Kevin Kelly Quotes

The web holds about a trillion pages. The human brain holds about a hundred billion neurons. Each biological neuron sprouts synaptic links to thousands of other neurons, while each web page on average links to 60 other pages. That adds up to a trillion “synapses” between the static pages on the web. The human brain has about 100 times that number of links — but brains are not doubling in size every few years. The global machine is.

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

Avoid hitting the snooze button. That’s just training you to oversleep.

When we permit any object to transmit a small amount of data and to receive input from its neighborhood, we change an inert object into an animated node.

Following the free also works in the other direction. If one way to increase product value is to make products free, then many things now free may contain potential value not yet perceived.

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.

We tend to overrate the value of intelligence. You need to pair your IQ with other virtues. The most important things in life can not be attained through logic only.

On the dashboard of every gasoline car is a symbol of gas pump with a little arrow. The arrow points to the side of the car that accesses your gas tank. Remember this when you borrow or rent a car.

Things do not need to be perfect to be wonderful. Especially weddings.

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.

If you are looking for something in your house and you finally find it, when you’re done with it, don’t put it back where you found it. Put it back where you first looked for it.

Take note if you find yourself wondering “Where is my good knife?” or “Where is my good pen?” That means you have bad ones. Get rid of those.

(The pseudo- and parasciences are nothing less, in fact, than small pools of knowledge that are not connected to the large network of science. They are valid only in their own network.)

Greater personalization requires greater transparency. Absolute personalization (vanity) requires absolute transparency (no privacy). If I prefer to remain private and opaque to potential friends and institutions, then I must accept I will be treated generically, without regard to my specific particulars. I’ll be an average number.

You really don’t want to be famous. Read the biography of any famous person.