Kevin Kelly Quotes & Sayings

Life is the ultimate technology. Machine technology is a temporary surrogate for life technology. As we improve our machines they will become more organic, more biological, more like life, because life is the best technology for living. — Kevin Kelly

The way that organizations and organisms anticipate the future is by taking signals from the past, most the time. — Kevin Kelly

Each organism's environment, for the most part, consists of other organisms. — Kevin Kelly

Entrepreneurship is about freedom, financial freedom but it also about what you leave behind.
Guibert Englebienne, Co-founder of Globant — Kevin Kelly

What excites the media is that someone has a great idea or vision and makes millions as a result. The reality is that rarely happens. It is competency that unlocks a person's potential.
Tim Clark excerpt from DO! the pursuit of xceptional execution — Kevin Kelly

Every year I own less of what I use. Possession — Kevin Kelly

Everything that we are making, we are making more and more complex. — Kevin Kelly

But in a turbulent environment the change is so widespread that it just routes around any kind of central authority. So it is best to manage the bottom-up change rather than try to institute it from the top down. — Kevin Kelly

Technological advances could allow us to see more clearly into our own lives. — Kevin Kelly

Seeing our world through technology's eyes has, for me, illuminated its larger purpose. And recognizing what it wants has reduced much of my own conflict in deciding where to place myself in its embrace. This book is my report on what technology wants. My hope is that it will help others find their own way to optimize technology's blessings and minimize its costs. — Kevin Kelly

This is the culmination of a lot of people's vision. I think this is just another step towards making Central Michigan football among the elite programs in the Mid-American Conference. — Kevin Kelly

I work in a "you scratch my back, and I'll stab yours" kind of a place. — Kevin Kelly

A single thread of self generation ties the cosmos, the bios, and the technos together into one creation. Humans are not the culmination of this trajectory but an intermediary, smack in the middle between the born and the made ... The arc of complexity and open-ended creation in the last four billion years is nothing compared to what lies ahead. — Kevin Kelly

The accretion of tiny marvels can numb us to the arrival of the stupendous. — Kevin Kelly

Technology is anything that doesn't work yet. — Kevin Kelly

It is easy to make a dollar but it is hard to make a difference. — Kevin Kelly

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

The proper response to a lousy idea is not to stop thinking. It is to come up with a better idea. — Kevin Kelly

There is no "I" for a person, for a beehive, for a corporation, for an animal, for a nation, for any living thing. The "I" of a vivisystem is a ghost, an ephemeral shroud. — Kevin Kelly

Since a relationship involves two members investing in it, its value increases twice as fast as one's investment. — Kevin Kelly

The daily grinding of evolution, as accelerated by technology, churns out more and more complex organisms, with higher rates of energy use, and with increasing specialization. Minds are the ideal way to express complexity, energy density, increasing specialization, expanding diversity
all in one system. Mindedness is what evolution produces. Mindedness is what technology wants, too. — Kevin Kelly

Softball isn't just a game it's away of life. — Kevin Kelly

Managers tend to treat organizations as if they are infinitely plastic. They hire and fire, merge, downsize, terminate programs, add capacities. But there are limits to the shifts that organizations can absorb. — Kevin Kelly

The system continually has to make this choice: it can either continue to exploit a known process and make it more productive, or it can explore a new process at the cost of being less efficient. — Kevin Kelly

Much of outcomes research is a systematic attempt to exploit what is known and make it better. — Kevin Kelly

The most interesting thing about change in the environment is that for the most part the environment isn't changing. — Kevin Kelly

The new OS is neither the classic communism of centralized planning without private property nor the undiluted selfish chaos of a free market. Instead, it is an emerging design space in which decentralized public coordination can solve problems and create things that neither pure communism nor pure capitalism can. — Kevin Kelly

The nature of an innovation is that it will arise at a fringe where it can afford to become prevalent enough to establish its usefulness without being overwhelmed by the inertia of the orthodox system. — Kevin Kelly

We are reaching deep within ourselves to adjust the master knob. — Kevin Kelly

This is actually a very important principle that science is learning about large systems like evolution and that futurists are learning about anticipating human society: just because a future scenario is plausible doesn't mean we can get there from here. — Kevin Kelly

So I now see upgrading as a type of hygiene: You do it regularly to keep your tech healthy. — Kevin Kelly

But when you are embodied in a location, in a physical plant, in a set of people, and in a common history, that constrains your evolution and your ability to evolve in certain directions. — Kevin Kelly

Any believable prediction will be wrong. Any correct prediction will be unbelievable. — Kevin Kelly

Organisms by their design are not made to adapt too far. — Kevin Kelly

When a system is in turbulence, the turbulence is not just out there in the environment, but is a part of the organization or organism that you are looking at. — Kevin Kelly

