The science fiction legend Arthur C. Clarke coined the oft-cited phrase, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. There have been many remixes over the years, and a new favorite is, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature” which came up in a podcast interview with Dr. Angus Harvey (who is the writer of Future Crunch, one of my favorite newsletters on the net).

We typically think of technology as something that is apart from nature; the more advanced technology is the further it gets away from a natural state. I really like this phrase because it flips the traditional paradigm on its head. Perhaps instead of technology being a continuous march away from where we came from, it should be convergent upon that very thing. How would the world be different if we took that mindset more frequently?