Kevin Kelly — Excellent Advice for Living | The Tim Ferriss Show

1. 0:00 – 1:59

   Start

   1. TFTim Ferriss0:00

      [upbeat music] I hear the professionals look straight to camera. [laughs] Good afternoon. This is Edward Murrow. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, ladies and gentlemen. I have one of my favorite people in front of me, Kevin Kelly. Who's Kevin Kelly? Kevin Kelly helped launch and edit Wired Magazine. He has written for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, among many other publications. He is the author of the new book, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier. I have a lot to say about this book. We will get into it. Other books by Kevin Kelly include Out of Control, the 1994 classic book on decentralized emergent systems; The Silver Cord, a graphic novel about robots and angels; What Technology Wants: A Robust Theory of Technology; Vanishing Asia, his 50-year project to photograph the disappearing cultures of Asia; and The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future, a New York Times bestseller. Kevin is currently co-chair of The Long Now Foundation, which is building a clock in a mountain that will tick for 10,000 years, of course. He also has a daily blog, a weekly podcast about cool tools, and a weekly newsletter, Recomendo, a free one-page list of six very brief recommendations of cool stuff. You can find that at recomendo.com. That is R-E-C-O-M-E-N-D-O.com. [laughs] I was gonna say R-E-C-O-M-E-N-do.com. You get the idea. So recomendo.com, take a look. He is also a senior maverick at Wired and lives in Pacifica, California. You can find him on Twitter @Kevin2Kelly, Kevin the number two Kelly, and all things Kevin at kk.org. Kevin, nice to see you again.

   2. KKKevin Kelly1:54

      Tim, it's always a pleasure, and just seeing you makes me happy.

   3. TFTim Ferriss1:58

      Likewise.

   4. KKKevin Kelly1:58

      I'm so glad

2. 1:59 – 4:44

   Is Kevin Kelly the most interesting man in the world?

   1. KKKevin Kelly1:59

      to be here. [laughs]

   2. TFTim Ferriss2:00

      I saw you walk in. I was chatting with, with Harley of Shopify earlier today, and you walked in, and I saw you across the room with your yellow baseball cap on. Doesn't hide the beard, though.

   3. KKKevin Kelly2:11

      [laughs]

   4. TFTim Ferriss2:12

      So I spotted you, and also just made me very happy to see you. I was thinking about that.

   5. KKKevin Kelly2:17

      Yeah.

   6. TFTim Ferriss2:17

      And how, how incredibly valuable that is. What a gift.

   7. KKKevin Kelly2:22

      It is, and I'm glad to be seen. And so I'm so glad to, to be able to share with you another time of exploring some ideas and just see where they go.

   8. TFTim Ferriss2:34

      Now, ideas, you're a man of ideas, and I thought for comic relief-

   9. KKKevin Kelly2:40

      [laughs]

   10. TFTim Ferriss2:42

       ... we might start with a list of possible topics to discuss with Kevin Kelly.

   11. KKKevin Kelly2:47

       Yeah.

   12. TFTim Ferriss2:47

       So I just wanna read these because people who are perhaps not long-term listeners-

   13. KKKevin Kelly2:52

       Uh-huh

   14. TFTim Ferriss2:52

       ... may not have heard our previous conversations. And I believe the title I used, you did not choose this, I chose it, for our first conversation was Kevin Kelly, The Real-Life Most Interesting Man in the World.

   15. KKKevin Kelly3:07

       Right.

   16. TFTim Ferriss3:07

       Something along those lines.

   17. KKKevin Kelly3:08

       Yes.

   18. TFTim Ferriss3:09

       And people may say, "What hyperbole? What is this nonsense?" But wait, allow me to list [laughs] the possible topics, and I ask every guest to send-

   19. KKKevin Kelly3:19

       Uh-huh

   20. TFTim Ferriss3:19

       ... possible bullets for exploration. So here we go, and then I will return to a few of these.

   21. KKKevin Kelly3:23

       Right.

   22. TFTim Ferriss3:24

       The most popular thing I've ever written, "1,000 True Fans," 2008. Why we built a clock that will tick for 10,000 years inside a mountain. I've had a daily blog for 20 years, for five years a weekly podcast. At Wired, we invented the click-on advertising banner for the web. Next, I spent 11 years creating a huge graphic novel about angels and robots, released on Kickstarter, The Silver Cord. We're gonna come back to that. My failed campaign to discover all the species of life on Earth. In 2003, I made a long bet on the collapse of the global human population by 2060. My TED Talk on why we should be optimistic in 10 minutes. The most important article I've ever written, my case against belief in an AI singularity. My most recent piece in Wired, extolling the glories of generative AI, Engines of Wow. I co-founded the Hackers Conference in 1984, still going. My 50-year passion project, and this goes on [laughs] weighing 30 pounds, about vanishing Asia. I rode my bike across America twice, once west to east, once north to south. I make a piece of art every day. My biggest audience and most of my fans are in China, where I'm known simply as KK. [laughs] I have a screen credit for working with Spielberg on the sci-fi concepts for Minority Report. With a friend, I built a two-family house from scratch, cutting down the trees. It goes on and on and on.

   23. KKKevin Kelly4:32

       [laughs]

   24. TFTim Ferriss4:32

       Right? The story of my religious conversion on This American Life in 1997. I made a music video in 1969, 12 years before MTV. So-

   25. KKKevin Kelly4:41

       [laughs]

   26. TFTim Ferriss4:43

       ... lest people think I'm

3. 4:44 – 11:29

   Kevin’s long bet against the human population.

   1. TFTim Ferriss4:44

      exagger-

   2. KKKevin Kelly4:44

      It sounds ridiculous now that you mention it. [laughs]

   3. TFTim Ferriss4:45

      It does sound ridiculous. And thank God I am a specialist in the ridiculous. So I thought [laughs] we would start with this bet. So in 2003, I made a long bet-

   4. KKKevin Kelly4:56

      Mm-hmm

   5. TFTim Ferriss4:56

      ... on the collapse of the global human population by 2060.

   6. KKKevin Kelly5:01

      Mm-hmm.

   7. TFTim Ferriss5:01

      So what is a long bet, and which direction did you bet? Were you betting on or against, and why?

   8. KKKevin Kelly5:09

      So Long Bets is a service that we set up at The Long Now Foundation, which I can explain a little bit more about that, which is m- meant to encourage long-term thinking. So we made a s- a place where we could have a long bet, meaning more than two years, about some socially significant wager. And the idea would be that there would be a public bet, and you'd be accountable for it, and there'd be money involved in the wager. And the idea was to also require people to put the logic of why they were going in a certain direction, and that over time, if you had enough of this, you could see which kinds of logic and what kinds of thinking would win more often. And, uh, to get around the, the laws of betting at the time, which basically it's illegal to make a bet. That's been kind of slowly changing, but we engineered a kind of a hacker which you could make a donation to Well, you would use the money, and the money would go to the foundation, the nonprofit of the person who won the bet.

   9. TFTim Ferriss6:15

      Mm-hmm.

   10. KKKevin Kelly6:15

       So my bet... And by the way, there are a lot of people who have bet on it, including Warren Buffett, who made a million-dollar bet that basically index funds would beat any investment hedge fund, and he won. Well, his charity won. My bet about the population was that the population of the world, the global population of the world by 2060, I think it was-

   11. TFTim Ferriss6:41

       2060

   12. KKKevin Kelly6:42

       ... would be the same as it was at the time of the bet, which is I think 2003. So the idea is, is that we are coming up to a peak of human population that would then on the other side go down. So you very commonly see the chart of the rising population, but it's interesting to me that you never see what happens on the other side.

   13. TFTim Ferriss7:06

       Mm-hmm.

   14. KKKevin Kelly7:06

       And what happens on the other side, as far as we can tell, is that it plummets, and that's because-

   15. TFTim Ferriss7:12

       Resource scarcity.

   16. KKKevin Kelly7:13

       No.

   17. TFTim Ferriss7:14

       No. Education or falling birth rates.

   18. KKKevin Kelly7:17

       Just falling birth rates-

   19. TFTim Ferriss7:18

       Mm-hmm

   20. KKKevin Kelly7:18

       ... because modern people on average are not having more than two kids per couple. Fertility is falling all around the planet, including right now even in the US, and everything that we've tried, we being humans, have tried collectively to counter that has not worked.

   21. TFTim Ferriss7:40

       Mm-hmm.

