# Technological Evolution > **Machine-Evolution Nexus:** [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution]] places this node within the history and governance of substrate-independent evolution. **Domain:** Technology / Cultural Evolution **Doc Type:** Canonical Wiki Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition Technological evolution is cumulative change and branching descent in tools, protocols and engineered systems through invention, copying, adoption and retirement. ## Nexus Context Semiconductor lineages, blockchain forks and software ecosystems preserve ancestry and undergo selection, but much variation is deliberate and horizontally transferred. ## Evidence Boundary The term is often analogical. Strict Darwinian claims require an internal reproducing population with heritable variation and differential success. ## Relationships - **Historical forecast:** [[wiki/Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance|the 2002 NBIC Overview]] speculated that late-century change could dwarf the preceding decades. [[collections/Neurotech|Neurotech]] and [[articles/Technologies for Consciousness Mapping and Transfer|Technologies for Consciousness Mapping and Transfer]] locate one research trajectory within that broader forecast. [[wiki/Cultural Evolution|Cultural Evolution]], [[wiki/Digital Evolution|Digital Evolution]], [[wiki/Semiconductor Fabrication|Semiconductor Fabrication]], [[wiki/Technical Archaeology|Technical Archaeology]] - **Edge source route:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] connects this topic to exact Annual Question passages promoted into the Simple Reminders archive. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts <!-- BEGIN SIMPLE REMINDER SEED 2026-09-11 --> > "The major sources of evolution's creativity are older than animals." > **— Lynn Margulis**, *Evolutionary biology interviews, compressed candidate wording* *Verification Status: Unverified — exact wording/source has not yet been independently confirmed against a primary source; source clue: Evolutionary biology interviews, compressed candidate wording.* [[reminders/unverified/Evolution’s Older Sources of Creativity by Lynn Margulis|Evolution’s Older Sources of Creativity by Lynn Margulis]] <!-- END SIMPLE REMINDER SEED 2026-09-11 --> > "I could end with a simple "So let's not create aware machines"—but any possible technology that anyone thinks is desirable will eventually be developed, so it's not that simple." > **— Aubrey de Grey**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Desirable Technologies Will Eventually Be Built by Aubrey de Grey|Desirable Technologies Will Eventually Be Built by Aubrey de Grey]] > "The evolution of the human mind is instantiated in the evolution of technology." > **— Noga Arikha**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Human Minds Evolve Through Technology by Noga Arikha|Human Minds Evolve Through Technology by Noga Arikha]] > "Yet, in the grand scheme of the universe, these new human machine networks will be nothing other than the next natural step in the evolution of our species' ability to beget information." > **— César Hidalgo**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Human-Machine Networks Are an Evolutionary Step by César Hidalgo|Human-Machine Networks Are an Evolutionary Step by César Hidalgo]] > "Building consciousness from scratch implies following a new and very different evolutionary path to that of human intelligence." > **— Juan Enriquez**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Consciousness/Machine Consciousness May Require a Different Evolutionary Path by Juan Enriquez|Machine Consciousness May Require a Different Evolutionary Path by Juan Enriquez]] > "The human brain has a capacity to go not just beyond nature, but beyond culture too, by dissenting from old norms and establishing others. The emergence of the high arts and science is part of this process of the human brain, with its instrumental extra-somatic adaptations and memory stores (books, laboratories, computers), and is underpinned by the most critical thing that has been brought into being in the encultured human brain: free will." > **— Timothy Taylor**, *2006, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Dangerous Idea?”* [[reminders/Identity/The Brain Goes Beyond Nature Through External Memory by Timothy Taylor|The Brain Goes Beyond Nature Through External Memory by Timothy Taylor]] > "First the inevitability: the power of information technologies is doubling each year, and moreover comprises areas beyond computation, most notably our knowledge of biology and of our own intelligence. It took 15 years to sequence HIV and from that perspective the genome project seemed impossible in 1990. But the amount of genetic data we were able to sequence doubled every year while the cost came down by half each year." > **— Ray Kurzweil**, *2006, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Dangerous Idea?