A lecture I gave a few months ago has been posted today, and I’m also putting up the original verbatim transcript here. In name, this lecture was about The Origin of Species, but it mainly talks about technology and evolution; in this respect, another lecture from back then is actually clearer: Humans and Technology in Evolution — Technology Also Needs “Biodiversity Reserves”. This time, “the metaverse” has been added. Recently there have also been many lectures about the metaverse, but their basic viewpoints do not go much beyond the series of articles I posted here earlier, so I won’t post them separately either.
The theme I’m talking about today is a continuation of the line of thought in my 2020 book What Is Technology. I try to combine Darwin’s theory of evolution with the history of technological development in order to understand the trends in the development of technology.
Drawing an analogy between biological evolution and technological evolution is certainly not my invention. In international academic circles, it has long been very common. For example, Basalla’s A History of Technology has long been translated into Chinese; in fact, the original title is The Theory of Technological Evolution. Many scholars have also drawn on sociology and economics to refine the theory of technological evolution, and the well-known writer Kevin Kelly has expounded the idea of technological evolution in several books.
In fact, it is very easy to establish a formal analogy between the lineage of biological evolution and the lineage of technological development. Such analogies were already not uncommon even before Darwin published The Origin of Species. As we will discuss later, even Darwin himself, in developing the theory of evolution, was to some extent inspired by the history of technological development.
However, if we go into the details and carefully distinguish which parts of this analogy are the same and which are different, we still run into many problems.
Many scholars tend to exclude the differences between technology and biology from the perspective of evolutionary theory; that is to say, evolutionary theory is taken to apply only to the level common to both technology and biology. But in my view, even if technology and biology differ in many ways, some of those differences can also be brought within the scope of evolutionary theory. Of course, if what is meant by evolutionary theory is the synthetic theory of evolution that emerged after the rise of molecular biology, then many issues really do apply only to biology; but if we return to Darwin’s original version of evolutionary theory, then its compatibility becomes much stronger.
So first we need to reexamine evolutionary theory in the biological sense. Darwin’s own theory of evolution contains several layers of meaning, and whether these layers can correspond to the history of technology has to be analyzed one by one. According to the biologist Mayr’s explanation, the theory of evolution proposed by Darwin includes at least five claims, and only the last one, “natural selection,” was Darwin’s original contribution.
These five meanings are: 1. species are not fixed and unchanging; 2. different organisms come from a common ancestor; 3. evolution is gradual; 4. species proliferate; 5. natural selection.
In my book What Is Technology, I discuss all of these levels. For example, the origin of technology is consistent with the origin of humans; what first makes humans human is precisely the ability to extend oneself through externalization. For example, the frequent disputes over priority in the history of technology bear out the gradualness of technological development, yet the process of technological transfer is also like an invasive species, causing local ecological upheavals. Or again, technology does not evolve only through differentiation; in many cases it also evolves through fusion, and once we introduce the “symbiogenesis” theory, a useful analogy can still be formed.
In short, if you are interested in the relevant discussions, you can refer to What Is Technology. Here I want to focus on the last two issues, and especially on things not discussed in the book.
Our central question can be summed up as: “What is selected, and where?” And in order to clarify how “selection” happens in the history of technology, we first need to correct some misunderstandings about the concept of natural selection in biological evolution.
As is commonly understood about evolution, “natural selection,” as the name implies, means that “nature” is doing the selecting, and the things selected are essentially genes, or various gene fragments.
People then make a simple correspondence: genes to “memes,” nature to the artificial. The word meme was coined by Dawkins at the end of The Selfish Gene, to describe units of transmission in the cultural world.
However, I think this simple correspondence is not the most appropriate. On the one hand, in human technological invention or other cultural creation, there are in fact no coded fragments that resemble genes. On the other hand, Darwin’s “natural selection” is indeed a concept opposed to “artificial selection,” such as the domestication of plants and animals by human beings, but “nature” is not a definite and fixed thing or place.
I am trying to return to Darwin’s original theory of evolution, temporarily without introducing later concepts such as genes, and to reinterpret this question of “what is selected, and where?”