   22. KKKevin Kelly7:40

       Japan is famously losing the total number of people, not just having a lower birth rate. They actually have a decline in population. But they're actually not the lowest birth rate, which is South Korea. And China is aging. Mexico is aging faster than the US, so all the people that have been coming from Mexico, Mexico will want to have come back at some point. So it's a really significant change, and a- again, it's possible that we could use technology to change it, maybe have artificial wombs or who knows what, but right now for the average person, they're not inclined to have a lot of children, and the people who do have children don't have enough to cover for those who, who don't-

   23. TFTim Ferriss8:24

       Mm-hmm

   24. KKKevin Kelly8:24

       ... in terms of the world population. You could have immigration, which is what the US has been doing all along, basically stealing people from other countries, but that doesn't help you globally.

   25. TFTim Ferriss8:35

       Mm-hmm.

   26. KKKevin Kelly8:35

       So here's where it's a problem. For a lot of environmentalists, this is good news 'cause there's less people who are-

   27. TFTim Ferriss8:42

       Consuming

   28. KKKevin Kelly8:43

       ... consume sources.

   29. TFTim Ferriss8:44

       Mm-hmm.

   30. KKKevin Kelly8:44

       But throughout history, we've always only had rising living standards with rising population.
4. 11:29 – 15:58

   Out Of Control.

   1. KKKevin Kelly11:29

      even know.

   2. TFTim Ferriss11:30

      Have you had any exposure to or interaction with the Santa Fe Institute? I have not, but I've recently had conversations with a number of people, Bill Gurley-

   3. KKKevin Kelly11:39

      Mm-hmm

   4. TFTim Ferriss11:39

      ... and others who are involved complex adaptive systems.

   5. KKKevin Kelly11:44

      Yeah.

   6. TFTim Ferriss11:44

      I'd just be curious to know what your-

   7. KKKevin Kelly11:46

      Right

   8. TFTim Ferriss11:46

      ... exposure has been, what your opinion is.

   9. KKKevin Kelly11:48

      So my first book was written about basically the Santa Fe Institute itself.

   10. TFTim Ferriss11:53

       Hmm.

   11. KKKevin Kelly11:53

       So Out of Control was initiated by a conference I went to at Los Alamos, and Santa Fe was hosting one of the first conferences. And I, I would go down there and talk to all the scientists, and this is in the late '80s. And that was the beginning of this sort of a complex adaptive system view of the world. And so that's what Out of Control is about, is looking at that view and saying, "You know, the way biology works and the way this complex technology works are very similar." They have very similar dynamics because they're complex adaptive systems. And what we want to make with, like, the internet, with all its penetrations, that you can kind of, like, think of spam as, like, an invading virus that you have to... You can't eliminate, but you have to treat it like an immune system, where you keep it at bay. And so the adopting some of these biological dynamics and applying them to machines and a lot of the work in trying to make robots and early AI, again, were modeling off of what was being learned and often reported or sponsored by the Santa Fe Institute and that kind of approach to complex adaptive systems. So yes, I, I think it's incredibly important and for me was a transformative framing of the complicated things, was to think of them in these terms. And my whole book was about the fact that the world of the made and the world of the born are basically the same, the two faces of the same kind of dynamic.

   12. TFTim Ferriss13:22

       Mm.

   13. KKKevin Kelly13:23

       And so you can look at how meadows work, ecosystems, and then you can look at the internet, which was just beginning, and now of course it's in full bloom. And you can see how social media, they have similar behaviors.

   14. TFTim Ferriss13:37

       Yeah. And you can find thing in one, uh, that you then find in the other in surprising ways-

   15. KKKevin Kelly13:43

       Yes

   16. TFTim Ferriss13:43

       ... sort of life imitating art and art imitating life-

   17. KKKevin Kelly13:45

       Yes

   18. TFTim Ferriss13:45

       ... in the sense that we think we have invented gears and then we are like, "Oh, wait a second."

   19. KKKevin Kelly13:49

       Exactly.

   20. TFTim Ferriss13:49

       Actually, there are insects that use gears-

   21. KKKevin Kelly13:51

       Right, right, right

   22. TFTim Ferriss13:51

       ... for types of jumping. [laughs]

   23. KKKevin Kelly13:52

       Right.

   24. TFTim Ferriss13:52

       How wild is that?

   25. KKKevin Kelly13:53

       Right. So there's biomimicry was the field which was, you know, kind of using those as models for ideas and frameworks for trying to make mechanical things, and that only takes you so far. I mean, that was the, the kind of maybe the genius or the, the breakthrough in the Wright brothers-

   26. TFTim Ferriss14:11

       Yeah

   27. KKKevin Kelly14:11

       ... which is like we didn't make flying machines by flapping-

   28. TFTim Ferriss14:15

       Strapping wings to people

   29. KKKevin Kelly14:16

       ... b- by flapping our wings. [laughs]

   30. TFTim Ferriss14:18

       [laughs]
5. 15:58 – 21:12

   Why did it take 11 years to complete The Silver Cord?

   1. TFTim Ferriss15:58

      All right. You spent 11 years creating a huge graphic novel-

   2. KKKevin Kelly16:00

      Uh-huh

   3. TFTim Ferriss16:00

      ... about angels and robots, The Silver Cord. I am, you may or may not know this, but deeply interested in comic books and collected for a very long time, spent-

   4. KKKevin Kelly16:10

      Yeah

   5. TFTim Ferriss16:11

      ... uh, all of my allowance, all of my work money, almost all of it on comics for a very long period of time.

   6. KKKevin Kelly16:16

      Right.

   7. TFTim Ferriss16:16

      Wanted to be a penciller. Why did it take 11 years, and what did-

   8. KKKevin Kelly16:20

      Uh

   9. TFTim Ferriss16:20

      ... the process of translating your thinking and writing-

   10. KKKevin Kelly16:24

       Yeah

   11. TFTim Ferriss16:24

       ... to that form look like?

   12. KKKevin Kelly16:26

       Yeah.

   13. TFTim Ferriss16:26

       What were the, what were the steps?

   14. KKKevin Kelly16:28

       So I met a friend who actually was an actual comic book artist and had done some, had published and wanted to do another one. And I'd kind of always wanted to try my hand at it because I, I thought that this was a, a brilliant genre for communicating lots of things, and particularly if you're interested in science fiction. It was sort of like, to me, a little better than a novel because it had that kind of immersive visualization, which I love. I'm a very visual person. But it wasn't as so detailed that you needed to make a movie of it.

   15. TFTim Ferriss16:59

       Mm-hmm.

   16. KKKevin Kelly17:00

       But we thought we could do both, and we thought that maybe we could write something that would have some appeal to be making movies, so we would try to write it, the script as if we were writing a movie. And so some of the other associates that we had worked for Pixar, some story writers-

   17. TFTim Ferriss17:17

       When you say associates, it sounds like a law firm. What do you mean?

   18. KKKevin Kelly17:19

       Well, I mean, we... So-

   19. TFTim Ferriss17:20

       Collaborators.

   20. KKKevin Kelly17:21

       Actually, here's what it was. My friend and these other friends all went to the same church.

   21. TFTim Ferriss17:26

       Okay.

   22. KKKevin Kelly17:26

       We all went to the same church, and there were people who worked at Pixar and some people who worked at ILM.

   23. TFTim Ferriss17:30

       Uh-huh.

   24. KKKevin Kelly17:30

       And so I had this idea of doing this, this book or this, this story, and the story was... The premise of it was I was imagining that there would be these interdimensional beings. We, we're calling them angels. They're made out of light because they're intangible, and that they would look down on humans and weep when they saw us because we were getting the ride that they craved, that embodiment, and we were squandering it.

   25. TFTim Ferriss17:59

       Mm-hmm.

   26. KKKevin Kelly18:00

       So that's the basic premise, is that there is this, this realm and there's these beings and they're waiting their turn to be embodied, and they're looking at us and what we're doing with... It's like, you know, you have the ultimate

   27. TFTim Ferriss18:14

       You're blowing it, guys

   28. KKKevin Kelly18:14

       ... and you're blowing it.

   29. TFTim Ferriss18:15

       [laughs]

   30. KKKevin Kelly18:16

       It's like, what would I do? I would, I would smother my face with mango juice and I would [laughs] you know, so I could take a, a dive into the ocean and swim underwater and hold my... You know. So that was the premise of it, and then the, the added part of it was that some of these angelic beings would try to cheat by becoming embodied into robots.
6. 21:12 – 26:48

   1,000 True Fans.

   1. TFTim Ferriss21:13

      I dig it, Kevin Kelly. You're good at helping friends-

   2. KKKevin Kelly21:15

      [laughs]

   3. TFTim Ferriss21:16

      ... myself included, to do that IRL, in real life too-

   4. KKKevin Kelly21:20

      Yeah. Right

   5. TFTim Ferriss21:20

      ... through experiences, and we may come back to that. But first, the iconic 1,000 True Fans, the most popular thing you've ever written.