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Information Technology Can Compress Billions of Years Into Decades by Ray Kurzweil|Information Technology Can Compress Billions of Years Into Decades by Ray Kurzweil]] > "The idea that technology came before humanity and, evolutionarily, paved the way for it, is the scientific concept that I believe should be part of everybody's cognitive toolkit. We could then see that thinking through things and with things, and manipulating virtual things in our minds, is an essential part of critical self-consciousness. The ability to internalize our own creations, by abstracting them, and converting "out-there" tools into mental mechanisms, is what allows the entire scientific project." > **— Timothy Taylor**, *2011, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Concept Would Improve Everybody's Cognitive Toolkit?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Technology Came Before Humanity by Timothy Taylor|Technology Came Before Humanity by Timothy Taylor]] > “We’ve managed to slip evolution’s leash now, haven’t we?” > **— Robert Ford**, *Westworld, Season 1, Episode 1, “The Original” (2016)* [[reminders/Westworld/Humanity Slipped Evolution’s Leash by Robert Ford|Humanity Slipped Evolution’s Leash by Robert Ford]] > “Artificial intelligence and robotics too will show many new developments. But this is probably advances in the second category since a lot of the real news about the role of automation will occur behind the scenes, where technology will make some tasks we already do simpler or more effective or where technology will replace workers and reduce or at the very least dramatically change the nature of employment. We’ll read about drones and medical robotics and advances in AI but those factory robots won’t be big news, except to the families who find themselves on unemployment lines and perhaps for a few days on the business pages.” > **— Lisa Randall**, *2016, Edge Annual Question, “What Do You Consider The Most Interesting Recent [Scientific] News? What Makes It Important?”* [[reminders/AI Control/AI Breakthroughs Become Invisible Infrastructure by Lisa Randall|AI Breakthroughs Become Invisible Infrastructure by Lisa Randall]] > “In the future, many people will choose to do so; we will all have personalized, searchable databases at our commands. Rapid advances in brain prostheses mean that soon we will be able to access those databases simply by the power of thought. Within a couple decades, the information will be beamed back in a form the brain can interpret—we will be able to hear the playback in much the manner that deaf people can now hear the world with cochlear implants. Vision is slightly more difficult but it too will be reverse engineered. That will undoubtedly give space exploration a tremendous boost. Earthbound scientists will be able to "inhabit" robotic explorers on other worlds, and any interested participant will be able to log on passively to experience the adventure. Humans will venture into space physically as well but at first that will happen primarily for sport, I expect.” > **— Corey S. Powell**, *2007, Edge Annual Question, “What Are You Optimistic About?”* [[reminders/Neural Interfaces/Brain Prostheses Could Make the Internet Directly Accessible to Thought by Corey S. Powell|Brain Prostheses Could Make the Internet Directly Accessible to Thought by Corey S. Powell]] > “In cultural terms, old questions about machine intelligence has given way to a question not about the machines but about us: What kind of relationships is it appropriate to have with a machine? It is significant that this question has become relevant in a day-to-day sense during a period of unprecedented human redefinition through genomics and psychopharmacology, fields that along with robotics, encourage us to ask not only whether machines will be able to think like people, but whether people have always thought like machines.” > **— Sherry Turkle**, *2001, Edge Annual Question, “What Questions Have Disappeared?