For Darwin, the objects selected are actually the “organs” of living beings, and the field in which selection takes place is the “environment.” Thus I reestablish the analogy between biological evolution and the history of technological development — “biological organs are selected in the environment,” corresponding to “technical implements are selected in the environment.”
The English word organ itself suggests the similarity among implements, machines, institutions, and organs; the Chinese characters for “device” and “official” are more or less similar in this respect too.
In a certain sense, evolution theory really was a product of the Victorian era, because it was only in this era that human beings had a rather vivid historical view of progress. The basis for that sense of progress was all sorts of machine inventions: in one lifetime, people could see generation after generation of unprecedented new machines coming into being, and see these new machines constantly improved and refined. Thus it was easy to form the idea that our living environment is continuously evolving along an irreversible historical process. Once people analogized the regularity of gradual change and development that they observed in machines to biology, the basic logic of biological evolution became easy to understand.
Darwin himself did not conceal this inspiration. In The Origin of Species he consciously used the history of machine development as an example. For instance, he wrote: “…as we believe that any great mechanical invention is the sum of all the work, experience, intelligence, and even blunders of numerous workmen; so when we thus look at each organic being, I think it will be more interesting to trace its history, according to my experience, than it otherwise would be!”
Darwin believed that just as human beings cannot suddenly invent complex and perfect machines, nature also cannot suddenly produce complex organisms.
After The Origin of Species was published, Marx quickly noticed it, and he immediately incorporated evolutionary ideas into his notes on Capital. Marx said: “Darwin has interested himself in the history of natural technology, i.e., in the formation of the organs of plants and animals which serve as instruments of production in their life. Does not the history of the formation of the productive organs of social man, of organs which are the material basis of every particular form of society, deserve equal attention?” (Capital, Vol. 1)
For Darwin and Marx, the evolution of biological organs and the evolution of “productive organs” are analogous to, and illuminate, one another.
But strangely enough, after Darwin, Marx, and Kapp, later theorists of technological evolution have increasingly ignored the analogy with “organs.” Only Stiegler emphasized this point. He said: “Technological evolution is the result of the coupling of humans and things, a coupling that still needs to be clarified… It is necessary to reflect on the so-called ‘organ.’ It denotes a part of the body or an implement as a technical instrument.”[9]52
It should be noted that the word “technology” refers not only to apparatuses, objects, and implements on the material level; it also has, in the first place, the meaning of a set of specific methods, functions, or procedures on the immaterial level. Likewise, closely connected to organs are concepts such as faculties and functions. A function does not necessarily have to be carried by an organ, but an organ is always the concrete embodiment of a function. To say that technology is analogous to organs means, strictly speaking, establishing a correspondence between “implement-function” and “organ-faculty.”
An organ is the tool by which an animal realizes a certain function, while a technical implement is the means by which a human being realizes a certain function. Biological organs gradually differentiate; for example, in a jellyfish the digestive and circulatory systems share the same cavity, and the cells of the entire body wall can breathe and excrete, whereas higher organisms have specialized respiratory organs, digestive organs, excretory organs, and so on. Once differentiated, organs can be recombined, giving rise to new functions. This pattern of organ development can easily be applied to the history of technological development. For instance, the earliest stone tools were all more or less the same; the same roughly identical tools were used for chopping wood and for carving bone. Later, as tools became more specialized, morphological variation became much more pronounced.
The evolution of organs can also explain the continual diversification of functions; entirely new functions may emerge through “exaptation” (a biological term). For example, bird feathers may originally have evolved as organs for keeping warm, but in the end they gradually developed unprecedented functions of gliding or flight. The evolution of technological history is similar: new functions often emerge inadvertently.
The more organs differentiate, the stronger the unity of the organism as a whole becomes. An earthworm’s body has very few complex organs, so if it is cut into two parts, it may become two individuals; but if every part of the body differentiates into different organs, then no matter which part is removed, the body’s unity will be damaged. This explains the trend in modern technology toward increasing differentiation on the one hand, and increasing integration into a single whole on the other.