   6. KKKevin Kelly21:29

      Right.

   7. TFTim Ferriss21:30

      Why do you think that is the case, and what would you double down on or revise if you were to take another stab-

   8. KKKevin Kelly21:42

      Right

   9. TFTim Ferriss21:42

      ... at it today?

   10. KKKevin Kelly21:44

       The honest answer, one of the reasons why it's very... We can talk about maybe why, why it's good and useful, and then why it's popular. The reason why it's popular is actually through you. Y- the, the fact that you included it in one of your books, and that sort of lifted it out of my little realm. The reason why maybe it kind of resonates with people-

   11. TFTim Ferriss22:05

       Mm-hmm

   12. KKKevin Kelly22:05

       ... is because there is sort of a, an assumption that the goal is to hit it big, the big time, bestseller, a hit. And most people kind of come to associate that, those numbers, that kind of large scale, with success. And the idea that success could look differently, that you could have a more modest size scale and that be successful, sometimes is dismissed as lifestyle businesses or whatever. And I kind of realized that the technology would allow a different version of that, that it was possible and that it would be good.

   13. TFTim Ferriss22:49

       Mm-hmm.

   14. KKKevin Kelly22:49

       It would be good for people. And so that was... I think people can resonate with that because it's, it's a viable alternative option to things that was not spoken before. It was not even really on the radar. And when I wrote it, when I first wrote it, before you even saw it, there was no Kickstarter, there was no Patreon, and I was challenged with people like Jaron Lanier to say, "Well, you know, that's a nice theory, but there isn't any evidence that this is actually working." And it, it was actually at that time I did a follow through and I tried to find evidence, and there was, there was evidence of established artists from publishing or music or studios who had already an audience and could move off of that-

   15. TFTim Ferriss23:33

       Mm-hmm

   16. KKKevin Kelly23:33

       ... to their own. But there wasn't any e- evidence of an indigenous organic growth from nothing. Now there is. Every day people write to me and meet me, say, "Yes, I have been able to do that," inspired someone by hearing of that possibility.

   17. TFTim Ferriss23:51

       Is there anything that you would modify in that piece or emphasize more?

   18. KKKevin Kelly23:57

       So I did a modification for you, which was-

   19. TFTim Ferriss24:01

       Yeah, what was that?

   20. KKKevin Kelly24:01

       I talked about the fact that one, again, one benefit and one disadvantage. The one benefit is, is that part of what we're, we're doing is if all you need is 1,000 true fans, then even if your interests are one in a million- Given the population of the Earth, of billions of people, that means there's 1,000 people potentially on the planet who will share your interests.

   21. TFTim Ferriss24:28

       Mm-hmm.

   22. KKKevin Kelly24:28

       If your interests are only one in a million people, then you still have enough. And then the second thing was that just to emphasize to people that this is not for everybody, that tending the fans and interacting with them is almost like a halftime job at least, maybe even more, and not everybody's suited to do that. An artist might just want to paint. They don't want to deal with fans, and we see [laughs] more of dealing with fans, what it means is it's not always pretty, and it can burn you out. And so I just want to emphasize that this is an option, and you don't have to go all the way. You can have your 1,000 true fans, and then you can have lots of other casual fans and other fans which would allow you to have other people help you, so it's not just you. And then secondly, for some people, you want to have intermediaries. It's just not something you, you want to spend your time doing, and that's perfectly fine, but it's a really great place to be able to start from.

   23. TFTim Ferriss25:28

       Mm-hmm.

   24. KKKevin Kelly25:29

       So maybe you don't want to land there, but that's one of my pieces of advice is that where you start is not where you're gonna land, and so you ... This is a good place to start.

   25. TFTim Ferriss25:39

       That's exactly what I was gonna say, which is even if you want to hypothetically build a huge company and change the world, although I'm very skeptical of people who lead with that, I think most businesses fundamentally are lifestyle businesses if you really double-click and look at it closely enough even if someone aims to be Fortune 500 CEO. In any case, the point I wanted to make is even if you have these very lofty large-scale goals, beginning with the exercise of reading 1,000 True Fans-

   26. KKKevin Kelly26:12

       Mm-hmm

   27. TFTim Ferriss26:12

       ... and at least considering what your approach would be to accomplish that first is a great-

   28. KKKevin Kelly26:19

       Mm. Yeah

   29. TFTim Ferriss26:19

       ... fundamental step.

   30. KKKevin Kelly26:20

       Right. And partly that is because you get 1,000 true fans by accumulating them one by one. If you're focused on, like, "Today I'm gonna get one more additional customer-"
7. 26:48 – 28:54

   Kevin’s failed campaign to discover all the species of life on Earth.

   1. TFTim Ferriss26:48

      and if you can take those 1,000 true fans and-

   2. KKKevin Kelly26:50

      Right

   3. TFTim Ferriss26:50

      ... and some subset of them become your PR/marketing forces, then things can multiply very quickly. I promised left turns. We're gonna take another left turn.

   4. KKKevin Kelly27:00

      [laughs]

   5. TFTim Ferriss27:01

      Your failed campaign to discover all the species of life on Earth, so I wanted to hit a highlight, and maybe this is also a highlight, but I would love for you to expand-

   6. KKKevin Kelly27:12

      Yeah

   7. TFTim Ferriss27:12

      ... on this. Lessons learned, what happened?

   8. KKKevin Kelly27:16

      So there was a conversation I was part of, and I was sitting next to a billionaire who said, "You know, it's actually hard to give away a billion dollars." And for some reason I thought at that moment, I thought, "Well, actually I know what I would do," and that would be I would hire all the local indigenous people and have them be barefoot taxonomists and go out and discover and count or, you know, or catalog-

   9. TFTim Ferriss27:51

      Catalog, mm-hmm

   10. KKKevin Kelly27:51

       ... all the living species on this planet because we never have done that. And by the way, if we found life on another planet, that's the first thing we would do is a systematic survey of all the life on that planet, but we haven't done that on our own home planet. And because you're paying locals, you would distribute that money down really, really fast. And Stewart Brand was sitting next to me, and we kind of ... We thought it was a cool idea, and then I didn't think anything more of it because I have ideas every... I have a lot of ideas. I'm giving them away. And then like a week later Stewart said, "Let's do that idea." And I said, "What idea?" [laughs] I'd forgotten about it already.

   11. TFTim Ferriss28:30

       [laughs]

   12. KKKevin Kelly28:30

       He said, "You know, the idea at dinner about counting all the species." And I said, "Yeah. I... You know, I don't know." It's like I'm not a taxonomist. I'm not a biologist. And Stewart's hunch was that with new technology, and this is my bias too, we might be able to do that in addition to it.

   13. TFTim Ferriss28:52

       Could we pause for just a-

   14. KKKevin Kelly28:53

       Yeah

   15. TFTim Ferriss28:53

       ... a quick

8. 28:54 – 33:57

   Stewart Brand.

   1. TFTim Ferriss28:54

      second? Could you just briefly explain for people who don't know who Stewart Brand is?

   2. KKKevin Kelly29:00

      Oh, yes. So Stewart Brand is a close friend and, and the person who first hired me. He was... He invented the Whole Earth Catalog in the 1969, and the best way to describe the Whole Earth Catalog is it was kind of like your information guide to the world before there was the internet. And Steve Jobs famously called it the internet before there was internet. It was internet printed on newsprint because it was, it was reader-generated. So before YouTube, before anything, if you wanted to find out how to build a house or repair your VW Bug or start a home school or keep bees, where would you go? There, there was literally no place to find that information. Libraries didn't have that information. There was no internet to look it up, but the Whole Earth Catalog started to accumulate those, and there was readers of it would send in their versions, like, "Oh, the best book on gold panning is this thing." And then Stewart would run it, print it and run it right away. And there was no advertising. It was kind of reader-supported. So that was Stewart Brand, and he went on to do things. We started The Well together, which was the first online access to the internet, and other things. So he's my hero, and he just had a, a recent book-

   3. TFTim Ferriss30:20

      Wow

   4. KKKevin Kelly30:20

      ... a biography written about him by John Markoff, The New York Times tech writer. So anyway, Stewart has been sort of at the center- We're at the leading edge of almost first the hippies, the beatniks, and then the hippies, and then the digital thing.

