(Up to: Technology Vs Evolution )

Everyone seems to be wrapped in this idea that technology - and computers in particular (including the Internet, mp3 players, etcetera) - are the salvation of mankind, from the reorganisation of processes and hierarchies in companies, to a new form of networked democracy, to Transhumanism. There are, of course, many people studying the totality of effects of technology, the inequality of access to it, and the various twists of logic supposedly perverting the true "beneficial" nature of electromachinery. But, as this article hopes to set out, perhaps the faults lie fundamentally deeper than is apparently supposed, even in such sceptical analysis of the modern era.

I write this sitting in my garden, using a new laptop that is white and shiny. Consider the scene: I am sitting on a blanket, the weather has been generally nice (it being July) although we have had some storms recently and it is somewhat cloudy at the moment. I am lying on my front as I type, and I possibly have 2 hours of battery life left.

Now consider the relevance of some of these elements to the laptop. It is resting on a blanket, which acts as a barrier between the ground - the grass, the dirt and the myriad bugs - and the sleek white surface of the machine. (Why is it pure white, anyway?) If it is cloudy, then there is a slight chance of rain. Why am I concerned about rain? Indeed, I may get wet if it rains, but at least I can dry myself off. Rain combined with the laptop, however, is a different story.

In other words, there is a constant zone of protection - not around me, around the machine. The smooth pure shell that the hardware is set into is more than simply a fashion accessory - it is a continuing reminder that anything non-pure, anything that threatens the heaven-like uniform cleanliness is a degradation of how the machinery was designed to operate. In other words, the technology is designed for one context only - a non-intrusive, non-shocking cleanroom of extraordinary regularity. Technology is precise.

This mindset, this paradigm pervades further than simply hardware design. It extends into the similarly human, yet simultaneously fragile world of software development too. In some ways, software can be said to develop in a manner something akin to biology - features are introduced and with it, more and more lines of code, in a gradual evolution of ability and version numbers. However, this progression of functional change should not be confused with a truly biological analogy. The evolution here is only concerned with the process of development - how changes are introduced - and is nothing to do with the act of execution, or the stability of the software itself.

Various techniques have now been developed to keep programs free of bugs, such as test-oriented implementation and so on. But these reveal, in their "crash-avoiding" bias, the fundamental flimsiness inherent in software. This software only works as long as its context is maintained as expected. In other words, stability is only ensured so long as the environment in which it is running consists of pre-defined (read "expected") routines, patterns and configurations. It is only possible to test software for conditions which one is able to predict.

This is not how organisms work. Dynamic Adaptability, not pre-defined case-avoidance, leads to true stability.