Beyond the Architecture of the Technium

One of the most misunderstood aspects when we talk about artificial intelligence is our relationship with this technology. Between those who claim that “it depends on how we use it,” those who repeat the mantra of human–machine collaboration, and those who foresee dystopias of total submission, we lose sight of a crucial fact: every technology has an architecture that imposes itself on our cognitive categories, reshaping our perception of the body, of our environment—and, in the case of the network and AI, extending our very nervous system.

McLuhan and the Mortal Extensions

In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), McLuhan had already outlined this dynamic with astonishing clarity: every medium is an extension of the human body, yet every extension also implies an amputation. We are therefore forced to numb our senses so as not to collapse under the constant stimulation of information streaming from our smartphones, televisions—our technological extensions.

“Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit by taking a lease on our eyes, ears, and nerves, we really have no rights left.”
— Marshall McLuhan

Isn’t this the perfect description of our social platforms and today’s algorithmic reality—of artificial intelligence itself as an extension (and manipulation) of our shared cognitive environment?

The Technium of Kelly: A Smiling Determinism

Let’s return to the central point: technology follows its own evolutionary arc through an architecture that imposes itself on our cognitive categories—in a dialectical relation with our biological and mental structures. For pure determinists like Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired, this relation is absolute: we have entered a new environment in which technology is the dominant force.

Kelly coined the term “Technium” to describe “the global, interconnected system of technologies” which, in his view, functions like a living organism: “The Technium is an extension of the human mind, and therefore an extension of life itself—and by extension, of the physical and chemical self-organization that gave rise to life.”

“The inventions of our mind pervade the world so deeply that they have become like an autonomous organism. These are interconnected entities that self-perpetuate and self-amplify.”
— Kevin Kelly

According to Kelly, most human inventions would be inevitable: if we reset life on Earth, we would eventually evolve back to the same technological point.

His core thesis is radical: “About 10,000 years ago, humans crossed a point of no return where their ability to modify the biosphere surpassed the planet’s ability to modify them. That moment marked the birth of the Technium. Now we are crossing a second threshold—where the Technium’s capacity to modify us surpasses our ability to modify it.”

The Truth Lies in Between (But the Medium Is the Message): AI and the Cognitive Hive

For me, the answer lies in an intermediate position—but not a reassuring one. Technology and its development—and, most importantly, its effect on us—are inscribed in its own architecture, or, more simply: in how, why, and by whom it was imagined and designed. Yet this is not pure technological determinism: evolution unfolds precisely through its relation with us, with our biological architecture.

This is not a compromise but a third ontological path—one that recognizes how, from the deep hybridization between technological and biological architectures, a completely new system emerges, with properties belonging to neither of the two alone.

The notion that “it depends on how we use technology” presupposes a neutrality that simply doesn’t exist. Every technology carries within it an architecture—an embedded logic of meanings, constraints, and tendencies—that imposes itself on our cognitive categories. The mere existence of digital infrastructures and data-exchange networks shapes our behavior regardless of intention. As McLuhan would say, the medium is already the message.

Minsky’s “Society of Mind”: The AI Prophecy of the Hive

Marvin Minsky, co-founder of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, had already envisioned this collective dimension of mind back in 1986. In his The Society of Mind, Minsky described intelligence not as a single entity but as “a vast society of individually simple processes, called agents.” As he wrote: “What magical trick makes us intelligent? The trick is that there is no trick. The power of intelligence stems from our diversity, not from any single, perfect principle.”

For Minsky, the mind is composed of “many little parts, each mindless by itself.” Mindless agents that, through cooperation, produce emergent intelligence—a society within.

But what happens when that metaphor is reversed? When we become the mindless agents of a collective artificial intelligence? When Minsky’s “Society of Mind” turns into a society of minds—a hive of human consciousness reduced to computational nodes?

It is here that Minsky’s metaphor becomes prophetic—and deeply unsettling. In 1986, he described how mindless agents, working within a specific architecture, could generate individual intelligence. Today, in 2025, we witness the inverse process: intelligent individuals, embedded in a specific technological architecture—platforms, algorithms, BCIs—becoming mindless agents of a collective intelligence they do not control. The emerging society of minds is not ours; it is one engineered by Big Tech to maximize profit through behavioral predictability.

This inversion perfectly illustrates why we speak of a third emergent system. We are no longer individuals using tools (the sociological narrative), nor passive spectators of autonomous technological forces (the deterministic narrative). We have become components of a hybrid system whose emergent properties—the cognitive hive—are qualitatively different from both technology itself and pre-technological humanity.

Brain–Computer Interfaces (BCIs) are the most literal manifestation of this hybridization. Neural interfaces create direct links between the brain and external devices, bypassing muscles and peripheral nerves. This is no longer science fiction: we are building a direct bridge between human consciousness and algorithmic architecture.

But who controls this architecture? Who defines the parameters of this global cognitive hive? Here, the question of “architecture” reveals its crucial political dimension.

Tech Surveillance and AI: The Big Brother Is Not the State — It’s Worse

These technologies were not developed by an Orwellian State driven by control, but by Big Tech—because capitalism still rules. We are consumers, and what better way to predict our choices and tastes than by turning us into a homogenized mass with the same needs?

Shoshana Zuboff gave this system a name: surveillance capitalism. Our data become “behavioral surplus,” transformed by AI into “predictive products” traded in the marketplace of future behavior.

The result? A vast interconnected hive where individuals act as parts of a collective intelligence stripped of creativity and freedom. A social architecture where the values of reciprocity are replaced by the predictive function of certainty.

The Feedback Loop of Homogenization

Recommendation algorithms powered by AI don’t just predict our choices—they shape, reinforce, and normalize them. Through engineered feedback loops, we are conditioned toward predictable preferences, standardized desires, and uniform needs.

Even more paradoxically, we are no longer consumers in the traditional sense. We are simultaneously raw-data mines, experimental subjects for model refinement, and the end-market for hyper-targeted advertising. A triple reification that Marx himself could scarcely have imagined, even in his darkest nightmares.

Conclusion: From the Inner Hive to the Global Hive

Humanity before artificial intelligence is already extinct—not because AI is conscious or malevolent, but because it has irreversibly altered our cognitive structures, our modes of relation, and our decision-making processes.

Minsky understood that the mind functions as a society of simple agents. But that metaphor has now inverted: we are no longer internal societies generating individual intelligence. We ourselves have become mindless agents of a collective intelligence controlled by others.

As McLuhan would say, we have been “narcotized” by our technological extensions. As Kelly would note, the Technium has already passed the point of no return. As Zuboff documents, we are nodes in a hive serving private economic interests, not the common good.

We have become passive nodes within a collective mind—not a democratic or liberating collectivity, but one designed to maximize profit through behavioral predictability. We are more connected than ever, yet less free. More informed, yet more manipulated. More technologically empowered, yet more cognitively vulnerable.

Recognizing that technology is neither neutral nor autonomous means accepting that we must act within this relationship, not at its margins.

This brings us to the deepest question: the transposition of social architecture—inseparable from the biological—into the new digital meta-environment. An ecosystem where the boundary no longer lies between human and machine, but between freedom and control.

The limit, as always, is power. And the inevitable question is: who controls the architecture of the relationship?

So far, the answer is clear—and disheartening: Big Tech, for profit. Not a political Big Brother with some semblance of democratic accountability, but a surveillance capitalism that turns our very human experience into raw material for value extraction.