   5. TFTim Ferriss30:35

      He's like the Forrest Gump of like-

   6. KKKevin Kelly30:35

      He's like the Forrest Gump

   7. TFTim Ferriss30:37

      ... like 25 seminal moments in history

   8. KKKevin Kelly30:38

      Exactly, right. He's kind of always there, and his background was biology. He was a biologist for a study with Paul Ehrlich, who was the Population Bomb guy on the other side of this argument about population. So Stewart was sitting there, it was The Long Now. Stewart started The Long Now with me and Danny Hillis and Peter Schwartz to think about, to encourage long-term thinking, to be a good ancestor. How do we be good ancestors? And at that dinner Stewart said, later on he said, "We should really try and do this. It would be kind of a great thing." So we actually started a foundation called All Species. I named it the All Species Inventory, All Species Foundation, and we were gonna try and raise money not from the usual sources that funded taxonomy. We didn't wanna take any money from there, 'cause it was really pitiful the amount of money. But to find it from like Silicon Valley and get money for developing the technology that would be able to do that, and it was just too early.

   9. TFTim Ferriss31:41

      Mm.

   10. KKKevin Kelly31:42

       It was just too early.

   11. TFTim Ferriss31:43

       Too early in what respects?

   12. KKKevin Kelly31:46

       Well, right now on my phone I have Merlin, which will identify a bird song.

   13. TFTim Ferriss31:53

       Mm-hmm.

   14. KKKevin Kelly31:54

       I have iSeek, which will identify almost any plant or mushroom. That's what we needed.

   15. TFTim Ferriss31:59

       I see. Technologically speaking.

   16. KKKevin Kelly32:00

       Yes, and you needed it because even those, those aren't gonna identify a new one. If you have an app that can identify the known ones, then you're only gonna bother the taxonomists with one that isn't identified.

   17. TFTim Ferriss32:14

       Mm-hmm.

   18. KKKevin Kelly32:15

       So right now, otherwise, people are just sending the bio- "Oh, this is a brand-new species"

   19. TFTim Ferriss32:19

       Too much replication

   20. KKKevin Kelly32:19

       ... and they're saying, "No, [laughs] this is not a new one. Don't bother me with that one."

   21. TFTim Ferriss32:23

       Mm.

   22. KKKevin Kelly32:23

       So that's what we needed, and we were just 25 years too early in terms of technology being available to be able to assist this. And so it became kind of a catalog of existing species, and that was the thing that shocked us was, okay, well, first we need is we need a list of all the existing species. And this is whatever this is, 2008 or something. There isn't one. It was like, what?

   23. TFTim Ferriss32:50

       [laughs]

   24. KKKevin Kelly32:51

       Well, there's all these taxonomic publications, and they're all buried in these obscure publications that haven't been digitized yet. It's like [laughs] so it's like oh my gosh, this is even further behind than we thought. So that is sort of what it became. It became kind of a, a program just to digitize the existing known species. And then the other thing is that as they started to do that, they realized that there was this huge duplication of species having more than one name because they're being, you know, somebody in Germany and somebody in Japan-

   25. TFTim Ferriss33:25

       Mm-hmm

   26. KKKevin Kelly33:25

       ... and not even knowing that they're talking about the same thing. So it was failed in the sense that we still don't know all the species on this planet. We don't even know how many we don't know, and we're still only beginning to have a central integrated comprehensive complete catalog of what we do know.

   27. TFTim Ferriss33:48

       Mm.

   28. KKKevin Kelly33:48

       And it's called the Encyclopedia of Life, and E.O. Wilson before he died was involved in that.

   29. TFTim Ferriss33:53

       The legendary E.O. Wilson.

   30. KKKevin Kelly33:54

       Right.
9. 33:57 – 36:22

   Resurrecting extinct species.

   1. KKKevin Kelly33:57

      Yes.

   2. TFTim Ferriss33:58

      Stewart Brand. Let's spend a lit-

   3. KKKevin Kelly34:00

      [laughs]

   4. TFTim Ferriss34:00

      ... a little more time on Stewart Brand.

   5. KKKevin Kelly34:01

      Who, who's been a guest on your show.

   6. TFTim Ferriss34:03

      He has been a guest. He's spectacular. He is... What would you s- what would you say his age is now?

   7. KKKevin Kelly34:08

      He's 86 maybe.

   8. TFTim Ferriss34:13

      Something like that.

   9. KKKevin Kelly34:14

      Yeah.

   10. TFTim Ferriss34:14

       And I interviewed him not that long ago.

   11. KKKevin Kelly34:17

       Right.

   12. TFTim Ferriss34:17

       And he was doing CrossFit two or three times a week.

   13. KKKevin Kelly34:20

       Right. Exactly.

   14. TFTim Ferriss34:21

       And also military background. You just have to read his bio to even begin to try to believe it. So he would, he would be also maybe on your shortlist for real world most interesting [laughs] man in the world.

   15. KKKevin Kelly34:34

       Yes, exactly.

   16. TFTim Ferriss34:34

       [laughs] Now, I recall chatting with Stewart, I believe, about resurrection of species.

   17. KKKevin Kelly34:45

       Mm-hmm.

   18. TFTim Ferriss34:45

       So the potential of Jurassic Park style resurrecting, say, woolly mammoths and reintroducing some of these large terrestrial herbivores for any host of reasons. What do you think the future holds for those types of plans?

   19. KKKevin Kelly35:04

       Yeah. So it was Stewart, Ryan Phelan, and I who did All Species, and Stewart and Ryan went on to do Revive & Restore is the name of their program. And it is to... Originally, the totem animal was the mammoth. The woolly mammoth was to bring that back, and there are a lot of very interesting reasons why to do that, and the way that they do it is basically to take existing Asian elephants and winterizing them through breeding.

   20. TFTim Ferriss35:33

       I got it.

   21. KKKevin Kelly35:34

       Accelerated breeding. So you're not just gonna like hatch out of a, out of a test tube a brand-new woolly mammoth. There would be a sense in which you would kind of use the line of existing elephants to try and reverse kind of engineer them.

   22. TFTim Ferriss35:48

       You take a Mendelian-

   23. KKKevin Kelly35:49

       Right

   24. TFTim Ferriss35:49

       ... sort of approach to...

   25. KKKevin Kelly35:51

       But that's a little bit longer term, and actually Stewart and I went to, and George Church went to Siberia to go get samples of the mammoths that were being exposed by the thawing permafrost-

   26. TFTim Ferriss36:06

       Wow

   27. KKKevin Kelly36:06

       ... to get the DNA from the trunk.

   28. TFTim Ferriss36:08

       Jurassic Park VII scene one.

   29. KKKevin Kelly36:10

       Exactly. Right, right.

   30. TFTim Ferriss36:11

       Opening. [laughs]
10. 36:22 – 39:55

    Why Kevin believes optimists shape the future.

    1. KKKevin Kelly36:22

       do it.

    2. TFTim Ferriss36:22

       Wow. All right. Well, optimism.

    3. KKKevin Kelly36:25

       [laughs]

    4. TFTim Ferriss36:27

       You're one of the most optimistic people I know.

    5. KKKevin Kelly36:29

       Mm-hmm.

    6. TFTim Ferriss36:31

       I think that that has a great influence-

    7. KKKevin Kelly36:33

       Mm

    8. TFTim Ferriss36:33

       ... on me and the world.

    9. KKKevin Kelly36:35

       Okay.

    10. TFTim Ferriss36:35

        And I sometimes push back-

    11. KKKevin Kelly36:37

        Yes

    12. TFTim Ferriss36:37

        ... on some of it.

    13. KKKevin Kelly36:38

        Of course. You should.

    14. TFTim Ferriss36:40

        [laughs] What would be your... Doesn't have to be an elevator pitch. Could just be a very long elevator ride-

    15. KKKevin Kelly36:48

        Mm-hmm [laughs]

    16. TFTim Ferriss36:48

        ... because we have infinite time.

    17. KKKevin Kelly36:50

        38 floors. [laughs]

    18. TFTim Ferriss36:51

        Yeah, exact- that's right. Moving as, as slowly as you would like. What is the argument for why we should be optimistic?

    19. KKKevin Kelly36:59

        So generally people see optimism as kind of a, a temperament, sunny view, and I think there is some of that and I have a natural amount of it, but over time, I've actually become even more optimistic in my general tendency deliberately. It's kind of like a learned optimism. And I think the reason we should be as optimistic as we can is because it is how we make really good things, good complicated things. So it's hard enough... Well, I mean, it's very hard to make good complicated things work because generally there's more way things can fail than they can succeed, and it's very unlikely that we're gonna make something really good that's complicated inadvertently. They're hard to do, so we have to kind of see it and believe that it can be done, and that is where the optimism comes in, is envisioning something and then believing that you could make it real. Because when we look back on history, and that's where a lot of my optimism comes, we realize that most of the things that we have now have been made by people who are optimistically viewing that there was possible to make them and believe that they were gonna make them, and could imagine them. So I think of it as a work of imagination where you kind of imagine a good scenario, which is harder to do than imagining a scenario where it fails or collapses.

