Technologies whose primary function is to create, improve, or control other technologies. These are the tools that build tools. Think: AI that designs more efficient AI chips, nanotechnology assemblers that build quantum computers, or simulation platforms that test the societal impact of new inventions before they're built. They're force multipliers for innovation, but also create a dizzying recursion where the pace of change is driven by machines we increasingly can't understand.
Example: "Their startup's product was a meta-technology: a self-improving code optimizer. You'd feed it any software, and it would rewrite its own algorithms to better rewrite other algorithms. It made their app infinitely faster and also completely incomprehensible to the original developers." Meta-Technologies
by Abzugal January 30, 2026
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