Kevin Kelly

Principles are our summary of their public statements.

• Demassification Trend

  Product

  Successful products tend to shrink in physical mass while expanding in functional power and connectivity.

  3 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

  Source < The Myth of Leapfrogging  (opens in a new tab)

• The Myth of Leapfrogging

  Strategy

  New technologies rarely replace the need for old infrastructure; instead, they often increase the demand for the reliable, high-bandwidth foundations that older technologies provide.

  3 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

  Source < The Myth of Leapfrogging  (opens in a new tab)

• Embrace the hacker spirit

  Mindset

  Breakthroughs are often driven by young, obsessive individuals who work long hours and use humor to navigate technical challenges.

  Source < Filling Turing's Cathedral  (opens in a new tab)

• Improve Your Worst Days

  Resilience

  Seek steady satisfaction by raising the quality of your worst days rather than trying to peak on your best days.

  Supporting quotes

  • “Never hesitate to invest in yourself - to pay for a class, a course, a new skill. These modest expenditures pay outsized dividends.”

  2 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

• Revisit Failed Ideas

  Creativity

  Failed inventions often contain brilliant ideas that were simply ahead of their time, waiting for the right technology to realize them.

  3 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

  Source < The Story of Information  (opens in a new tab)

• Generational Tech Perception

  Mindset

  Anything invented before a person is born is seen as part of the natural world, while anything invented after age thirty is often viewed as a threat to civilization.

  2 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

  Source < Everything That Doesn't Work Yet  (opens in a new tab)

• Prioritize Real-Time Over Quality

  Product

  Customers often prefer a lower-quality or smaller selection if it is available instantly rather than waiting for a superior option.

  3 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

  Source < Simultanology  (opens in a new tab)

• Question Media Narratives

  Mindset

  One should maintain a balanced perspective on new technologies rather than accepting the alarmist views often presented by traditional media.

  2 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

  Source < Weekly Links, 06/10/2022  (opens in a new tab)

• Old Tech Shapes the Present

  Strategy

  Old technologies often have a more significant influence on daily life and the economy than the newest innovations.

  2 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

  Source < Technologies Don't Go Extinct  (opens in a new tab)

• Look to the margins for innovation

  Finding ideas

  The most generative and open-ended opportunities are always found at the uncertain margins of technology rather than the established center.

  Supporting quotes

  • “Each new unformed, hackable, potential invention is quickly refined by use, and this use makes a technology more specific, more conditional, more open to use by know-nothings.”

  2 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

• Prioritize Adaptability Over Prediction

  Strategy

  Instead of spending resources to anticipate future needs, build systems and spaces that are easy to modify when the future actually arrives.

  Supporting quotes

  • “So my new approach should not be to build in anticipations. Rather I should build in changeability; to make it as easy as possible to retrofit, to remodel, to re-work.”

  2 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

• Align Incentives Through Shared Ownership

  Management

  Turn employees into stakeholders by giving them a share of the profits. This ensures that individual effort is directly linked to personal payoff, reducing the need for constant supervision.

  3 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

  Source < The Invisible Hook  (opens in a new tab)

• Formalize Risk Sharing Partnerships

  Risk

  Creating formal contracts to share gains and losses with a partner helps individuals endure high-uncertainty environments.

  Supporting quotes

  • “Buccaneers could diversify the risk of their chosen trade by spreading their potential gains and losses over two people instead of one.”

    “But their tireless pursuit of the latter gave way to the desirable outcomes associated with the former and did so before their legitimate contemporaries achieved anything like the same.”

  1 more supporting quote is in the member records.

• Evolve Content Through Viral Testing

  Marketing

  Instead of perfecting a campaign in isolation, release ideas to passionate users and let real-world testing and redesign evolve the most effective version.

  Supporting quotes

  • “It will take many years of brash upstarts with small to no advertising budgets who have little to loose figuring this out.”

  2 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

• Complexity Leads to Autonomy

  Management

  When a system becomes sufficiently complex, it begins to exhibit behaviors and needs that are independent of its individual components or creators.

  3 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

  Source < Ratcheting Up Autonomy  (opens in a new tab)

• Build in Modular Subgroups

  Productivity

  Break complex tasks into stable sub-units so that an interruption or failure only loses the progress of the current module rather than the entire project.

  3 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

  Source < Ratcheting Up Autonomy  (opens in a new tab)

• Adopt the Long Now perspective

  Strategy

  One should expand their sense of time beyond the next quarter or year to consider centuries and millennia.

  3 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

  Source < The Clock in the Mountain  (opens in a new tab)

• Watch for subtle shifts

  Strategy

  The most impactful changes often happen quietly through shifts in how people describe and understand the world.

  Supporting quotes

  • “But once the metaphor of computation infiltrates physics and biology deeply, there is no difference between those two statements. It's the metaphor that wins.”

  2 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

• Anticipate Emergent Beliefs in Systems

  Technology

  As systems like AI become more complex, expect them to develop internal logics or 'religions' that mirror their environment and origins.

  3 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

  Source < The Religions of Aliens  (opens in a new tab)

• Differentiate Importance from Interest

  Marketing

  Understand that what is traditionally labeled as 'important' is often a commodity, while what people actually share is what they find genuinely interesting.

  2 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

  Source < Non-Commodificable in Newsprint  (opens in a new tab)