By the way, this kind of finely divided labor and integrated modern technological system actually contains risks. It is more sensitive to changes in the external environment. For example, dinosaurs were once the rulers of the earth, but once the entire ecological environment underwent a dramatic change, they were also the first to fail to adapt. By contrast, some structures that are simpler — worms, bacteria, and so on — are not afraid of drastic environmental changes and can always survive.
The same is true for small-scale ecosystems: the more complex a system is, the more fragile it may be. Coral reefs and tropical rainforests are regions with highly concentrated biodiversity, but they are also the most easily affected by factors such as global warming. The collapse of a small rainforest ecosystem can lead to the extinction of thousands upon thousands of unique species.
By analogy, before and after a dramatic technological revolution, old technologies may lose their footing in batches. For example, the Industrial Revolution rendered the skilled craft of traditional artisans uncompetitive, and many artisans lost their jobs. After artificial intelligence technology becomes increasingly advanced, old technologies will inevitably have to undergo a comprehensive restructuring. Beyond the large-scale changes at the macro level, technological innovations in each specific field will also reshape old symbiotic relationships.
In the biological world, ecological change means species extinction, while in the human world, new technologies may bring about social problems such as mass unemployment, and may also cause the extinction of related cultural characteristics and ways of life. These are all issues that must be taken seriously.
Back to the point: after finishing the question of “what is selected,” let us next discuss the question of “where is it selected.” In other words, what is natural selection?
The “natural” in “natural selection” is a basic principle, not some fixed place, much less some fixed entity.
It is not that some supreme being once called God, and now called “nature,” is doing the selecting. There is nothing standing apart from all things that is doing the selecting.
What is called “survival of the fittest” is in fact a relativistic proposition: adaptation is relative, not absolute. There is no absolute scale by which to determine how “fit” each species is. Adaptation is adaptation relative to an environment, and the environment is not fixed; it is constantly changing. The environment changes as external conditions change, and it also changes as every species within it changes it.
For example, “there are many wolves” is, for a rabbit, its “survival environment,” and the rabbit is also part of the environment for the wolf. If the wolves eat all the rabbits, their own environment will have changed.
Besides being dynamic and relative, the environment is also nested and multi-layered. For example, for a rabbit, the other competitors within the rabbit population constitute one layer of the survival environment, while the grassland and wolf pack faced by the whole population constitute another layer of environment. The geographic region or climatic zone in which the rabbits and the wolf pack exist together is also an environment. “Natural selection” is at work at every layer of environment, but when we analyze its mechanism in concrete terms, it becomes necessary to distinguish between “environment” in different senses or at different scales.
All of what I have just said is already implicit in Darwin’s definition of “natural selection.” Darwin wrote: “For the preservation of each species, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in the infinitely complex relations with other organic beings and with external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring. The offspring, also, will thus have a better chance of surviving, for, out of any one species of annual plants or animals, only a small number can survive. Every slight variation, if useful, is thus preserved; and this principle of preservation I have called Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man’s power of selection.”
Many people read only the second half of this and, seeing only that half-sentence about “profitable” and “useful” variations being preserved, fail to notice that this “usefulness” is relative, measured “in the infinitely complex relations with other organic beings and with external nature.”
Darwin also mentioned changes in the “environment.” For example, climate change may lead to the extinction of species, and changes in the proportions of other organisms may also lead to the extinction of species,
Once we understand the relativity of the “environment,” we can turn back and look at the earlier question: the unit being selected is not necessarily always an “organ” or a “gene”; in fact, this selected unit can itself be relative. In different environments, the entities participating in the competition for survival are not the same.
Darwin also hints at different levels of competition. For example, within an individual, there is a competitive relationship between organ and organ. If one organ develops greatly, and if total nutritional intake does not change significantly, then some other organ may have to atrophy and regress. In the “internal environment” of a given individual, organs are in a competitive relationship. But when an individual competes with another individual, all the organs of the individual stand on the same front.
As for the individuals within a population, on the one hand they are part of the whole population and compete with other individuals for food and mating rights; on the other hand, they also struggle to survive in the external environment together with those other individuals. When facing the external environment, the individuals in the population again become comrades on the same front.
