Kevin Kelly

Quotes are word for word from the source.

• The core rule

  “Maintain an incoming flow of attention and money will follow. That is really all you need to know.”

  Our noteKelly emphasizes that capturing and keeping attention is the primary task for any business.

• Blending Virtual and Physical

  “A sweet mashup of virtuality and physical presence is this artwork by Golan Levin . Called Ghost Pole Propagator , it projects a "skeleton" of each visitor onto the stone walls of a castle.”

  Our noteKevin Kelly describes an interactive art installation that blends digital projections with physical environments.

• The goal of authorship

  “As an author I know how many of my purchased books are unread. But while it is nice that people buy books, I feel a failure as an author if the bought (or borrowed) books are not read.”

  Our noteKevin Kelly discusses the frustration of books being purchased but never actually read by the buyers.

• Long term horizon

  “If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you're competing against a lot of people.”

  Our noteKevin Kelly curated Jeff Bezos's thoughts on the competitive advantage of thinking in longer time frames.

• Universal behavior online

  “Well, one lesson we can take from the web today is that any possible behavior is already happening somewhere at least once in the world.”

  Our noteKelly observes that the internet allows us to see the 'long tail' of human behavior.

• Hybrid organizational design

  “The real art of business and organizations in the network economy will not be in harnessing the crowd of "everybody" (simple!) but in finding the appropriate hybrid mix of bottom and top for each niche, at the right time.”

  Our noteKelly defines the core challenge for modern businesses in balancing crowd input with leadership.

• Ignorance slows progress

  “Most of the discoveries about what electricity could do happened without the knowledge of how they worked. That ignorance, of course, drastically slowed down the advances in electrical inventions.”

  Our noteKevin Kelly discusses how early pioneers of electricity lacked a true theory of how it worked.

• Understanding through making

  “What you can't make, you can't understand or tame.”

  Our noteThe philosophy of learning by building rather than just studying theory.

• Audience Ownership

  “Many of the key decisions in publishing today come down to whether you own your audience or not.”

  Our noteKevin Kelly explains why publishers now prioritize authors who already have a following.

• The fulfillment challenge

  “This "fulfillment" aspect of crowdfunding is often overlooked until the end, when it turns out to be the most difficult part of the process for many creators.”

  Our noteKelly warns about the logistical burden of delivering rewards to backers.

• Amazon KDP advantages

  “Amazon offers its print-on-demand service, called KDP , to anyone who wants it, with the added huge advantage that your book will be not only listed on Amazon immediately, but also delivered by Amazon's magical logistical Prime operation.”

  Our noteKelly describes the logistical power of using Amazon for self-publishing.

• Prototyping physical products

  “Because you can print as few as one copy of a book, I use these on-demand print services to manufacture prototype versions of a book to check for its sizing and feel.”

  Our noteKevin Kelly explains how he uses print-on-demand for testing book designs.

• Promotion effort ratio

  “One way or another this promotion job will be your job, and can end up being at least half of your total effort on a book.”

  Our noteKevin emphasizes that marketing is as significant as the writing process itself.

• Superior digital experience

  “Like football, watching in HD is far better than being at the game itself.”

  Our noteHe compares the experience of watching a live broadcast to being physically present at an event.

• Exponential scale understanding

  “Every integer on the the magnitude scale of earthquakes is ten times stronger than the one before it. A 5 is ten times a 4, a 6 ten times a 5.”

  Our noteKevin explains the logarithmic nature of earthquake magnitude scales.

• Visualizing extreme scale

  “It's hard to imagine what one that is one hundred thousand times more powerful would feel - or sound - like at the epicenter.”

  Our noteReflecting on the massive energy difference between a minor quake and a major disaster.

• Unpredicted Innovations

  “Science fiction stories gave us picture phones, and online encyclopedias, visual tablets, and world brains on a screen, but not the internet”

  Our noteKevin notes that even the most imaginative writers failed to predict the decentralized nature of the internet.

• Accessibility of fans

  “Whatever your interests as a creator are, your 1,000 true fans are one click from you.”

  Our noteThe internet allows niche creators to find their specific audience globally.

• Crowdfunding Benefits

  “Having your fans finance your next product for them is genius. Win-win all around.”

  Our noteDiscussing the power of crowdfunding for niche creators.

• Human centric features

  “It is this aspirational aspect of design that I think is most telling. Why shouldn't our keyboard have a button that evokes "best friend"?”

  Our noteKelly suggests that technology should reflect human social needs rather than just technical functions.

• The need for containment

  “Without containment, a reader's attention tends to flow outward, wandering from the central narrative or argument. The velocity of shifting focus creates a centrifugal force which spins readers away from the pages of the book.”

  Our noteExplaining why the web's lack of boundaries can distract readers from deep content.

• Nature of digital books

  “A books is less an artifact and more a stream that flows into your view.”

  Our noteKelly describes how digital books shift from physical objects to accessible digital flows.

• Measuring new possibilities

  “In fact asking ourselves how humanity might make entirely new kinds of mistakes is probably the best metric we have for discovering new possibilities of choice and freedom.”

  Our noteKelly discusses how the ability to make new types of mistakes indicates an increase in free will.

• Finding Your Purpose

  “Outside your job, your purpose during your run time is to figure out what your purpose is during your run.”

  Our noteDiscussing the existential goal of both humans and autonomous agents.

• Predetermined yet unique

  “The path of freezing water is predetermined, but there is great leeway, freedom and beauty in the individual expression of its predestined state.”

  Our noteKevin uses the snowflake analogy to explain how technology has a direction but unique forms.

• Art and science

  “The film represents an attempt to cross the divide between scientific visualisation of DNA and aesthetically pleasing art.”

  Our noteKevin Kelly describes a film that blends genomic data with artistic animation.

• Understanding user mental models

  “The intent behind this effort is to capture the unconscious layout that ordinary people have in mind when they navigate the internet.”

  Our noteKevin Kelly explains why he started collecting hand-drawn maps of the internet from ordinary people.

• Empathy with work

  “The grower has to think like a pumpkin - be the pumpkin. It is that transformation - and not mere competition - that is the great attraction.”

  Our noteKevin describes the mindset required to grow world-record-sized vegetables.

• Adaptive content depth

  “When I pay close attention, the news gets more detailed. As I screen further and deeper, the text has more links, denser illustrations.”

  Our noteKevin Kelly describes a future where screens adjust information density based on the user's level of attention.

• Multidimensional Intelligence

  “Intelligence is not a single dimension. It is a complex of many types and modes of cognition, each one a continuum.”

  Our noteExplaining why the idea of a single linear scale for intelligence is scientifically inaccurate.