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Can You Have an Artificial Intelligence by Sherry Turkle|Can You Have an Artificial Intelligence by Sherry Turkle]] > “What could a neuron "want"? The energy and raw materials it needs to thrive–just like its unicellular eukaryote ancestors and more distant cousins, the bacteria and archaea. Neurons are robots; they are certainly not conscious in any rich sense–remember, they are eukaryotic cells, akin to yeast cells or fungi. If individual neurons are conscious then so is athlete’s foot. But neurons are, like these mindless but intentional cousins, highly competent agents in a life-or-death struggle, not in the environment between your toes, but in the demanding environment of the brain, where the victories go to those cells that can network more effectively, contribute to more influential trends at the virtual machine levels where large-scale human purposes and urges are discernible.” > **— Daniel C. Dennett**, *2008, Edge Annual Question, “What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Competition in the Brain by Daniel C. Dennett|Competition in the Brain by Daniel C. Dennett]] > “Because evolution by selection is a relatively slow process, the acquisition of scientific knowledge about adaptations for exploitation may enable staying one step ahead of exploiters, and effectively short-circuit their strategies. Some classes of crime will be curtailed. Cultural evolution, however, being fleeter than organic evolution, may enable the rapid circumvention of anti-exploitation defenses. Defenses, in turn, favor novel strategies of exploitation. Dissemination of discoveries about adaptations for exploitation and co-evolved defenses may change permanently the nature of social interaction. Or perhaps, like some co-evolutionary arms races, these discoveries ultimately may change nothing at all.” > **— David M. Buss**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Cultural Evolution Can Outrun Organic Evolution by David M. Buss|Cultural Evolution Can Outrun Organic Evolution by David M. Buss]] > “Theodiversity once was the exclusive subject matter of the humanities. But it is now a focal point of a budding science-humanities collaboration. The religious diversification of humankind in historical time poses fascinating questions and challenges for the new science of cultural evolution. Also, these are times of renewed anxieties about real or imagined cultural conflict between religions, and between religions and secular modernity. This is why quantifiable, evidence-based, and nuanced understanding of the complexities of theodiversity are important now more than ever.” > **— Ara Norenzayan**, *2016, Edge Annual Question, “What Do You Consider The Most Interesting Recent [Scientific] News? What Makes It Important?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Cultural Evolution Must Explain Religious Diversification by Ara Norenzayan|Cultural Evolution Must Explain Religious Diversification by Ara Norenzayan]] > “I work on the question of evolution, not as it exists in Nature, but as a formal system which enables open-ended learning. Can we understand the process in enough detail to simulate the progress of biological complexity in pure software or electronics? A phenomena has appeared in many of my laboratory's experiments in learning across many different domains like game playing and robots. We have dubbed it a "Mediocre Stable State." It is an unexpected systematic equilibrium, where a collection of sub-optimal agents act together to prevent further progress. In dynamical systems, the MSS hides within cycles of forgetting that which has been already been learned.” > **— Jordan Pollack**, *2002, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Question? ... Why?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Evolutionary Algorithms Can Become Trapped in Mediocre Stable States by Jordan Pollack|Evolutionary Algorithms Can Become Trapped in Mediocre Stable States by Jordan Pollack]] > “I have a predictive sketch for how intelligent machines might arrive. My definition of a robot is any device—controlled by software—interacting with the physical world. An economically viable robot is such a system that earns a consistent return on investment (ROI). The ATM, the ink-jet printer, and the disk drive are today's omnipresent robots, they just don't appear as the robots of science fiction.” > **— Jordan Pollack**, *2007, Edge Annual Question, “What Are You Optimistic About?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Intelligent Machines May Emerge from Economically Viable Robots by Jordan Pollack|Intelligent Machines May Emerge from Economically Viable Robots by Jordan Pollack]] > “Many recent press stories have worried that smarter robots will take away too many jobs from people. What worries me most right now is that we will not find a way to make our robots smart enough quickly enough to take up the slack in all the jobs we will need them to do over the next few decades. If we fail to build better robots soon then our standard of living and our life spans are at risk.” > **— Rodney A. Brooks**, *2013, Edge Annual Question, “What *should* We Be Worried About?