Kevin Kelly > Quotes

“Humans are the reproductive organs of technology.”
― Kevin Kelly, What Technology Wants

“...the proper response to a lousy idea is not to stop thinking. It is to come up with a better idea.”
― Kevin Kelly, What Technology Wants

“A good question is not concerned with a correct answer. A good question cannot be answered immediately. A good question challenges existing answers. A good question is one you badly want answered once you hear it, but had no inkling you cared before it was asked. A good question creates new territory of thinking. A good question reframes its own answers. A good question is the seed of innovation in science, technology, art, politics, and business. A good question is a probe, a what-if scenario. A good question skirts on the edge of what is known and not known, neither silly nor obvious. A good question cannot be predicted. A good question will be the sign of an educated mind. A good question is one that generates many other good questions. A good question may be the last job a machine will learn to do. A good question is what humans are for.  •”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“Extrapolated, technology wants what life wants:
Increasing efficiency
Increasing opportunity
Increasing emergence
Increasing complexity
Increasing diversity
Increasing specialization
Increasing ubiquity
Increasing freedom
Increasing mutualism
Increasing beauty
Increasing sentience
Increasing structure
Increasing evolvability”
― Kevin Kelly, What Technology Wants

“Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening.” Indeed,”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“When copies are free, you need to sell things that cannot be copied. Well, what can’t be copied? Trust, for instance.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“Trust is earned in drops and lost in buckets. Unwavering honesty will help seal in trust.”
― Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier

“‎What color is a chameleon placed on a mirror?
...
The chameleon responding to its own shifting image is an apt analog of the human world of fashion. Taken as a whole, what are fads but the response of a hive mind to its own reflection?
In a 21st-century society wired into instantaneous networks, marketing is the mirror; the collective consumer is the chameleon.”
― Kevin Kelly, Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World

“Don’t treat people as bad as they are. Treat them as good as you are.”
― Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier

“This is not a race against the machines. If we race against them, we lose. This is a race with the machines. You’ll be paid in the future based on how well you work with robots. Ninety percent of your coworkers will be unseen machines.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“Our mission as humans is not only to discover our fullest selves in the technium, and to find full contentment, but to expand the possibilities for others. Greater technology will selfishly unleash our talents, but it will also unselfishly unleash others: our children, and all children to come.”
― Kevin Kelly, What Technology Wants

“Some scholars of literature claim that a book is really that virtual place your mind goes to when you are reading. It is a conceptual state of imagination that one might call “literature space.” According to these scholars, when you are engaged in this reading space, your brain works differently than when you are screening. Neurological studies show that learning to read changes the brain’s circuitry. Instead of skipping around distractedly gathering bits, when you read you are transported, focused, immersed.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“It’s possible that a not-so-smart person who can communicate well can do much better than a super-smart person who can’t communicate well.That is good news because it is much easier to improve your communication skills than your intelligence.”
― Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier

“If today’s social media has taught us anything about ourselves as a species, it is that the human impulse to share overwhelms the human impulse for privacy.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“While anonymity can be used to protect heroes, it is far more commonly used as a way to escape responsibility.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“We are morphing so fast that our ability to invent new things outpaces the rate we can civilize them.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“we’ve been redefining what it means to be human. Over the past 60 years, as mechanical processes have replicated behaviors and talents we thought were unique to humans, we’ve had to change our minds about what sets us apart. As we invent more species of AI, we will be forced to surrender more of what is supposedly unique about humans. Each step of surrender—we are not the only mind that can play chess, fly a plane, make music, or invent a mathematical law—will be painful and sad. We’ll spend the next three decades—indeed, perhaps the next century—in a permanent identity crisis, continually asking ourselves what humans are good for. If we aren’t unique toolmakers, or artists, or moral ethicists, then what, if anything, makes us special? In the grandest irony of all, the greatest benefit of an everyday, utilitarian AI will not be increased productivity or an economics of abundance or a new way of doing science—although all those will happen. The greatest benefit of the arrival of artificial intelligence is that AIs will help define humanity. We need AIs to tell us who we are.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“The kind of intelligent book club discussion as now happens on the book sharing site Goodreads might follow the book itself and become more deeply embedded into the book via hyperlinks. So when a person cites a particular passage, a two-way link connects the comment to the passage and the passage to the comment. Even a minor good work could accumulate a wiki-like set of critical comments tightly bound to the actual text.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“Since it is the last scarcity, wherever attention flows, money will follow.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“The smallest thought could not exist unless the entire universe and the laws of physics were in some way encouraging it.”
― Kevin Kelly, What Technology Wants

“Instead of asking your child what they learned today, ask them who they helped today.”
― Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier

“Habit is far more dependable
than inspiration. Make progress by making habits. Don’t focus on getting into shape. Focus on becoming the kind of person
who never misses a workout.”
― Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier

“The more you are interested in others
the more interesting they’ll find you. To be interesting, be interested.”
― Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier

“Learn how to learn
from those you disagree with
or even offend you. See if you can find
the truth in what they believe.”
― Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier

“Separate the processes of creating
from improving. You can’t write and edit
or sculpt and polish
or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don’t select. While you sketch, don’t inspect. While you write the first draft, don’t reflect. At the start, the creator mind must be
unleashed from judgment.”
― Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier

“In fact, the business plans of the next 10,000 startups are easy to forecast: Take X and add AI. Find something that can be made better by adding online smartness to it. An”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“A lack of responsibility unleashes the worst in us. There’s”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“Listening well is a superpower. While listening to someone you love
keep asking them
“Is there more?”
until there is no more.”
― Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier

“Anger is not the proper response to anger. When you see someone angry
you are seeing their pain. Compassion
is the proper response to anger.”
― Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier

“Evolution doesn't care about what makes sense; it cares about what works”
― Kevin Kelly, Bootstrapping Complexity