BM23002 Chapter 1 The Made and the Born

Quotations

“The realm of the born – all that is nature – and the realm of the made - all that is humanly constructed – are becoming one. Machines are becoming biological and the biological is becoming engineered.” Page 2.

“For the world of our own making has become so complicated that we must turn to the world of the born to understand how to manage it.” Page 2.

“We now see that no logic except bio-logic can assemble a thinking device, or even a workable system of any magnitude.” Page 2.

“Although many philosophers in the past have suspected one could abstract the laws of life and apply them elsewhere, it wasn’t until the complexity of computers and human –made systems became as complicated as living things, that it was possible to prove this.” Page 3.

“Milk cows and carrots, therefore, are human inventions as much as steam engines and gunpowder are. But milk cows and carrots are more indicative of the kind of inventions humans will make in the future: products that are grown rather than manufactured.” Page 3.

“Generic engineering is precisely what cattle breeders do when they select better strains of Holsteins, only bioengineers employ more precise and powerful control.” Page 3.

“As we look at human efforts to create complex mechanical things, again and again we return to nature for directions.” Page 4.

“Ours may always be a flashy type of creativity, but there is something to be said for slow, wide creativity of many dim parts working ceaselessly.” Page 5.

Synopsis

The story was conceived whilst inside an airtight glass module designed to allow me to survive in space alongside both living things and manufactured things which looked to provide a parallel environment to me living on Earth itself.

The trend will be for the technological man made world to both receive its directions and design from nature but for the technologies to be more like biological systems. It acknowledges where we are technologically is way behind what nature has achieved biologically. So we need to look to biological design to move forward our technological design.

 

 

BM23001 Introduction to the New Biology of Machines

OUT OF CONTROL - The New Biology of Machines 

Kevin Kelly chronicles the dawn of a new era in which the adaptability and autonomy of living organisms become the model for human made systems and machines – everything from telecommunications to manufacturing processes, drug design and the global economy.

The book was originally titled, Out of Control, The New Biology of Machines, and was first published in the United States in 1994 by Addison Wesley Inc. It was first published in Great Britain in 1994 by Fourth Estate Limited. The first paperback edition was published in 1995.

The original book frontispiece read : -

OUT OF CONTROL

Kevin Kelly, executive editor of Wired, lives in Pacifica, California. Formerly publisher and editor of Whole Earth Review, he has been instrumental in helping launch a number of cultural innovations: The Hackers Conference; Cyberthon, the first virtual --reality jamboree; and the WELL, model way- station on the information superhighway. He is a feedback freak. His E-mail coordinates are:kk@well.com. For slo-mo communication, use 19 Amapola Avenue, Pacifica, California, 94044.

Special Note written by David Bannister, DMB Publishing.

I purchased my paperback copy of Out of Control from a second hand bookshop in Cheltenham, England for £2.49 in 2005. I read it cover to cover and was exposed to multiple epiphany and serendipity moments with these type of experiences not normally triggered by reading a Popular Science paperback.

But one question that remains a mystery to me was why it got named “Out of Control” when in fact it was all about being “Under Control”. In fact I believe the tagline of “The New Biology of Machines” better represents its contents indicating man made machines are now acquiring biological attributes and capabilities.

The endorsements on the back pages of the book listed below hardly do it any justice but they are quoted below for completeness:-

 

“A fascinating, entertaining book.” – New Statesman & Society.

“Extraordinarily thoughtful, thought provoking, futuristic.” – Spectator.

“Out of Control is an astonishingly ambitious extrapolation from now, Read it for yourself.” – iD

“An engaging non-stop tour of the high – tech ecological consciousness of the 1990’s” – TLS

“Conveys brilliantly the end-of-the-millenium excitement felt by many….a joy to read, both for its detail and for the enlivening impression it provides.” – Financial Times

“Touching on the frontiers of the most exciting science and technology of our age, Kelly’s book is by turns fascinating, entertaining and awe-inspiring” - Focus

 

So why publish a book summarising the contents of Out of Control?