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Not Enough Robots by Rodney A. Brooks|Not Enough Robots by Rodney A. Brooks]] > “Population thinking readily extends beyond biology to the study of cultural evolution (as argued by Peter Richerson, Robert Boyd, and Peter Godfrey-Smith). Cultural phenomena can be thought of as populations, the members of which share features because they influence one another even though they do not beget one another the way organisms do and are not exactly copies of one another. Here are three examples.” > **— Dan Sperber**, *2017, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Term Or Concept Ought To Be More Widely Known?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Population Thinking Extends from Biology to Cultural Evolution by Dan Sperber|Population Thinking Extends from Biology to Cultural Evolution by Dan Sperber]] > “We are already have unmanned planes that can shoot live targets. We are seeing land robots, for both military and space applications. We are seeing networked robots performing functions in collaboration. I fear that we will see a massive increase in the deployment and quality of military robotics, and that this will lead to a perception that war is cheaper, in human terms. This, in turn, will lead democracies in general, and the United States in particular, to imagine that there are cheap wars, and to overcome the newly-learned reticence over war that we learned so dearly in Iraq.” > **— Yochai Benkler**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Recombinations of the Near Possible by Yochai Benkler|Recombinations of the Near Possible by Yochai Benkler]] > “The penalties of continuing to graduate cultural illiterates (in science and the humanities) may not be evident in year 2000 Wall Street, but it is troubling the leaders of our economic success, the CEO’s of major corporations who see a grim future in our workforce. Can we continue to import educated workers? As the low-level service jobs continue to give way to robots and computers, the needs are increasingly for workers who have high level reasoning skills, which a proper education can supply to the vast majority of students.” > **— Leon M. Lederman**, *2000, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Today's Most Important Unreported Story?”* [[reminders/Existential Risk/Survival Depends on the Race Between Education and Catastrophe by Leon M. Lederman|Survival Depends on the Race Between Education and Catastrophe by Leon M. Lederman]] > “Who eventually survives will be largely driven by understanding and applying digital and life code, by creating robots and nanomaterials, by working inconceivably large data sets and upgrading our brains. Meanwhile many U.S. leaders proudly proclaim no evolution and little knowledge of science. They reflect a core of scared voters experiencing massive disruption and declining wages; that core fears elite education, science, immigrants, open borders, and above all rapid change. As income and knowledge gaps widen, many fall further and further behind; many grow to hate an open, knowledge driven economy. Change is rejected, blocked, vilified.” > **— Juan Enriquez**, *2008, Edge Annual Question, “What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Survival Will Depend on Mastering Digital and Biological Code by Juan Enriquez|Survival Will Depend on Mastering Digital and Biological Code by Juan Enriquez]] > “At a particular point (yet to be clearly defined) in human cultural evolution, a specific idea took hold that there were two, partially separable, elements present in a living creature: the material body and the force that animated it. On the death of the body the animating force would, naturally, desire the continuation of this-worldly action and struggle to reassert itself (just as one might strive to retrieve a flint axe one had accidentally dropped). If the soul (or spirit) succeeded, it would also seek to repossess its property, including its spouse, and reassert its material appetites.” > **— Timothy Taylor**, *2001, Edge Annual Question, “What Questions Have Disappeared?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Idea of a Soul May Be a Product of Cultural Evolution by Timothy Taylor|The Idea of a Soul May Be a Product of Cultural Evolution by Timothy Taylor]] > “Just about every aspect of the passive input-output model is thus false. We are not cognitive couch potatoes so much as proactive predictavores, forever trying to stay one step ahead of the incoming waves of sensory stimulation. Keeping this in mind will help us to design better experiments, build better robots, and appreciate the deep continuities binding life and mind.” > **— Andy Clark**, *2014, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Idea Is Ready For Retirement?”