What’s the technium you ask? Coined by the great mind of Kevin Kelly he defines it as the human-technology relations and argues that technology is the emerging seventh kingdom of life on earth. A giant force which is “the greater, global, massively interconnected system of technology vibrating around us.”
Wow, so now we know what that is let’s consider these facts:
- There are 5000 naturally occurring minerals. Yet, we’ve manufactured over 1000 artificial minerals.
- We’re reshaping our geological world and currently lay more than 10 billion tonnes of concrete per annum.
- During early 2000’s internet cable was being laid faster than the speed of sound (343 meters per second)
- Information is growing at 66% per annum. The worlds store information doubles every 13 months.
- All the sensors we are developing for the Internet of Things (IoT) replicate & improve human sensing capabilities. All just sense what humans can sense.
- In 2008 there were already more things than people connected to the internet.
- There’ll be more than 50 billion such sensors in the next 5 years.
- We don’t know exactly how many miles of road we have, how much fresh water, or how many schools because it’s all changing so fast.
- 75% of all energy consumed on earth is to the support the machines we’ve made (that power the technium), rather than us humans directly.
- 7% of the energy we use is just for running the internet.
- When visualised, the nature of this change represents a nuclear explosion.
- The technium itself (the system we live inside of) is a super organism, much like the Great Barrier Reef. We build and maintain it, and also depend on it for our own existence – but we can’t really see it or know how it operates.
We are literally building a computer around ourselves – a super technological organism.
It’s worth listening to where this information comes from – it will open your mind to the world you are actually living in – The Technium Unbound podcast here.