Extending this analogy, we can regard a certain human cultural group, or a certain “civilization,” as a biological organism, and various technical artifacts as its “organs”; we can also regard a certain human group as a small ecosystem, and technology as individual species symbiotic within it. Then for technology, its “environment” likewise has a corresponding internal–external duality: on the one hand, there is the internal environment of civilization, including countless individuals such as inventors and consumers, as well as various other technologies; on the other hand, there is what lies outside the group or civilization, such as nature and other civilizations. When we consider “selection” from the standpoint of the external environment, evolution theory in fact does not exclude the “conscious” selection that occurs in the internal environment. The key is that all selection in the internal environment must ultimately still undergo the selection of the external environment of the population. If the selection intentions arising from individuals are not conducive to the survival of the population as a whole in the external environment, then they will still ultimately be eliminated. In this sense, human recognition and selection of technology are no different from a monkey’s recognition and selection of a leader; whether or not there is conscious, active behavior within the population does not hinder the effectiveness of natural selection at the level of the external environment.
The fact that a monkey consciously chooses a mate does not negate the blindness of “natural selection.” Likewise, the conscious choices inventors and consumers make about technology do not prove that the development of technology is not subject to evolution theory. On the contrary, the perspective of evolution theory inspires us to notice the relativity and multiplicity of technological competition.
Overemphasizing “competition” is the most common way of misunderstanding evolution theory. A typical example is social Darwinism, and this problem is also widespread even in many popular novels nowadays: they emphasize the “cruelty” of nature, stress the law of the jungle, and claim that survival means engaging in a life-and-death struggle, preferably strangling one’s opponents in the cradle.
But we have already seen that this line of thought is completely wrong. This is not only because evolution theory speaks of what is the case, not what ought to be; more importantly, even the “what is the case” that evolution theory speaks of is not like this. Evolution theory has never advocated some absolute competition. Competition is always relative, and competition is always the flip side of cooperation.
In the evolutionary perspective, “competition for survival” is indeed everywhere; there is also a “competitive” relationship between two organs in my body. But that does not mean I should immediately cut out certain organs in order to make room for other organs’ “survival space”; that would be a completely stupid thing to do. Because my organs are only in a competitive relationship at one particular level, while at other levels they are in a cooperative relationship.
Even in a competitive relationship, “cooperation” is everywhere, because what adapts is the “environment,” and the environment itself includes other competing units. The one who is good at cooperating harmoniously with the other units in the environment is the “fit” one. So in a certain sense, survival of the fittest is survival of the well-integrated.
Only in one situation will there be a life-and-death relationship between two competing units, and that is the concept of the so-called “ecological niche.” An “ecological niche” is itself a relative position as well—relative to a certain survival environment, if the “positions” occupied by two species are identical, then they are in a relationship in which one rises as the other falls, a relationship of life and death. As the saying goes, one mountain cannot contain two tigers, yet tigers and sheep are rather able to coexist; but one kind of tiger and another kind of tiger can hardly coexist. For instance, if what A eats, B also eats; what A fears, B also fears; where A can stay, B can also stay, and vice versa, then the two species A and B will find it difficult to coexist long-term in the same region.
By analogy, the competition and replacement of technologies are similar.
Technology also has no absolute superiority or inferiority; the “superiority” of a certain technology must always be considered in the corresponding environment. For example, we know that south of the 400-millimeter rainfall line, in terms of food production technology, agriculture is superior to pastoral nomadism; but north of the 400-millimeter rainfall line, agriculturalists have not outcompeted pastoralists. As for extreme environments such as deserts and rainforests, the older way of life of gathering and hunting is actually more adaptable.
Is an automobile faster than a horse-drawn carriage? That is relative too. In an environment with a relay station supplying fodder but no gas station, with carriage drivers but no 4S service centers, with dirt roads but no asphalt roads, an automobile would not be faster than a horse-drawn carriage. Many revolutionary new technologies do not compete with old technologies within the same ecological environment; rather, they call forth a new environment and then occupy the mainstream through the expansion of that new environment. Rather than saying that dinosaurs were replaced by mammals, it would be better to say that the old environment suitable for dinosaurs was replaced by a new environment in which angiosperms rose. The iPhone did not outperform Nokia in call quality or battery life, but it won by shaping entirely new scenarios for mobile phone use.