    20. TFTim Ferriss38:27

        Mm-hmm.

    21. KKKevin Kelly38:27

        It is much easier to imagine how things break than it is to see how they work, and that's why entrepreneurs and all the others are rightly lauded because they're going against that grain. It's, it is hard to imagine how we could have this thing that seems like it is improbable, and most things that work are improbable. That's the definition from the Santa Fe complexity theory, is that things breaking down is the probable.

    22. TFTim Ferriss38:55

        Mm-hmm.

    23. KKKevin Kelly38:56

        Complicated things working are improbable by definition, and so you're against the improbable and that work of imagining the improbable and having the improbable succeed and believing it can, is optimism. Which means that the optimists are the ones who shape our future. So I like to give a little story of like a car, and you need to have brakes on the car to steer the car.

    24. TFTim Ferriss39:23

        Yeah. I'm with you so far. [laughs]

    25. KKKevin Kelly39:27

        But the engine is actually the more important element, and so there are people and there are, there are organizations and there are methods that are gonna be doing the braking, and I think they're essential. I want brakes on the car. But I just feel that the brake can overwhelm and cause stagnation, and that we also want to remember to focus on making the engine even stronger.

    26. TFTim Ferriss39:51

        Mm-hmm.

    27. KKKevin Kelly39:53

        So I emphasize the engine.

11. 39:55 – 43:55

    Active optimism vs. passive optimism.

    1. TFTim Ferriss39:56

       So I want to take a closer look at the engine.

    2. KKKevin Kelly39:58

       [laughs]

    3. TFTim Ferriss39:58

       So, so if things breaking down-

    4. KKKevin Kelly40:01

       Uh-huh

    5. TFTim Ferriss40:01

       ... are the probable-

    6. KKKevin Kelly40:02

       Yeah

    7. TFTim Ferriss40:02

       ... and there are many more ways things can-

    8. KKKevin Kelly40:05

       Right

    9. TFTim Ferriss40:05

       ... go wrong than they can go right.

    10. KKKevin Kelly40:07

        Right.

    11. TFTim Ferriss40:08

        If I'm hearing you correctly, and maybe also bringing in some of my own position-

    12. KKKevin Kelly40:17

        Mm-hmm

    13. TFTim Ferriss40:17

        ... it would be that active optimism is probably more valuable than passive optimism in the sense that-

    14. KKKevin Kelly40:23

        Yes, yes

    15. TFTim Ferriss40:24

        ... the belief that you can make things-

    16. KKKevin Kelly40:26

        Right

    17. TFTim Ferriss40:26

        ... turn out all right as opposed to the belief that things will turn out all right.

    18. KKKevin Kelly40:32

        Right.

    19. TFTim Ferriss40:32

        And therefore, I can go about my day and not concern myself with worries about A, B, C, D, E all the way through Z.

    20. KKKevin Kelly40:43

        Yeah.

    21. TFTim Ferriss40:43

        And I'm curious if you suddenly had the Kevin Kelly Institute for Active Optimists-

    22. KKKevin Kelly40:51

        [laughs]

    23. TFTim Ferriss40:53

        ... how you would cultivate this or-

    24. KKKevin Kelly40:56

        Hmm

    25. TFTim Ferriss40:56

        ... maybe encourage it in more people, because I do see optimists who are not panicked, not necessarily paranoid, but they are very interested and excited and feel some moral obligation to focus on solving really high leverage problems or creating new technologies. I also see techno optimists who are like-

    26. KKKevin Kelly41:22

        Right

    27. TFTim Ferriss41:22

        ... "Well, if A, B and C gets bad enough, if the temperature of the Earth gets to X, Y and Z, then we'll have these technologies and all will be fine. And if this happens, then that'll all be fine." And you know, people thought oil was gonna run out by this year-

    28. KKKevin Kelly41:39

        Yeah

    29. TFTim Ferriss41:39

        ... but they didn't factor in that as the number of barrels per year produced-

    30. KKKevin Kelly41:44

        Mm-hmm
12. 43:55 – 45:50

    What constitutes progress?

    1. TFTim Ferriss43:56

       Now I'm interrupting not to push back, but just for definition of terms.

    2. KKKevin Kelly43:59

       Mm-hmm.

    3. TFTim Ferriss43:59

       What do you mean by progress?

    4. KKKevin Kelly44:00

       Right.

    5. TFTim Ferriss44:00

       Because that word can be used to mean a lot of different things in a sense.

    6. KKKevin Kelly44:03

       That's right. It's a very loaded word, and I'm using it to, to mean simply that-

    7. TFTim Ferriss44:10

       Angels of our better nature type stuff

    8. KKKevin Kelly44:12

       ... yes. How would I say it? It's... It means that overall on average this is a better place to live than at any time in the past, and this is the kind of Obama test. I don't know if you heard about that.

    9. TFTim Ferriss44:27

       No.

    10. KKKevin Kelly44:27

        But it's like if you were to be born randomly in any time period, you could be male, female, poor, rich, you're totally at random on some average thing, what time do you wanna live in? What time period?

    11. TFTim Ferriss44:42

        Mm-hmm.

    12. KKKevin Kelly44:42

        And like there's no way you would want to be anything before at least 50 years ago.

    13. TFTim Ferriss44:47

        Mm-hmm.

    14. KKKevin Kelly44:47

        And maybe not even within 50 years. And so because we intuitively understand that this is actually a, the best time to be alive. But there is a recognition of like what are the currents that made that? What has allowed that? What's, what's operating? Is it still going?

    15. TFTim Ferriss45:04

        Mm-hmm.

    16. KKKevin Kelly45:04

        And from my view of history, and I had the chance to live in the past, you know, in a time machine. We, we'll talk about that in a minute. [laughs]

    17. TFTim Ferriss45:14

        [laughs] Okay. Wow, didn't see that coming. Yes. Okay.

    18. KKKevin Kelly45:17

        I did. And-

    19. TFTim Ferriss45:17

        Time... No, I'm taking a note. Time machine, question mark.

    20. KKKevin Kelly45:19

        Time machine. I, I have, I've been in the time machine, and it's very, very clear that we've been on a momentum and a, and a trajectory of progress, and it's possible that that could stop tomorrow.

    21. TFTim Ferriss45:33

        Mm-hmm.

    22. KKKevin Kelly45:33

        It's highly unlikely that it's gonna stop tomorrow. So there is just all the conditions that make that suggest that it will continue.

    23. TFTim Ferriss45:42

        Mm-hmm.

    24. KKKevin Kelly45:42

        And so part of our optimism can come from that.

    25. TFTim Ferriss45:47

        Okay. Time machine's coming up.

    26. KKKevin Kelly45:49

        Yeah. [laughs]

13. 45:50 – 50:37

    Is regression inevitable if we don’t embrace “degrowth?”

    1. TFTim Ferriss45:50

       I, I want people to stick around right after this commercial break. [laughs]

    2. KKKevin Kelly45:52

       [laughs]

    3. TFTim Ferriss45:53

       But no, I'm not gonna take a commercial break, but I do [laughs] want to ask you, given the bet on collapse of-

    4. KKKevin Kelly46:01

       Yeah

    5. TFTim Ferriss46:01

       ... global human population, do you think that by 2060-

    6. KKKevin Kelly46:08

       [laughs]

    7. TFTim Ferriss46:08

       ... if we've peaked out at the top of the rollercoaster, do you think this progress is inextricably linked to population growth and population density? And if that's the case, do you think we might be looking at regression?

    8. KKKevin Kelly46:26

       So-

    9. TFTim Ferriss46:26

       Not trying to turn you to the dark side.

    10. KKKevin Kelly46:27

        No, no, no.

    11. TFTim Ferriss46:28

        I'm just curious.

    12. KKKevin Kelly46:28

        You're asking the exact right questions. You know, there's a movement called degrowth, the degrowth movement.

    13. TFTim Ferriss46:36

        I'm not familiar.

    14. KKKevin Kelly46:37

        So these are people who basically see the troubles of the world, and particularly climate when coming from our addiction to growth.

    15. TFTim Ferriss46:48

        Mm-hmm.

    16. KKKevin Kelly46:49

        Growth is kind of the consumer capitalistic kind of idea that they grow, grow, grow, grow. And they're saying it's finite. We can't continue to grow.

    17. TFTim Ferriss46:57

        Mm-hmm.

    18. KKKevin Kelly46:57

        And we have to degrowth, stop growing. There's a little bit of a confusion in English because there's two meaning of the word growth. There's growth to add on more, more pounds, to add more and more stuff, to get bigger, wider, heavier, to have more things, to sell more refrigerators, to sell more bottles of wine. But there's another meaning of the word growth which is probably closer to what you're interested in, personal growth.