Well I completely missed the publication of Out of Control in 1994. How widely it was publicised or reviewed in 1994 I am not sure. It certainly never came on to my radar. I suspect the followers of Kevin Kelly would have been alerted to its release and no doubt they would have purchased copies. Once I had acquired my second hand copy in 2005 and read it through it became a firm favourite of mine. From time to time I would pick it off the bookshelf and re-read a chapter for both the pure pleasure and the new perceptiveness it always generated. A habit of mine was to underline in pencil parts of the text I found to be most interesting. This allowed me when re-reading to just pick out the most salient points making the most effective use of my available time. One of the advantages of buying second hand books is there is no hesitation in doing such pencil mark ups whereas I am less inclined to do so on a brand new book. This became a habit over a number of years whereby I would just pick up the book from my study shelf and just read for a chapter the underlined parts of text to get an instant dose of Kevin Kelly’s wisdom.

When I retired in 2016 I started to think about how I could get Kevin Kelly’s book back into the public domain so others could gain the pleasure I got from reading it. It also made me appreciate the outstanding value that could still be gleaned from reading Kevin Kelly’s work 30 years after it had been first written. In many cases what had been purely futurist at Kevin Kelly’s time of writing was now evolving in some areas to become a reality whilst the traction in other areas he predicted would see growth starting to fade or completely stop.

Because Kevin was a brilliant story teller and scene setter often these stories remained stored in my memory dependant on the remembering of the story rather than the pure facts. Whilst he still used facts and figures to reinforced the subject being communicated. Because of his enormous network of publishing contacts he was readily able to introduce you to these experts in their specific fields whilst being able to narrate both their views and ideas. In 1994 many of these were to become the inventors or investors behind these concepts, ideas or products so it was a pure first hand narrative from these original knowledge sources. This was priceless in itself since it was often documenting elements of technological history in their early development stages.

Kevin Kelly had his own sort of bohemia come Californian new age style of communicating by immersing his facts into this blanket of atmospherics. He was also inclined to jump in a random way across what some writer’s would have defined as subject boundaries. It is acknowledged that most really creative writers will often work this way as they rush to get their inner thoughts documented before they are lost. But sometimes this jumping makes it difficult for the reader to fully grasp the message being communicated. Whilst subsequent editing would normally take out this randomness it sometimes makes it more interesting to leave it in place. Although this editor has attempted to maintain logical pathways.

So with all this marking up of key text now in my possession how could I try to regenerate an interest in Out of Control in 2023. Would it lend itself to being a relevant piece of work now that technology had or had not moved forward in the intervening approximately 30 years since Kevin Kelly first narrated it and committed it to paper.

So did I intend to just blog it free to a random readership? Or put it behind a digital pay wall? Or create an eBook? Or create a paperback? Then how should it be presented. It was Kevin’s creativity and work effort not mine. All the underlined text would be shown as a quote from the Out of Control book with the relevant page number recorded. Copyright would always be attributed to Kevin Kelly. On my behalf no attempt at any form of plagiarism. Kevin Kelly would have to be contacted and approve the approach before any sort of release to the public. David Bannister, the author and publisher, acknowledges and respects all Legal Copyrights. For my part I would interject infrequently talking to the reader directly if I felt some directional narrative from me might aid increased understanding. But my most important added narrative would be a brief synopsis at the end of each chapter where I would attempt to simply summarise the subject matter in the chapter. This would be my only written contribution to the book.

So why do it? Firstly it revives interest in written narrative, however old, adding value to a new readership thereby extending human knowledge. Secondly it stops the loss of excellent intellectual material and importantly pays tribute to what an exceptional thinker is Kevin Kelly. Thirdly it will hopefully regenerate interest in these areas by other researchers and authors. Fourthly it supports the building up of knowledge in these increasingly relevant biological areas of advancement. Fifthly it might just kick start a biological revolution in 2023 in all the directions covered by Kevin Kelly achieving what I might call a 5^th Industrial (Biological) Revolution.

To me it only adds real value if it kick starts some real activity resulting in a change of concept, service or product that uses some biological tenet defined within this particular summary of Out of Control.

To add further value to the above please make use of these relevant internet links.

Biography of Kevin Kelly

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Kelly_(editor)

Out of Control Summary

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_Control_(Kelly_book)

The Whole Earth Review

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Review

The WELL

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WELL

The Wired Magazine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wired_(magazine)

The Linnaean Enterprise

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linnaean_enterprise