelly]

I'm not talking about the spoon. I'm talking about the whole superorganism of all the technology.

[Robert Krulwich]

But it's a lot of spoons.

[Kevin Kelly]

It's a lot of spoons. And what connects them is actually the fact that we have this stream of things that are organizing themselves, maintaining order and in some cases increasing their order in the face of the rest of the universe running down. And the spoons that you're obsessed with have come from that same strand. There is a strand of these galaxies and stars and here's a little corner of the planet where this self organizing system has been making more and more order and it made these animals and then more and more order and structure and complexity and diversity and it made minds and these minds have made another thing that has high degree of order and complexity and stuff and may itself be starting to make other things, other minds may.

[Robert Krulwich]

It may have made.

[Kevin Kelly]

Does that seem scare you? Shrink you? Worry you?

[Robert Krulwich]

Let me read to you. Let me read to you what some of your reviewers have said. Kelly central thesis is technology has its own internal logic and rhythms that are distinct and sometimes adverse to the desires of the humans that create it. Technology creates itself, using humans to do its bidding. Or humans cannot direct or prevent technology's course, at least not in the long run. Like water contained behind a dam, relentlessly seeking escape, technology will eventually find its own way. Doesn't that creep you out a little? No, no, I know, but you're just you.

[Kevin Kelly]

No, no, seriously. It's like if you said the same thing about life, would that bother you?

[Robert Krulwich]

No, I'm part of life. I'm just worried about the thing.

[Kevin Kelly]

No, you're part of technology too. Don't you understand that we humans have made, have invented ourselves, that you know, we have this, we have this external stomach, we call it cooking, that has changed our diets. It has changed our teeth, our jaws. We have remade ourselves. When we become literate, our brains are rewired, we think differently. We're not the same people that left Africa. We have domesticated ourselves. We are going to continue doing that. So why does that you are technology. Does that bother you?

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, but when you say, what does technology want? I'm not sure I'm in that sentence. That's what creeps me out. What would happen if, by your logic, and maybe as a fellow traveler, by your logic, you could imagine a situation where the things that we have created, not only our ideas, but the things we have made, will have, by the same processes that describe the evolution of life, will have developed a will of their own. And then there will be either a evolution at our command or an evolution away from us or a revolution, an evolution that might somehow compete with us. I don't know.

[Jad Abumrad]

To some extent, aren't we already in that kind of imagined future state? I mean, you think about the Internet. Right? Now, if we wanted to turn it off, it would be extremely difficult to.

[Kevin Kelly]

It's impossible.

[Jad Abumrad]

And if we did, the catastrophic, nonlinear, unpredictable effects of turning this thing off would be unbelievably devastating. We would have no idea what would happen. All the things that would break.

[Robert Krulwich]

If the Internet was talking about at that point, would we be turning off something we use, something we need? But at the moment when. I don't know where this gets this far, but at the moment when to turn off the machine is to commit a murder, that is that the machine would have come somehow sentient or full of feeling, that would be a very moral issue.

[Jad Abumrad]

But it's very clear also to defend him again, when you say want. And this is. I mean, this is the danger of want, right? Because he's not talking about consciousness. He's not talking about. Well, not yet, Right. And it's like, in the sense that you would say, you know, a little bacterium wants to kind of float up a nutrient stream or something like that, Right. The bacterium presumably, is not conscious of what it is doing. It's not sitting there saying, like, yummy nutrients here. This is great. If I only had a spoon. It's not thinking like that, Right. But nonetheless, you have to look at it and say, it is happy going up this little gradient, sucking in all these nutrients. And somehow that thing is driven towards that. And so maybe the problem is we don't quite have that I want, but there's no I. Right. We don't have the kind of.

[Kevin Kelly]

The verb, or maybe something I use want provocatively and deliberately, but partly so that we can rehearse this idea. As things acquire more autonomy. Right now, the amount of autonomy in the things that we make is minuscule. It's about the size of a bacteria or a grasshopper, but it Won't be. It will increase. And so we have to prepare ourselves for the fact that someday we're going to make something that will have a want. And how do we deal with that when we make something that declares to us, oh, I am a child of God, what's our response to it? And so I use want to help us really prepare ourselves for that eventuality.

[Robert Krulwich]

Let me just end. Let me finish with this. You're like one of the happiest people I know. So you've often said that if in contemplating these future problems, you just seem to always look on the, you know, from the life of Brian, always look on the bright side of life. In this case, if you were to give the Technium a mind of its own, is your thought that it will work out great?

[Kevin Kelly]

Yes, I think that what evolution moves towards is increasing sentience of all sorts. So we see that. We see throughout life mind being invented all the time. I think what we are doing is we're kind of evolution's way to invent minds that evolution, biological evolution could not make. So we're going to invent all kinds of ways of thinking that evolution in a biological sense could not reach. And the reason why we're going to do that is we're going to invent all kinds of mind, different kinds of thinking, because our mind alone is probably not sufficient to completely comprehend the universe. We need other species of thinking. So we're going to populate the universe as far as we can with other ways of thinking so that collectively we can comprehend the universe. And those other ways of thinking are ways that biological evolution probably couldn't get to itself. So I think that, yes, the more kinds of minds there are, the better.

[Jad Abumrad]

I think part of the problem is when you're saying, are we going to be okay? Kevin is saying, absolutely. On the 10,000 year scale, we're going to be great.

[Kevin Kelly]

But next year?

[Jad Abumrad]

What about next Tuesday? Both are valid concerns.

[Kevin Kelly]

Some things in life are bad they can really make you mad Other things just make you swear and curse when you're chewing on life's gristle that grumble give a whistle and this'll help things turn out for the best Always look on the bright side of life.

[Jad Abumrad]

Always.

[Kevin Kelly]

Look on the light side of life.

[Robert Krulwich]

Special thanks to Paul Holden Graber, Director of Public Programs at the New York Public Library in New York City. And of course to Steven Johnson, whose new book is called Where Good Ideas Come from, and Kevin Kelly, his book what Technology Wants. I'm Jad Abumrad. I'm Robert Kilrich.

[Jad Abumrad]

Thank you for listening.

[Robert Krulwich]

Hello, this is Rachel Rukier, a Radiolab listener and supporter in Brooklyn, New York. Radiolab is supported in part by the Afroid P. Sloan foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan. thanks guys. That just made my week.

[Jad Abumrad]

Since WNYC's first broadcast in 1924, we've been dedicated to creating the kind of content we know the world needs. Since then, New York Public Radio's rigorous journalism has gone on to win a Peabody award and a DuPont Columbia Award, among others. In addition to this award winning reporting, your sponsorship also supports inspiring storytelling and extraordinary music that is free and accessible to all. To get in touch and find out more, visit sponsorship wnyc. Org.