    19. TFTim Ferriss47:23

        Mm-hmm.

    20. KKKevin Kelly47:23

        Developing, maturing.

    21. TFTim Ferriss47:25

        Or knowledge growth.

    22. KKKevin Kelly47:26

        Knowledge growth.

    23. TFTim Ferriss47:27

        I guess in a sense it's the same as the first, but it's-

    24. KKKevin Kelly47:29

        No, it's increasing this complexity

    25. TFTim Ferriss47:31

        ... infinite in capacity.

    26. KKKevin Kelly47:32

        It's taking the same number of atoms and having a more complex arrangement. It's going from a jellyfish to a chimpanzee or something.

    27. TFTim Ferriss47:40

        Mm-hmm.

    28. KKKevin Kelly47:40

        And so that complex adaptive system where you have increasing levels of complexity and more exotropy in it, that is a different kind of growth.

    29. TFTim Ferriss47:52

        What is exotropy? I know what entropy is.

    30. KKKevin Kelly47:54

        It's the opposite-
14. 50:37 – 53:34

    Kevin’s $20 time machine.

    1. TFTim Ferriss50:37

       as you pointed out.

    2. KKKevin Kelly50:37

       So the time machine.

    3. TFTim Ferriss50:39

       Time machine.

    4. KKKevin Kelly50:40

       I know you're gonna ask about the time machine.

    5. TFTim Ferriss50:41

       Oh, it's there. It's right there-

    6. KKKevin Kelly50:42

       [laughs]

    7. TFTim Ferriss50:42

       ... top right, time machine question mark. For those who think I'm lying, it's right there. [laughs]

    8. KKKevin Kelly50:48

       [laughs]

    9. TFTim Ferriss50:48

       Okay.

    10. KKKevin Kelly50:48

        The time machine. I took like a $20 bus ride-

    11. TFTim Ferriss50:53

        Mm-hmm

    12. KKKevin Kelly50:53

        ... in northern Afghanistan-

    13. TFTim Ferriss50:55

        Mm-hmm

    14. KKKevin Kelly50:55

        ... in 1975 somewhere, and I arrived in a different century, literally in a different century. I had no map. I'd not met anybody, heard of anybody who ever went there. I mean, there was obviously lots of Afghans, but I mean, no, no tourists. I had no idea if I could get there. It was literally a n- a name on a very poor map. And-

    15. TFTim Ferriss51:21

        [laughs] How did you choose it?

    16. KKKevin Kelly51:22

        Because it was so-

    17. TFTim Ferriss51:23

        It's like a Coming to America, just [laughs]

    18. KKKevin Kelly51:24

        ... it was so remote, and I wanted to see what was at the end of the line.

    19. TFTim Ferriss51:28

        Right.

    20. KKKevin Kelly51:28

        And here was a town, and I don't know how... You know, maybe there's 100,000 people in this town.

    21. TFTim Ferriss51:32

        That's a good size.

    22. KKKevin Kelly51:33

        A good size town. There was no electricity in the town. They didn't have streetlights. They would have a guy at night go and light kerosene lamps, the streetlighter. They would throw their shit into the street, I mean, out the window kind of stuff. It was like... And of course, the feudal... There was a feudal structure. I mean, they had basically slaves and child brides and the whole thing.

    23. TFTim Ferriss52:01

        Mm.

    24. KKKevin Kelly52:01

        It was just medieval-

    25. TFTim Ferriss52:03

        Mm

    26. KKKevin Kelly52:03

        ... in every way. Very little metal. There was no signage on the town.

    27. TFTim Ferriss52:08

        Mm.

    28. KKKevin Kelly52:08

        There was no signs. Didn't need signs.

    29. TFTim Ferriss52:10

        Mm-hmm.

    30. KKKevin Kelly52:11

        It was like I'm in a different century. I'm in a different century. And that experience of, of seeing what you get when you had development in technology, and of course you could see all the challenges and the problems, but the main thing that I learned from that experience is thing that we get, is we get choices and options.
15. 53:34 – 1:05:57

    Will AI take our jobs?

    1. TFTim Ferriss53:34

       Even as I understand it, some, let's call them AI researchers, computer scientists with familiarity with AI, couldn't have even predicted several years ago us having today-

    2. KKKevin Kelly53:48

       Right

    3. TFTim Ferriss53:49

       ... many choices, maybe some difficult choices, maybe some difficult outcomes I might go so far to say.

    4. KKKevin Kelly53:54

       Mm-hmm.

    5. TFTim Ferriss53:57

       And I wanted to read something. This is from your Wired piece.

    6. KKKevin Kelly54:02

       Mm.

    7. TFTim Ferriss54:03

       November 2022.

    8. KKKevin Kelly54:05

       Mm-hmm.

    9. TFTim Ferriss54:06

       And this is after spending months creating thousands of images using AI. Excellent piece. I think Limitless Creativity.

    10. KKKevin Kelly54:15

        Yeah.

    11. TFTim Ferriss54:16

        And there was one line that stuck out to me, and I was like, "Man, that's a strong statement."

    12. KKKevin Kelly54:22

        Mm-hmm.

    13. TFTim Ferriss54:22

        I kind of wish Kevin hadn't included this-

    14. KKKevin Kelly54:24

        Mm

    15. TFTim Ferriss54:24

        ... because I think it's gonna be hard to defend.

    16. KKKevin Kelly54:26

        Okay.

    17. TFTim Ferriss54:26

        And I would like to talk about it.

    18. KKKevin Kelly54:28

        Sure.

    19. TFTim Ferriss54:28

        And this also pairs with an article I only started recently reading from Marc Andreessen, and as I understand it, the basic premise is that AI will not cause an increase in unemployment-

    20. KKKevin Kelly54:43

        Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

    21. TFTim Ferriss54:43

        ... which is a bit broader-

    22. KKKevin Kelly54:45

        Mm-hmm

    23. TFTim Ferriss54:45

        ... than the line-

    24. KKKevin Kelly54:46

        [laughs]

    25. TFTim Ferriss54:46

        ... that we have here. So let me read "I've spent the last six months using AIs to create thousands of striking images, often losing a night's sleep in the unending quest to find just one more beauty hidden in the code. And after interviewing the creators, power users, and other early adopters of the generators, I can make a very clear prediction. Generative AI will alter how we design just about everything, period." Side note, I completely agree with this. "Oh, and not a single human artist will lose their job because of this new technology." So, uh, maybe I should ask you to clarify this.

    26. KKKevin Kelly55:16

        [laughs]

    27. TFTim Ferriss55:17

        Because I work with tons and tons and tons-

    28. KKKevin Kelly55:20

        Uh-huh

    29. TFTim Ferriss55:20

        ... of contractors, and there are artists right now I've worked with who are going to be replaced. At least some of their functions will be replaced-

    30. KKKevin Kelly55:31

        Mm-hmm
16. 1:05:57 – 1:10:04

    The future of AI is dumbsmarten.

    1. KKKevin Kelly1:05:57

       to go.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:05:57

       You've interviewed just about everybody. I mean, you can, you can get to just about everybody, and I know you've spoken-

    3. KKKevin Kelly1:06:02

       Mm-hmm

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:06:03

       ... to the who's who of AI and any adjacent field that you want to investigate. You're very... Y- you know a lot of people, and you know a lot of people that know a lot of people. So you've, you've spoken to so many, and you have, I would say, one of the more impressive, you know, Nostradamus-like predictive-

    5. KKKevin Kelly1:06:23

       Mm-hmm

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:06:23

       ... track records. What would be your predictions, speculations for the next... within the next five to 10 years? Could be a shorter-

    7. KKKevin Kelly1:06:33

       Mm

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:06:33

       ... timeframe of what you think.

    9. KKKevin Kelly1:06:35

       In AI?

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:06:36

        Yeah. Mm-hmm.

    11. KKKevin Kelly1:06:38

        Here's what I would expect. The thing I want to emphasize is that there's plural. There's AIs, so this idea of the monolithic AI taking over w- it's just they're like machines, and they're... they follow the general engineering maxim, which is that you cannot optimize everything. There's always trade-offs. So we're gonna engineer these AIs to be good for certain things, but not as good as something else in another dimension. And we already see that with, say, the image generators. Some favor artists, some favor photography. There'll be different personalities. The one that does painting the best probably isn't gonna be the best for writing.

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:07:17

        Mm-hmm.

    13. KKKevin Kelly1:07:18

        There'll be some kind of transformative, you know, thing-

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:07:21

        They're all equally bad at hands-

    15. KKKevin Kelly1:07:22

        You're right

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:07:22

        ... I've noticed.

    17. KKKevin Kelly1:07:23

        And so I say the general stance we're gonna have is what I call dumbsmarten.

