There's this line that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature (iirc Karl Schroeder spin on the Clarke law). I think we're already close to that. All tech is quasi-converging to a basic biology-like stack. There's still vast variety of course.
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Supervenience order:
materials > mechanical > power system > thermal regulation > sensing/actuating > electronics > computing > AI
biochemistry > structure/morphology > energy/feeding > sensing/actuating > peripheral nervous system > CNS/brain-stem > cortex and above
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include communications in computing
not everything has all the layers, but something like the curiosity rover for eg. is pretty much a complete cross-section of all "tech"
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supervenience ref... I find it a useful philosophy concept when I want to get more precise in thinking about ideas like stacks/layers/above-and-below. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superveni.
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Like, we think of "AI" and "robots" as sectors of technology, but the moment you start adding autonomy, sensing, and compute to any engineered artifact, it's basically a full-stack robot. Whether it's a vacuum or a robot, or a blade in a cloud rack, or a pressure cooker
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I've been interested in the contours of the 4th or 5th industrial revolution depending on how you count, and I think it's the birth of technological "life" in some crude sense. When everything from screwdrivers to mars rovers acquires a life-form like quality. Sirius Cybernetics.
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