In these cases, the old technology does not necessarily go completely extinct; it is only eliminated when its ecological niche overlaps. If every scenario that can use old technology can also use new technology, then the old technology will be hard to survive. For example, printed books replaced handwritten books, and sound films replaced silent films. But animation did not replace comics, and television did not replace radio, because the old technologies can still find a place in environments not yet covered by the new technologies. For example, in situations where one can both watch television and listen to radio, television prevails over radio; but in places where one can listen to radio but not necessarily watch television (such as inside a car), radio still retains a certain space for survival.
What, then, is the “environment” in which technology exists? As we have already seen, this environment is composite. For example, the environment of the automobile includes other technologies, such as asphalt roads and gas stations, and of course also includes the natural environment, such as jungles or swamps, which are harder to transform into environments suitable for automobiles. It also includes the human environment, such as population density, habits of life, traffic regulations, and so on. What the automobile must adapt to is this kind of composite “cultural–technical–natural” environment.
Of course, these environments on the one hand intersect with one another, and on the other hand roughly present layers from the inside outward, with the adjacent layers forming a relationship of mutual shaping and mutual constraint.
On the one hand, humans transform the natural environment through technology; on the other hand, the natural environment constrains or destroys the technical environment through physical laws and unpredictable disasters. On the one hand, humans choose technology according to culture/ideas/aesthetics and create a technical environment; on the other hand, the technical environment in turn shapes human culture/ideas/aesthetics…
What is called the natural environment is not a flat plane either. For example, a coral reef, a jungle, a whale fall—all form a relatively self-sufficient “natural environment,” in which the organisms living there are protected to a certain extent. The “cultural–technical” environment likewise forms “ecosystems” large and small, as if there were some kind of protective shell between the inside and the outside of the system, with communication between the inside and the outside, yet with the internal environment relatively self-contained.
Among the nested relations of “environment,” we may imagine two absolute endpoints: one is the absolute “internal environment,” namely a purely spiritual world; the other is the absolute “external environment,” namely a purely “cosmic space.” But these two endpoints are both products of conjecture; the environments humans actually encounter are all things between this “inside” and “outside,” things always constituted with the participation of technology.
Aside from the imagined absolute “inside” and “outside,” the inside–outside of any “environment” is also relative and dynamic.
The philosopher Heidegger used the example of the snail shell: he “compared the subject and its inner domain with the snail in its dwelling.”
The snail shell is the medium between the snail and the external world, the “protective shell” that separates the snail’s external environment from its internal environment. But for the snail, once it curls back into its shell, the hard shell becomes “external” to it. When the snail extends itself out of the shell to move about, the shell again becomes a part of the snail’s body, something “inside” the external environment.
Where is the snail’s “subject”? It is neither always hidden at the “innermost” point nor always exposed at the “outermost” side. The reason the subject is active is precisely that it can move back and forth among the “borders,” dealing with the world through dynamic boundaries.
Technology, as a human “organ,” is for each person much like a “snail shell” as well: we arm ourselves with tools and interact with the “external environment” through them. For example, I eat with bowls and chopsticks, repair things with a hammer, and communicate by telephone. When I eat, the bowl and chopsticks are not “outside”; like an extension of my hands and feet, they expand my boundaries. When I talk with a friend on the phone, the telephone is not “outside” either, but rather the mediating layer through which I interact with an “outsider,” expanding my boundaries. But we are also liable to contract inward at any moment; every tool can at any time become my “external environment.”
When we talk about “adaptation,” the technical environment belongs partly to the adapter and partly to the environment being adapted to. For example, when we say that someone is better adapted to life in the North, what do we mean? Obviously, we do not mean that he is adept at surviving naked, without a single roof tile over his head, in a northern winter; rather, we mean that he is adapted to a “northern environment” that already includes clothing, houses, water supply, heated kang beds, central heating, and so on as technical conditions. The same is true for a technical artifact. When we say that a certain piece of furniture is better suited to the North, we do not mean that it would be especially appropriate to put this table down in a sparsely inhabited snow-covered forest; rather, we mean that it is more suited to the dry environment jointly created in the North by natural climate and heating technology, or that it better fits the life habits and cultural customs of northerners.