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:07:27

        Okay.

    19. KKKevin Kelly1:07:28

        They'll be really smart and-

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:07:30

        Is that Pennsylvania Dutch? [laughs]

    21. KKKevin Kelly1:07:31

        Well, I don't know. It's kind of like that. It's Amish. It's dumbsmarten. We're just gonna be furious. It's like, how can you be so dumb when you're so smart about these other things?

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:07:41

        Yeah.

    23. KKKevin Kelly1:07:41

        This is gonna be their typical reaction. [laughs] It's like, you're insanely brilliant, but you're so dumb here.

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:07:46

        Sounds like half of Silicon Valley. [laughs]

    25. KKKevin Kelly1:07:47

        Exactly. Dumbsmarten. It'll be more and more difficult to kind of generalize, but what I'm saying is that they're gonna be engineered for specific tasks primarily.

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:07:56

        Mm-hmm.

    27. KKKevin Kelly1:07:57

        And there will be a general one, but the general one would be kind of like, like the Swiss Army knife.

    28. TFTim Ferriss1:08:02

        Yeah.

    29. KKKevin Kelly1:08:02

        You know, it's like good generally, but not really the best in any one tool.

    30. TFTim Ferriss1:08:06

        Yeah.
17. 1:10:04 – 1:12:48

    What’s currently underhyped?

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:10:04

       makes sense. Tools will get specialized. They will become so embedded-

    2. KKKevin Kelly1:10:10

       Mm-hmm

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:10:10

       ... that we will cease to think about them.

    4. KKKevin Kelly1:10:12

       Hopefully.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:10:12

       And hopefully, right, in the same way that you waved at the lights.

    6. KKKevin Kelly1:10:15

       Right.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:10:15

       You know, we have all sorts of lights in here-

    8. KKKevin Kelly1:10:17

       Right

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:10:17

       ... but it's not like we walk into any room with artificial light and we think, "Good Lord."

    10. KKKevin Kelly1:10:23

        Yeah. [laughs]

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:10:24

        [laughs] What is this miracle of engineering-

    12. KKKevin Kelly1:10:25

        Right, right

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:10:26

        ... and human ingenuity? I think most folks will be like, "Okay, okay."

    14. KKKevin Kelly1:10:30

        Yeah.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:10:30

        So why is it under-hyped, right? What, what should surprise people, or what, what are people-

    16. KKKevin Kelly1:10:36

        Right, right

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:10:36

        ... not appreciating?

    18. KKKevin Kelly1:10:38

        So I was involved with the internet. I was living online for at least 10 years before 1992, '93, when Wired started. And in a certain sense it was like we couldn't get anybody to take it seriously. It was dismissed as teenage boy stuff, and it was kind of that's what it was, but I felt like, "No, this is like this is really significant. This is really powerful." And what changed it was an interface change. It became visual.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:11:05

        Mm-hmm.

    20. KKKevin Kelly1:11:06

        For the first time, and the web was pictures and stuff, and that's when everybody-

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:11:12

        Switched on

    22. KKKevin Kelly1:11:12

        ... got it. Most of the AI happening today has been happening with all these chat... has been happening for years. What's new is that we now have an interface. We have the conversational. It's this idea of the large language model. We have a conversational interface, and that suddenly was [laughs] the power that's been there for years is now suddenly accessible. It's like having the pictures on the web. And so we're suddenly thinking about it. It's suddenly in people's faces in the same way that the internet was completely fringe and then when the web came along, it very rapidly became mainstream. I remember the first time I saw my gas station, the pump, there was like a URL. I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is like... It's here." This is... I have the same feeling right now happening with the chatbots and the, and the image generators is these capabilities have been around for at least a decade, but now what's new is we have a, a language interface, a, a conversational interface with them, and the, the power is just sort of completely in our faces now.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:12:14

        Mm-hmm.

    24. KKKevin Kelly1:12:15

        And so where do we go from there? I think we are going to then start to apply this to everything, right? It's gonna be... I mean, as we speak every day there's people embedding this, and they're gonna embed it with this interface. So I think we're gonna move to this having a whole another level of interfacing with this machine with language, and that's very, very powerful. We'll just go through the whole thing as like take X, add the language interface to it. That's really powerful.

18. 1:12:48 – 1:15:06

    Posting an AI picture a day keeps Kevin at play.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:12:49

       What are you hoping to use AIs for over the next six to 12 months?

    2. KKKevin Kelly1:12:56

       First of all, I generate... I post a AI picture every day and a half been.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:13:01

       When did you switch from manual to-

    4. KKKevin Kelly1:13:03

       Uh, last June, almost a year ago. And-

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:13:08

       Which tools do you mostly use?

    6. KKKevin Kelly1:13:10

       I tend to go to Midjourney still. Midjourney, for those that don't know, has a very curious interface. It's a Discord channel.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:13:19

       Yeah.

    8. KKKevin Kelly1:13:20

       And at first, I was completely bamboozled and infuriated with that-

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:13:24

       [laughs]

    10. KKKevin Kelly1:13:25

        ... but I came to see it as genius.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:13:28

        Why is that?

    12. KKKevin Kelly1:13:29

        Because everybody's working in the open.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:13:31

        Mm.

    14. KKKevin Kelly1:13:31

        It's like the ultimate learning vehicle. You-- And I learn something every time I go on-

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:13:36

        Being a student in the surgery theater back in the day

    16. KKKevin Kelly1:13:39

        ... Exactly. You're seeing how other people do it. It's not behind closed doors. They're doing it in public, and oh my gosh, do you learn so much that way so fast. And what's interesting, the year before that I did a piece of art every day on my iPad with Procreate, and I spent almost as much time on the AIs making an image as I do when I make it myself.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:14:03

        Mm-hmm.

    18. KKKevin Kelly1:14:03

        'Cause again, the accusation among the painters in the 1800s when the photography came along was, "Oh, you guys are... You, you, you just push the button." And we realize of course now that photography is not just pushing the button. There's a lot more involved in making a really great photograph than just pushing the button. You have to be in the right position, all this kind of stuff. And the same thing with, with the AIR. It's, "Oh, you're just clicking." No, no. It's like, it's like photography. I feel I have some of the same kind of a stance that I have when I'm photographing. I'm kind of hunting. I'm searching through it. I'm trying to find a good position, a good area where there's kind of promise, and I'm moving around, and I'm trying, and I'm whispering to the AI, "How about this?" I'm changing the word order. I'm actually interacting and having a conversation with it over time, and it may take a half hour or more to get an image that I'm happy with.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:14:54

        Mm-hmm.

    20. KKKevin Kelly1:14:54

        And I'm at that point very comfortable in putting my name as a co-creator of it because I have, me and the intern have worked together to make this thing.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:15:04

        [laughs]

19. 1:15:06 – 1:21:32

    How Kevin uses AI chatbots to help write first drafts.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:15:07

       Okay. So you have the art application. Any other applications-

    2. KKKevin Kelly1:15:11

       Oh, in the future? In the next six months? Well, I'm actually using the chatbots to help write.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:15:17

       Chatbots. ChatGPT?

    4. KKKevin Kelly1:15:18

       Yeah. ChatGPT, you know, Bing stuff, and Google. For me, I've always had problems making that first draft.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:15:24

       Mm-hmm.

    6. KKKevin Kelly1:15:25

       It's just a killer.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:15:26

       Yeah. I, I know the feeling.

    8. KKKevin Kelly1:15:27

       You know the feeling.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:15:28

       [laughs]

    10. KKKevin Kelly1:15:29

        I find it helpful in making the first draft.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:15:32

        How do you prompt it? What would be an example approach?

    12. KKKevin Kelly1:15:36

        All different ways, and, and that's-- I've been collecting this, and it's... And here's the thing about this-

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:15:39

        Your book of spells

    14. KKKevin Kelly1:15:40

        ... Yes. Here, here's the thing about it is that this is an important lesson about technology is that we have to use it to figure it out. There's something I call thinkism, which is this reliance on trying to solve problems by thinking about them, which is very appealing to people who like to think.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:15:57

        [laughs]

    16. KKKevin Kelly1:15:58

        Okay? And you can only go so far with thinkism because all the things we're discovering about this, none of the inventors of this had any idea that they could be used this way.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:16:08

        That's cool.

    18. KKKevin Kelly1:16:09

        Right? And so we're discovering, we collectively by using it, are discovering its capabilities and eventually its harms. But that's important because this is how we steer the things. And so the problem with trying to prohibit or turn it off or ban it is that you don't get to steer then, going back to that metaphor. So right now through use, we're, we're uncovering all these things, and I've been trying to track how people are actually using them and, like for instance, chat. So here's the thing. These chat models, basically what they generate are wisdom of the crowd kind of knowledge.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:16:43

        Mm-hmm.

