The Technium

Interesting thought: that a technology is like an organism so what is the ecosystem of technologies? This article from the Edge explores a bit further
"Specific technologies are like individuals, or species, and the society or ecosystem of these individuals is the technium. I'm especially interested in how the technium works at the system level — how it operates as an ecology of technological species, as a complex web of interacting agents each with their own biases and tendencies.

The emergent system of the technium — what we often mean by 'Technology' with a capital T — has its own inherent agenda and urges, as does any large complex system, indeed, as does life itself. That is, an individual technological organism has one kind of response, but in an ecology comprised of co-evolving species of technology we find an elevated entity — the technium — that behaves very differently from an individual species. The technium is a superorganism of technology. It has its own force that it exerts. That force is part cultural (influenced by and influencing of humans), but it's also partly non-human, partly indigenous to the physics of technology itself. That's the part that is scary and interesting."
It is actually strangely redolent of Walter Wink's characterising of the Powers and definitely links to the thinking I'm attempting on emergent structures in human social interaction.... And a bit later on is a quotable bit which pretty much sums up why I like scifi and counterfactual novels: "Hollywood and science fiction authors are the new theologians. They've been asking these essential existential questions way ahead of the rest of society."
And here's a really intriguing thought about the way that technology has been 'symbiotic' with human culture for ages and its been positive because it has opened up freedoms and opportunities: "These opportunities, these freedoms, are a very powerful force. Imagine a great artist like Mozart born before the possibility of a piano, or orchestra — what a loss that would have been. Or if Hitchcock had been born before the technology of film had been invented. Or Van Gogh before cheap oil paints. Undoubtedly those giants would have done their best with whatever they had — perhaps Beethoven on drums, Van Gogh with charcoal. But we honor them in part because in some unfathomable way they were able to realize their true genius by finding a perfect match with their tools — tools that are possibilities and choices manifested."
Edge 217: