Ecology of Tech Gadgets

There is an interesting parallel between the ecologies of the natural world and the universe of tech products. A naive outsider observer, like an alien diligently documenting our planet from outer space, might mistake our tech gadgets for a strange class of living organisms evolving alongside animals and plants.

Like all other organisms, tech gadgets survive by seeking out energy. Plants gather energy from sunlight via photosynthesis. Animals gather energy from the stored energy reserves of plants or of animals who got it from plants. Tech gadgets get energy from electricity, which comes from power plants, which largely release energy stored by plants and left as fuels like coal, gas, and oil. This energy flows throughout the gadgets’ environment in the walls of the buildings and throughout some of the gadgets themselves. The observers would note that the gadgets evolved specialized beaks(plugs) able to tap into the energy flows at feeding areas, much like the beaks birds evolved to get energy.

Like many species of trees, tech gadgets need the assistance of other animals to reproduce. Many trees evolved tasty fruits/nuts to entice animals to carry their seeds long distances to plant the next generation in a process called endozoochory. Rather than attracting animals with nutrition, tech gadgets appeal specifically to the human intellect. So enticing are these tech gadgets that they induce the humans to gather all the raw materials and physically construct the gadgets’ offspring.

Through this process of reproduction, they evolve over time according to the rules of natural selection. The iPad eventually evolves into the iPad 2 which is better suited to attract humans. Gadgets that are able to attract more human interest reproduce more successfully and their populations grow. This can produce distinct genii under the same family of gadgets. For example, Android phones and iPhones. It can even produce different species under the same species like the different species of iPhones (16 GB, 32 GB, etc). Interestingly, gadget evolution obeys both natural selection and intelligent design.

Despite their lack of sexual reproduction, different lines of gadgets are able to converge to common descendants. For example, the telephone and the camera were completely separate families of gadgets just a couple decades ago, but now they are both ancestors of the modern family of cell phones. This rarely happens with animals as organisms that don’t share the same genus are unable to produce viable offspring.
This analogy can be extended beyond tech gadgets to all tools. Those classified as gadgets happen to be the descendants of the early computers. Even for something as simple as a toothpick, it is the latest in a very long line of ancestry dating back even longer than homo sapiens. Toothpick design has been whittled down over the years to the most efficient form for humans enjoyment just as the design of a cheetah has been tuned to be the most efficient hunting machine in its environment.

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