As far back as 1813, Thomas Jefferson understood that ideas were not really property, or if they were property they differed from real estate. He wrote, "He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me." If — Kevin Kelly

Your greatest job is shedding what you don't have to do. — Kevin Kelly

We're just at the beginning of the beginning of all these kind of changes. There's a sense that all the big things have happened, but relatively speaking, nothing big has happened yet. In 20 years from now we'll look back and say, 'Well, nothing really happened in the last 20 years.' — Kevin Kelly

An organization's reason for being, like that of any organism, is to help the parts that are in relationship to each other, to be able to deal with change in the environment. — Kevin Kelly

Singularity is the point at which "all the change in the last million years will be superseded by the change in the next five minutes." — Kevin Kelly

In a broad systems sense, an organism's environment is indistinguishable from the organism itself. — Kevin Kelly

Each system is trying to anticipate change in the environment. — Kevin Kelly

The smallest thought could not exist unless the entire universe and the laws of physics were in some way encouraging it. — Kevin Kelly

What is clearly happening inside this glass capsule is happening less clearly at a great scale on Earth in the closing years of this millennium. The realm of the born - all that is nature - and the realm of the made - all that is humanly constructed - are becoming one. Machines are becoming biological and the biological is becoming engineered. That's banking on some ancient — Kevin Kelly

For better or worse, our lives are accelerating, and the only speed fast enough is instant. — Kevin Kelly

the journey of going from 'I' to 'We'. "When two indigenous Quechuans meet sixteen thousand feet atop a mountain in Peru for the first time, often they set a challenge. Let's say the challenge is a race. In their society, whoever wins the race is duty bound to coach the loser until he has attained a similar competency. In return, the loser teaches the victor a new skill. This interdependence helps both people. Both win, as does society. Ayni, the art of reciprocation, ensures that their society as a whole grows together. — Kevin Kelly

Yet the paradox of science is that every answer breeds at least two new questions. More tools, more answers, ever more questions. — Kevin Kelly

Find the minimum amount of technology that will maximize your options. — Kevin Kelly

Get the ongoing process right and it will keep generating ongoing benefits. In our new era, processes trump products. This — Kevin Kelly

Our existence here, he says, is a case of "not we the accidental but we the expected." Mathematician Manfred Eigen wrote in 1971, "The evolution of life, if it is based on a derivable physical principle, must be considered an inevitable process. — Kevin Kelly

Complexity that works is built up out of modules that work perfectly, layered one over the other. — Kevin Kelly

All these computers, all these handhelds, all these cell phones, all these laptops, all these servers - what we're getting out of all these connections is we're getting one machine ... We're constructing a single, global machine. — Kevin Kelly

Clearly, we are self-made. We are the first technology. We are part inventor and part the invented — Kevin Kelly

Paranoia is acceptable in the new friendship paradigm. Worrying that your best employees or customers might leave is ok, as long as you put in place an active strategy to offset any possibility of that scenario. — Kevin Kelly

It's about how to deal with the idea killer in your own head, the part of your brain where fear and knowledge keep you from executing the brilliant ideas your mind generates every day. — Kevin Kelly

The most certain thing you can say about the environment tomorrow is that it probably is going to be just like today, for the most part. — Kevin Kelly

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

Nearly every aspect of modern civilization has been flattening down except one: money. Minting money is one of the last jobs left for a central government that most political parties agree is legitimate. It takes a central bank to battle the perennial scourges of counterfeit and fraud. Someone has to regulate the amount of money issued, keep track of the serial numbers, ensure that the money is trusted. A robust currency requires accuracy, coordination, security, enforcement - and an institution that takes responsibility for all those. Thus behind every currency stands a watchful central bank. — Kevin Kelly

Changing things from the top down works when things are stable. — Kevin Kelly

Well, here's what you can do, and that's about it. — Kevin Kelly

In the context of your dreams,knowledge will always gives you enough reasons not to act. Act regardless and execute xceptionally — Kevin Kelly

A complaint is a unique opportunity to strengthen the relationship with the client. — Kevin Kelly

once we wrapped the globe in endless circles of wires crossing the deserts and beneath the oceans, decentralization was not only possible, but inevitable. — Kevin Kelly

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. — Kevin Kelly

A brain is a society of very small, simple modules that cannot be said to be thinking, that are not smart in themselves. But when you have a network of them together, out of that arises a kind of smartness. — Kevin Kelly

The young are always coming up with the good ideas; it's because they waste time. They follow their passion and do something, not looking for a payoff, just doing what's interesting. — Kevin Kelly

One of the functions of an organization, of any organism, is to anticipate the future, so that those relationships can persist over time. — Kevin Kelly

