Quotes from 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.

The only factor becoming scarce in a world of abundance is human attention.

A world without discomfort is utopia. But it is also stagnant. A world perfectly fair in some dimensions would be horribly unfair in others. A utopia has no problems to solve, but therefore no opportunities either.

Don't treat people as bad as they are. Treat them as good as you are.

Our greatest invention in the past 200 years was not a particular gadget or tool but the invention of the scientific process itself.

Simon's insight is often reduced to "In a world of abundance, the only scarcity is human attention.

Not only did we fail to imagine what the web would become, we still don't see it today. We are oblivious to the miracle it has blossomed into. Twenty years after its birth the immense scope of the web is hard to fathom. The total number of web pages, including those that are dynamically created upon request, exceeds 60 trillion. That's almost 10,000 pages per person alive. And this entire cornucopia has been created in less than 8,000 days.

As a tool, evolution is good for three things: How to get somewhere you want but can't find the route to. How to get to somewhere you can't imagine. How to open up entirely new places to get to

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

A fact is interesting, an idea is important, but only a story, a good argument, a well-crafted narrative is amazing, never to be forgotten.

Our lives are already significantly more complex than even five years ago. We need to pay attention to far more sources in order to do our jobs, to learn, to parent, or even to be entertained. The number of factors and possibilities we have to attend to rises each year almost exponentially. Thus our seemingly permanently distracted state and our endless flitting from one thing to another is not a sign of disaster, but is a necessary adaptation to this current environment.

Every self is an argument trying to prove its identity

Trust is earned in drops and lost in buckets. Unwavering honesty will help seal in trust.

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.

You'll simply plug into the grid and get AI as if it was electricity. It will enliven inert objects, much as electricity did more than a century past.

Because of technology everything we make is always in the process of becoming. Every kind of thing is becoming something else, while it churns from "might" to "is." All is flux. Nothing is finished. Nothing is done. This never-ending change is the pivotal axis of the modern world.

In other words, science is a method that chiefly expands our ignorance rather than our knowledge.

Learn how to learn from those you disagree with or even offend you. See if you can find the truth in what they believe.

Listening well is a superpower. While listening to someone you love keep asking them "Is there more?" until there is no more.

The only things that are increasing in cost while everything else heads to zero are human experiences—which cannot be copied. Everything

The problems of today were caused by yesterday's technological successes, and the technological solutions to today's problems will cause the problems of tomorrow.

While anonymity can be used to protect heroes, it is far more commonly used as a way to escape responsibility. That's why most of the brutal harassment on Twitter, Yik Yak, Reddit, and other sites is delivered anonymously. A lack of responsibility unleashes the worst in us.

Consumers say they don't want to be tracked, but in fact they keep feeding the machine with their data, because they want to claim their benefits. This

If Jefferson gave you his house at Monticello, you'd have his house and he wouldn't. But if he gave you an idea, you'd have the idea and he'd still have the idea. That weirdness is the source of our uncertainty about intellectual property today. For