Interview: Kevin Kelly, Editor, Author, and Futurist

When I want to change my own behavior, I need to repeat little behavior-modifying mantras as reminders. I have found that memorable proverbs give me a way to grab hold of lofty advice. So if I can distill a whole book’s worth of advice into a sentence, that gives me the handle for it, to easily bring the lesson forward when needed. (View Highlight)

But it is important to realize that the technium is not inherently contrary to nature; it is inherently derived from evolution and thus inherently capable of being compatible with nature. (View Highlight)

There are surely new problems generated by social media. We can not use something for hours a day, every day, and have it not affect us. We have hints, but don’t really know. As we discover how it works, a wise society would modulate how this technology is used — by adults and children. As we begin to understand its tendencies, harms and benefits, we can devise incentives to continually re-design the tech to enhance democracy and well-being. All this must be done on the fly, in real time, because what we have learned over the past 100 years is that we can’t figure out, and can’t predict, what technologies will be good for simply by thinking and talking about them. New technologies are so complex they have to be used on the street in order to reveal their actual character. We are likely to guess wrong at first, as we have been wrong in the past when trying to guess what a new technology meant. We can laugh now at the moral panics over the degrading nature of novels, cinema, sports, music, dancing, TV, and comic books (the latter two prohibited in our house when I was growing up), but we know prohibitions never work in the long term. We should engage with social media, because we can only steer technologies while we engage them. Without engagement we don’t get to steer. (View Highlight)