If that metaphor holds, then humans are dominated by a human-created structure, not by something created by technology.
[EDIT: but also, most humans alive on earth today experience domination at the hands of other human beings, not Kelly's Technium or any similar concept, even if technology is used to carry that out]
A couple hundred years ago, this structure barely existed, and would not come about without humans.
About 50 years ago we began seeing pieces of the structure operate independently, without human involvement, in very limited areas and circumstances, e.g. welding pieces of cars together.
We are approaching or have already reached a point today where more of the structure operates without direct human involvement than with.
In other words, a computer can mostly design a microchip and build a factory to manufacture it with limited human involvement, less than half the process being implemented by humans.
When this halfway point is reached, would you still call this structure "human-created", or would you describe it as something else?
Intentionality is really at the core of Kelly's ideas about the Technium. He (sensibly) doesn't ascribe the Technium with consciousness, but he does assert that as an entity, it possesses something identical to or closely akin to intentionality.
I don't personally agree with Kelly about much of his Technium thesis (although some of his observations are fascinating). But even I were to agree about the Technium having intentionality, I don't think that even Kelly would claim that the current manifestation of that bears much sign of it. What we have now wasn't created by the Technium, for the Technium, it was created by humans, for humans, utilizing machines for purposes we define.
It could be that in 1000 years someone will look back and see the Technium's own designs visible in these things, but for now I would say they are at least invisible and most likely non-existent.
Because of this, I will continue to view the technological world as "human created", certainly for as long as it serves human intents rather than those of the (putative) Technium.
>Technium with consciousness, but he does assert that as an entity, it possesses something identical to or closely akin to intentionality.
Average human brain has about 100 billion cells, according to some source.
Number of Internet-connected devices is approaching 1 billion, and each device is in some ways more capable than one brain cell.
The capability of these beings has gone from nothing beyond exact repetition to playing chess and controlling entire systems with humans as elements of the system.
They are still children, because they are immature, still developing very quickly, and still unable to reproduce independently.
A new being has come into existence. It is gradually developing ideas and intentions. Just as with bio-life, eventually the beings which just happen to have a tendency to self-reproduce and have "motivation" to perservere will win out over other kinds.
Intentionality and consciousness are demonstrably not the result of simple aggregation. You acknowledge this, I think, with the phrase "each device is in some ways more capable than one brain cell". That may be true, but the devices are not linked (and I would suggest, are not likely ever to be linked) in ways that would make them powerful the way neurons are.
They are not children. The do not develop. Individual instances are semantically prototypes which are destroyed or powered down, and the information gained from their existence is used by humans to create new ones. There is no "evolution" because there is no mechanism for variation beyond that which we, as humans, introduce. These machines are the perfect material for an intelligent design argument (one to which I do not subscribe). I do not see them as counterparts to, let alone examples of, biological evolution and development.
I do not subscribe to these attempts to find correspondences between whatever our current understanding of life/the brain/consciousness is and whatever current technology we have on hand. In the 1800s, people were doing this with hydraulics and gearing. Today, we're doing it with computers. It's so transparently parochial.
I don't doubt the theoretical potential for life as well as consciousness to exist on a non-biological substrate. I do very much doubt that the IoT is that substrate, and ditto for AlphaFoobar, GPT-N or whatever other computational marvel one might point to.
[EDIT: but also, most humans alive on earth today experience domination at the hands of other human beings, not Kelly's Technium or any similar concept, even if technology is used to carry that out]