Snowshoes, dog sleds, and canoes were the main modes of transportation, used to track and kill fish, rabbits, and moose for food. As nomads, they lived in tents during the summer, and in cabins during the winter. For much of the twentieth century, the Oji-Cree lived at a technological level that can be described as relatively simple. Here live the Oji-Cree, a people, numbering about thirty thousand, who inhabit a cold and desolate land roughly the size of Germany. We can test the “Increasing” theory by taking a quick trip up north, to an isolated area south of the Hudson Bay. Some, like the Wired founder Kevin Kelly, believe that the answer is a resounding “yes.” In his book “What Technology Wants,” Kelly writes: “Technology wants what life wants: Increasing efficiency Increasing opportunity Increasing emergence Increasing complexity Increasing diversity Increasing specialization Increasing ubiquity Increasing freedom Increasing mutualism Increasing beauty Increasing sentience Increasing structure Increasing evolvability.” Assuming that we really are evolving as we wear or inhabit more technological prosthetics-like ever-smarter phones, helpful glasses, and brainy cars-here’s the big question: Will that type of evolution take us in desirable directions, as we usually assume biological evolution does?
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