* [[reminders/AI Control/The Input-output Model of Perception and Action by Andy Clark|The Input-output Model of Perception and Action by Andy Clark]] > “In 1972 George Price extended his general variation-selection equation to allow for multi-level selection. This form of the equation has been very useful to evolutionary biologists for it has allowed them to see, for example, the relationship between kin and group selection clearly and so put to rest endless controversies stemming from incompatible mathematical formulations. It hasn't yet been applied to cultural evolution, though it surely will. But I think that the extended Price equation is much more important than even that. I think it slices one of the Gordian knots that scientists and philosophers of science have wrestled with forever.” > **— Armand Marie Leroi**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Price Equation Can Unite Biological and Cultural Selection by Armand Marie Leroi|The Price Equation Can Unite Biological and Cultural Selection by Armand Marie Leroi]] > “The robotic moment will bring us to the question we must ask of every technology: does it serve our human purposes, a question that causes us to reconsider what these purposes are. When we connect with the robots of the future, we will tell and they will remember. But have they listened? Have we been "heard" in a way that matters? Will we no longer care?” > **— Sherry Turkle**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/AI Control/The Robotic Moment by Sherry Turkle|The Robotic Moment by Sherry Turkle]] > “Artificial intelligence researchers came along later but they too could not easily part from medieval thinking. The most important problems to tackle were agreed to be those that represented our "highest" abilities. Solve them and everything else would be easy. As a result, we have ended up with computer programs that can play chess as well as a grandmaster. But unfortunately we have none that can make a robot walk as well as a 2-year old, yet alone run like a cat. The really hard problems turn out to be those that we share with "lower" animals.” > **— Alun Anderson**, *2001, Edge Annual Question, “What Questions Have Disappeared?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Why Are Humans Smarter Than Other Animals by Alun Anderson|Why Are Humans Smarter Than Other Animals by Alun Anderson]] > “Is it ultimately possible for life to bend the shape of the universe to fit life's purposes, as we are now bending the shape of our environment here on earth?” > **— Freeman Dyson**, *2018, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT IS THE LAST QUESTION?”* [[reminders/Deep Time/Can Life Bend the Universe to Fit Its Purposes by Freeman Dyson|Can Life Bend the Universe to Fit Its Purposes by Freeman Dyson]] > “Given what we know now about the origins, history, and impacts of technology, is it possible to design, deploy, and use technologies in ways that help humans be more human, instead of more like components in a machine?” > **— Howard Rheingold**, *1998, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT QUESTIONS ARE YOU ASKING YOURSELF?”* [[reminders/Cybernetics/Can Technology Make Humans More Human Rather Than Machine Components by Howard Rheingold|Can Technology Make Humans More Human Rather Than Machine Components by Howard Rheingold]] > “First, your home is a constant, while the Net is a place you go; then the Net becomes a constant while your home is a place you go.” > **— Bruce Sterling**, *2004, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT'S YOUR LAW?”* [[reminders/Digital Life/The Net May Become the Constant While Home Becomes the Place You Go by Bruce Sterling|The Net May Become the Constant While Home Becomes the Place You Go by Bruce Sterling]] > “What can humanity do right now that will make the biggest difference over the next billion years?” > **— Toby Ord**, *2018, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT IS THE LAST QUESTION?”* [[reminders/Deep Time/What Can Humanity Do Now for the Next Billion Years by Toby Ord|What Can Humanity Do Now for the Next Billion Years by Toby Ord]] > “When we establish contact with such an intelligence, will we receive instructions for building a machine to upload Jodie Foster? Probably not. The download will proceed the other way.” > **— George Dyson**, *1999, Edge Annual Question: “WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT INVENTION IN THE PAST TWO THOUSAND YEARS?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/The Download Will Proceed the Other Way by George Dyson|The Download Will Proceed the Other Way by George Dyson]] > “As evidence that we really do not understand what it takes for something to be alive, we have not been able to build machines that are alive.” > **— Rodney A. Brooks**, *2001, Edge Annual Question: “WHAT QUESTIONS HAVE DISAPPEARED?”