The fecundity of technology comes alive with a bang in this
vernacular, incendiary popcorn popper (video via BoingBoing).
Seeing this video reminded me of the antic incredulity with
which NPR’s “sciencey” correspondent Robert Krulwich greets
Kevin Kelly’s assertion that no technology has ever gone
extinct. In his recent book What Technology Wants, Kelly claims
to find no instance of a past technology that isn’t still being
manufactured by humans somewhere on the planet. You can find
latter-day manufacturers of everything from jab-sowers to steam-
powered automobile engines to flint axes, he observes. From
there, Kelly goes on to elaborate an axiom of technological
development: techs don’t die; they merely incorporate themselves
into the technium. It is a striking feature of technological
history that it doesn’t exhibit anything like the
PermianóTriassic extinction, which saw the death of more than
half of biological families and four-fifths of all genera on the
planet. And yet I think the observation may miss