Kevin Kelly Quotes

A good question is worth a million good answers. A good question is like the one Albert Einstein asked himself as a small boy — “What would you see if you were traveling on a beam of light?” That question launched the theory of relativity, E=MC2, and the atomic age. 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.

Rather than steering your life to avoid the unexpected, aim directly for it.

Imagine that seven out of ten working Americans got fired tomorrow. What would they all do? It’s hard to believe you’d have an economy at all if you gave pink slips to more than half the labor force. But that — in slow motion — is what the industrial revolution did to the workforce of the early 19th century. Two hundred years ago, 70 percent of American workers lived on the farm. Today automation has eliminated all but 1 percent of their jobs, replacing them (and their work animals) with machines. But the displaced workers did not sit idle. Instead, automation created hundreds of millions of jobs in entirely new fields. Those who once farmed were now manning the legions of factories that churned out farm equipment, cars, and other industrial products. Since then, wave upon wave of new occupations have arrived — appliance repair person, offset printer, food chemist, photographer, web designer — each building on previous automation. Today, the vast majority of us are doing jobs that no farmer from the 1800s could have imagined.

Dont bother fighting the old; just build the new.

To cultivate a habit switch your language from “I can or can’t do” to “I do or don’t do.”You shift the weight from a wavering choice to an unwavering identity.

Productivity, however, is exactly the wrong thing to care about in the new economy.

The migration from ad hoc use to commercialisation cannot be rushed. To reach ubiquity you have to pass through sharing.

You don’t need more time because you already have all the time that you will ever get; you need more focus.

How many geniuses at the level of Bach and Van Gogh died before the needed technologies were available for their talents to take root?

If you are the smartest person
in the room, you are in the wrong room.

Bit by bit the logic of the network will overtake every we atom we deal with.

Rule of 7 in research: You can find out anything if you are willing to go seven levels. If the first source you ask doesn’t know ask them who you should ask next and so on down the line. If you are willing to go to the seventh source you’ll almost always get your answer.

From the days of Sumerian clay tablets until now, humans have “published” at least 310 million books, 1.4 billion articles and essays, 180 million songs, 3.5 trillion images, 330,000 movies, 1 billion hours of videos, TV shows, and short films, and 60 trillion public web pages.

Decisions like to present themselves as irreversible, like a one-way door. But most deciding points are two-way. Don’t get bogged down by decisions. You can usually back up if needed.

To be rich you don’t need to make more money; you chiefly need to better manage the money already flowing through your hands.