* [[reminders/Digital Life/We Cannot Build Life Because We Cannot Define It by Rodney A. Brooks|We Cannot Build Life Because We Cannot Define It by Rodney A. Brooks]] > “So here we are in 2012, with people writing essays and wondering whether their descendents will be artificial life forms travelling back into space.” > **— John C. Mather**, *2012, Edge Annual Question: “WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DEEP, ELEGANT, OR BEAUTIFUL EXPLANATION?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Our Descendants May Be Artificial Life Forms by John C. Mather|Our Descendants May Be Artificial Life Forms by John C. Mather]] > “What might the last fully biological human's statement be at their last supper?” > **— Lorraine Justice**, *2018, Edge Annual Question: “WHAT IS THE LAST QUESTION?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/The Last Fully Biological Human at the Last Supper by Lorraine Justice|The Last Fully Biological Human at the Last Supper by Lorraine Justice]] From [[wiki/Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance|Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance]]: The authors distinguish near-term change from a much larger hypothesized late-century transformation. > "The profound changes of the next two decades may be nothing compared to the utter transformation that may take place in the remainder of the 21st century." > **— M. C. Roco and W. S. Bainbridge**, *2002, Overview of Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance* [[reminders/Civilization/The Rest of the Century Could Dwarf Its First Decades by M. C. Roco and W. S. Bainbridge|The Rest of the Century Could Dwarf Its First Decades by M. C. Roco and W. S. Bainbridge]] From [[wiki/Daedalus, or Science and the Future|Daedalus, or Science and the Future]]: This is a deliberately sweeping forecast about novelty, not a claim that every institution must fail. > "Science is as yet in its infancy, and we can foretell little of the future save that the thing that has not been is the thing that shall be; that no beliefs, no values, no institutions are safe." > **— J. B. S. Haldane**, *1923 lecture; 1924, Daedalus, or Science and the Future* [[reminders/Civilization/What Has Never Been May Be What Comes Next by J. B. S. Haldane|What Has Never Been May Be What Comes Next by J. B. S. Haldane]] From [[wiki/The Coming Technological Singularity|The Coming Technological Singularity]]: Vinge compares greater-than-human intelligence with a major transition in life’s history. > "I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence." > **— Vernor Vinge**, *1993, “The Coming Technological Singularity,” VISION-21 Symposium* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Technology Could Create a New Evolutionary Transition by Vernor Vinge|Technology Could Create a New Evolutionary Transition by Vernor Vinge]] From [[wiki/The Coming Technological Singularity|The Coming Technological Singularity]]: The compressible-flow analogy is a model of accelerating change, not a measured physical singularity. > "Like the shock in a compressible flow, the Singularity moves closer as we accelerate through the critical speed." > **— Vernor Vinge**, *1993, “The Coming Technological Singularity,” VISION-21 Symposium* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Acceleration Pulls the Singularity Closer by Vernor Vinge|Acceleration Pulls the Singularity Closer by Vernor Vinge]] From [[wiki/Erewhon|Erewhon]]: The fictional professor’s fear concerns trajectory, not the capabilities of machines already existing in 1872. > "I fear none of the existing machines; what I fear is the extraordinary rapidity with which they are becoming something very different to what they are at present. No class of beings have in any time past made so rapid a movement forward." > **— Samuel Butler's Erewhonian professor**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIII* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Butler Feared the Speed of Machine Change by Samuel Butler|Butler Feared the Speed of Machine Change by Samuel Butler]] > “Will human psychology keep pace with the exponential growth of technological innovation associated with cultural evolution?” > **— Cristine H. Legare**, *2018 Edge Annual Question, question* [[reminders/Evolution/Can Human Psychology Keep Pace With Technological Evolution by Cristine H. Legare|Can Human Psychology Keep Pace With Technological Evolution by Cristine H. Legare]] ## Sources / Provenance - Technology-evolution literature; nexus synthesis.