In short, whether for people or for artifacts, the “environment” they adapt to is not flat and singular, but rather a relative, dynamic composite environment of “culture—technology—nature.”
We can call anything that distinguishes and protects some internal environment from its external environment a “medium”; a snail shell is a simple kind of “medium.” A medium always offers both the possibility of penetration and the constraint of boundary. Of course, some media are relatively open, while others are relatively closed. When a medium becomes more closed, the boundary between inside and outside appears more distinct. Of course, what constitutes closure is often not a single technology, but a technical system made up of multiple technologies supporting and connecting one another.
From the very beginning, this animal called humankind has carved out its own space in nature, and what it has relied on is primitive technology. Fire is the most primordial and important technology; the reach of firelight forms a primitive “boundary,” allowing humankind to keep its distance from untamed nature.
As technology evolved and grew richer, humankind began to build firmer, more closed layers. The agricultural revolution consolidated the boundary between humankind and nature. With the help of agricultural technology, humans no longer needed to go out and pursue prey, but could always retreat within their home ground and deal with nature in a more stable and controllable way. From that point on, the environment humans needed to adapt to changed completely: what a person skilled in making a living needed to master was the technology of farming in an agricultural environment, no longer the technology of hunting and gathering in a wild environment. The wild environment receded beyond the fields, or rather, the farmer retreated within the fields.
The emergence of cities added some smaller layers within the space of human activity. Cities are separated from the outside by walls, but what is kept out by the city wall is not the outermost wild nature, but areas that have already been agriculturally transformed.
The city is another layer of protection shell—it establishes a protective shell between the citizen and the agricultural environment, so that the citizen no longer needs to deal directly with the agricultural environment, but can enjoy its products more safely through commercial and political institutions. Of course, the distance between the citizen and the wild natural environment becomes even greater.
The Industrial Revolution strengthened the city and further diminished the status of agriculture. In the pre-industrial era, although cities were safe and independent, the law that sustained the entire human world was still agricultural in orientation; land and cultivation were the center of all commercial and political institutions. But in the industrial era, the industrial world established new laws that, in turn, governed the operation of the agricultural sphere.
A city can never exist apart from the countryside, just as the countryside can never shake off the domination of nature. But by setting up layer after layer of protective shells between their own living space and the natural environment, humans have created layers of buffering. Agriculture still depends on the natural environment, but it tries to make the capricious forces of nature stable and safe. Industry still depends on the nourishment of agriculture, but it replaces agricultural seasonality with its own assembly-line-like rhythm of stability and precision. So the modern rural person is no longer what “rural person” meant at the beginning of the agricultural revolution; in a fundamental sense, the modern rural person is also a city person, because their lives unfold in a world whose center of operation is the industrialized city.,
We say that we live in the “real world,” but the so-called “real world” is no longer that wild world of jungle and forest, nor the agricultural life of men tilling and women weaving; it is this modern urban life already wrapped in a new industrial-technological environment.
And our life today seems already different again from the industrial age: after the information revolution, a newer, smaller “shell” is gradually taking shape.
What does the recently popular “metaverse” mean? Of course, there are many sloppy and abusive interpretations, but if we want to find a somewhat reliable explanation, then the metaverse refers to this new “internal environment” taking shape under the strengthening of digital technology as a result of the information revolution; it is opening up new niches within industrial society and urban life. These relatively independent and self-sufficient “information circles” have already appeared here and there, and what “metaverse” expresses is precisely the trend toward the integration of the information world into a single whole.
In the history of human technology, the two greatest transformations were probably the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution. Both of these “revolutions” established new “protective shells.” Agriculture does not imitate nature; it establishes new rules that in turn govern nature. Industry does not imitate agriculture; it establishes a new order that in turn controls agriculture. In a similar sense, if there is to be an “information revolution,” then this “information world” is not an imitation of urban life in the industrial age, nor is it a “virtual” version of the so-called “real” world—the metaverse is not about making virtual reality, but about establishing the order of a new world within a newer, smaller, safer protective shell, and then, in turn, influencing the operation of the industrial world.
My report is finished, thank you!
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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