As a practical matter I’ve learned to seek the minimum amount of technology for myself that will create the maximum amount of choices for myself and … - Kevin Kelly
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As a practical matter I’ve learned to seek the minimum amount of technology for myself that will create the maximum amount of choices for myself and others. The cybernetician Heinz von Foerster called this approach the Ethical Imperative, and he put it this way: “Always act to increase the number of choices.” The way we can use technologies to increase choices for others is by encouraging science, innovation, education, literacies, and pluralism. In my own experience this principle has never failed: In any game, increase your options.
Kevin Kelly (born 1952) is the founding executive editor of Wired magazine, and a former editor/publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog. Kelly is considered an expert in digital culture, and is said to have helped make technology part of popular culture.
Biography information from
Wikiquote·
Portrait adapted from
Wikimedia Commons, Christopher Michel (CC BY)
To maximize innovation, maximize the fringes. Encourage borders, outskirts, and temporary isolation where the voltage of difference can spark the new. The principle of skunk works plays a vital role in the network economy. By definition a network is one huge edge. It has no fixed center. As the network grows it holds increasing opportunities for protected backwaters where innovations can hatch, out of view but plugged in. Once fine-tuned, the innovation can replicate wildly. The global dimensions of the network economy means that an advance can be spread quickly and completely through the globe. The World Wide Web itself was created this way. The first software for the web was written in the relative obscurity of an academic research station in Geneva, Switzerland. Once it was up and running in their own labs in 1991, it spread within six months to computers all around the world.
Most overnight successes — in fact, any significant successes — take at least 5 years. Budget your life accordingly.
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Experience is overrated. Most breakthrough accomplishments were done by people doing them for the first time. Therefore when hiring, hire for aptitude and attitude and then train for skills.