It has become evident that the primary lesson of the study of evolution is that all evolution is coevolution: every organism is evolving in tandem with the organisms around it. — Kevin Kelly

The current understanding was that it was impossible to predict how something would evolve because it was a very turbulent environment full of things interacting with each other. — Kevin Kelly

Questioning is simply more powerful than answering. — Kevin Kelly

All imaginable futures are not equally possible. — Kevin Kelly

What technology is really about is better ways to evolve. That is what we call an 'infinite game.' ... A finite game is played to win, and an infinite game is played to keep playing. — Kevin Kelly

An organization is a set of relationships that are persistent over time. — Kevin Kelly

Long ago I learned that even the most inanimate things we know of - stone, iron columns, copper pipes, gravel roads, a piece of paper - won't last very long without attention and fixing and the loan of additional order. Existence, it seems, is chiefly maintenance. What — Kevin Kelly

Since it is the last scarcity, wherever attention flows, money will follow. — Kevin Kelly

It's generally much easier to kill an organization than to change it substantially. — Kevin Kelly

The great advance of personal computers was not the computing power per se but the fact that it brought it right to your face, that you had control over it, that were confronted with it and could steer it. — Kevin Kelly

Technology is all the accumulated usefulness that our minds invent. — Kevin Kelly

We are infected by our own misunderstanding of how our own minds work. — Kevin Kelly

You'll always have enough reasons not to execute, not to do: not enough time, not enough money, not enough will or skill.But what matters isn't what you lack. What matters isn't your idea but what you do with it. What will you do? — Kevin Kelly

In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention." Simon's insight is often reduced to "In a world of abundance, the only scarcity is human attention." Our — Kevin Kelly

The organization and the environment are in concert. — Kevin Kelly

Managing bottom-up change is its own art. — Kevin Kelly

The way to build a complex system that works is to build it from very simple systems that work. — Kevin Kelly

Tim believes that entrepreneurship isn't based on an idea or a plan, or even a model - it is based on having a strong competency in something. The way to overcome fear, he claims, is by testing your competency. — Kevin Kelly

Ironically, the best questions are not questions that lead to answers, because answers are on their way to becoming cheap and plentiful. A good question is worth a million good answers. A — Kevin Kelly

We tend to think of the mind of an organization residing in the CEO and the organization's top managers, perhaps with the help of outside consultants that they call in. But that is not really how an organization thinks. — Kevin Kelly

Preserve the core, and let the rest flux. In their wonderful bestseller Built to Last, authors James Collins and Jerry Porras make a convincing argument that long-lived companies are able to thrive 50 years or more by retaining a very small heart of unchanging values, and then stimulating progress in everything else. At times "everything" includes changing the business the company operates in, migrating, say, from mining to insurance. Outside the core of values, nothing should be exempt from flux. Nothing. — Kevin Kelly

Books were good at developing a contemplative mind. Screens encourage more utilitarian thinking. A — Kevin Kelly

My father sometimes asks me if I feel untethered and irresponsible not owning anything. I tell him I feel the opposite: I feel a deep connection to the primeval. I feel like an ancient hunter-gatherer who owns nothing as he wends his way through the complexities of nature, conjuring up a tool just in time for its use and then leaving it behind as he moves on. It is the farmer who needs a barn for his accumulation. The digital native is free to race ahead and explore the unknown. Accessing rather than owning keeps me agile and fresh, ready for whatever is next. — Kevin Kelly

And they discovered something very interesting: when it comes to walking, most of the ant's thinking and decision-making is not in its brain at all. It's distributed. It's in its legs. — Kevin Kelly

There is nothing to be found in a beehive that is not submerged in a bee. And yet you can search a bee forever with cyclotron and fluoroscope, and you will never find the hive. — Kevin Kelly

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

But in fact, when you try to model that on a computer you find that because of the very structure of matter and of the chemical bonds that are the basis of every organism, evolution is not random at all. It will tend to follow certain paths. — Kevin Kelly

Wherever the Net arises, there arises also a rebel to resist human control ... A network nurtures small failures in order that large failures don't happen as often. It is ... fertile ground for learning, adaptation, and evolution ... The only organization capable of unprejudiced growth, or unguided learning, is a network. All other topologies limit what can happen. — Kevin Kelly

Humans are the reproductive organs of technology. — Kevin Kelly

Technology is anything that was invented after you were born. — Kevin Kelly

An organization's intelligence is distributed to the point of being ubiquitous. — Kevin Kelly

Organizations get invested into a particular product. And sometimes the best thing is to stop making that product, even though it's profitable, because it has optimized at a local peak. — Kevin Kelly

Evolution doesn't care about what makes sense; it cares about what works — Kevin Kelly