    20. KKKevin Kelly1:16:43

        Wisdom of the crowd was very famous counting the jelly beans, right? Like if you average all the attempts by humans to count the number of jelly beans in a bottle, the best guess, the most accurate was kind of like the average of them.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:16:57

        Mm-hmm.

    22. KKKevin Kelly1:16:57

        And that's what we're getting with the chat. It's taking everything that's written, the plus and the minuses, the geniuses and the jerks, and it's averaging out, and that's what it's giving you is kind of an average. So most of the content generated by the chats is sort of broadly correct, very kind of average, very kind of bland, and a lot of what you're doing with the intern is kind of pressing them. So one of the tricks is that you s- you can ask for it to be a little bit snarkier or more professional.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:17:27

        So let's say you're starting tabula rasa.

    24. KKKevin Kelly1:17:31

        Right, right.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:17:32

        Idea popped into your head in the shower.

    26. KKKevin Kelly1:17:34

        Right.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:17:34

        Okay, I want to give a rough draft a shot.

    28. KKKevin Kelly1:17:35

        Right.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:17:35

        What is the step number one-

    30. KKKevin Kelly1:17:38

        Right, right
20. 1:21:32 – 1:24:54

    Potential scenarios for where AI will be going soon.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:21:32

       Right. [laughs]

    2. KKKevin Kelly1:21:32

       Okay?

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:21:33

       Right.

    4. KKKevin Kelly1:21:33

       It's the not bad intern. Universal not bad personal intern.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:21:37

       [laughs]

    6. KKKevin Kelly1:21:37

       And you know, they'll get better, and I think we'll also... again, they'll get specialized. So in 15 years, 15 years... So here's my reluctance about that. I saw VR for the first time-

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:21:57

       [laughs]

    8. KKKevin Kelly1:21:58

       ... with Jaron Lanier in 1989. '87. I could see that in five years. I could see, like... I mean, it was so good. It was so amazing.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:22:10

       We'll be at Ready Player One in 1992.

    10. KKKevin Kelly1:22:12

        Exactly.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:22:13

        [laughs]

    12. KKKevin Kelly1:22:14

        So what's happened in the 30 years since then? The state of the Oculus, whatever, it's about the same as what I saw with Jaron Lanier, but it's a million times cheaper.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:22:28

        Right.

    14. KKKevin Kelly1:22:29

        Okay? [laughs] But it really isn't a million times better.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:22:31

        Mm-hmm.

    16. KKKevin Kelly1:22:32

        So I don't know. I, I think this is the time for scenarios. I think I could have a different, bunch of different scenarios rather than making a prediction.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:22:41

        Sure. Right.

    18. KKKevin Kelly1:22:42

        And you know, one of the scenarios is that it doesn't get exponentially better, but it just gets exponentially pervasive.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:22:49

        Mm-hmm.

    20. KKKevin Kelly1:22:50

        And it's-

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:22:50

        Which you would think would automatic- not automatically, that's a strong word, would make it better in terms of-

    22. KKKevin Kelly1:22:57

        Yeah

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:22:57

        ... access to larger data sets and...

    24. KKKevin Kelly1:23:00

        Yeah. Again, I think one of the things that might come, we might have a much more tailored version of this.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:23:05

        Mm-hmm.

    26. KKKevin Kelly1:23:06

        All right? So going back to the, you know, like your, your attempts to, to train it on your own stuff or to maybe have a more customized version of stuff that you want. So it's maybe relatively the same level, but it's much more personalized and tailored and customized to what you do and how you do it. And also-

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:23:24

        Also tailored for my audience. I want to-

    28. KKKevin Kelly1:23:26

        Right.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:23:26

        And I've already seen a few people do this-

    30. KKKevin Kelly1:23:28

        Right
21. 1:24:54 – 1:29:36

    What prompted Kevin to write Excellent Advice for Living?

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:24:54

       All right. Excellent Advice for Living.

    2. KKKevin Kelly1:24:57

       [laughs]

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:24:58

       Damn it, Kevin, I've been trying to get you to talk about this-

    4. KKKevin Kelly1:25:00

       [laughs]

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:25:00

       ... and you keep pushing back. I was gonna segue to this because you mentioned using AI to think differently-

    6. KKKevin Kelly1:25:07

       Right

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:25:07

       ... as a catalyst for thinking differently.

    8. KKKevin Kelly1:25:09

       Right, right, right.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:25:09

       And it made me think of Advice that I've certainly read of yours and you've probably-- we've had, probably had conversations about it which related to career advice for people, say, in their 20s and exploring avenues and creating for themselves or attempting to create for themselves jobs and activities that don't have clear labels and using that, among other tools, as a way to learn to think differently

    10. KKKevin Kelly1:25:43

        Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:25:44

        But let's zoom out. So I'm holding two copies of the book. One is very, very tiny. This is a prized possession now. I've read it probably 12 times. I have many, many notes, and there are all sorts of notes in here. Excellent Advice for Living. Now, the tiny version I have says Seeds for Contemplation, which I also like. And then there's the, the very beautiful cover-

    12. KKKevin Kelly1:26:08

        Yeah

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:26:08

        ... of this galley that you handed to me just before we started recording. Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier. How did this come to be? What is the genesis story?

    14. KKKevin Kelly1:26:22

        I would write down bits of advice that, to help me change my own behavior. I liked to kind of reduce something that I could say to myself, to repeat to myself, to remember something and as a way of changing my behavior. And in that kind of encapsulation and reduction to a little tiny sentence, for me was like a handle to grab hold of it and bring it forth when I needed it. And an example would be if I know I have something in my household and I can't find it, then when I finally do find it, I'd say to myself when I'm getting ready to put it back, "Don't put it back where I found it. Put it back where I first looked for it."

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:27:00

        Mm-hmm.

    16. KKKevin Kelly1:27:00

        And so I have my flashlight. Well, uh, put it back where you first looked for it.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:27:05

        Mm-hmm.

    18. KKKevin Kelly1:27:05

        I'm reminding myself that. And so I would start to write things down. Like another one would be if I'm invited to do a talk, go meet somebody or have coffee, whatever it is, I would say to myself, "Would I do this if it was tomorrow morning?"

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:27:19

        Mm-hmm.

    20. KKKevin Kelly1:27:19

        As this kind of a filter to really make sure it passed that hurdle because eventually it will be tomorrow morning [laughing] and I have to think about it. And so I would say I got this invite. Oh, that's kind of interesting. Good. Would I do this tomorrow morning? So this kind of making it into some portable way that I could remind myself very easily, and I start got in the habit of writing these down. And I realized a lot of it was sort of advice that I wish I had known earlier.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:27:47

        Mm-hmm.

    22. KKKevin Kelly1:27:48

        I have three kids, and the way of our parenting was the opposite of helicopter parenting [laughs] was very hands-off, and I-- we did not give them much advice ever. When I was growing up, I didn't really pay attention to what my parents said. I paid attention to what they did.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:28:04

        Mm-hmm.

    24. KKKevin Kelly1:28:05

        And I figured that's what our kids were doing too. So we tried to model behavior rather than to say it. So neither my wife or I ever really gave much advice. But I thought that now that I was writing it down, that I should give them advice, so I began this idea of trying to extract out and put it into a little handle something encapsulated that I could give to my kids.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:28:28

        Mm-hmm.

    26. KKKevin Kelly1:28:29

        And I did a bunch when I was 68 on my birthday. I, I kind of released it to, to my son at that time, who was a young adult, just becoming an adult. And a lot of people loved it, and it ricocheted around the, the internet. I did it for a couple more years, and I realized that I had a lot to say. I was finally giving advice, which [laughing] I've been keeping to myself.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:28:53

        This cork bottled up for all these decades [laughing]

    28. KKKevin Kelly1:28:54

        Kept it in for 70 years [laughing] and now I was giving it out. But it's kind of scattered around the internet, and I thought it would be really handy to have it in a book. So I made a prototype myself, just made a little book. I made five copies, and I sent it around to see if it was kind of worked as a book, and this book also has my little doodles in it, and it worked. And so I sent it to a publisher. They loved it. They said they didn't like the doodles. [laughing] And so they said, "No art by you." Okay. [laughing] It's in a portable form and, and actually I realized afterwards, although I-- it was not in my head at the time, but it's very tweetable.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:29:34

        [laughs]

22. 1:29:36 – 1:33:12

    Examples of Kevin’s simple, tweetable advice.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:29:36

       It's very tweetable.

    2. KKKevin Kelly1:29:36

       These are tweets, and so they work at the kind of attention span of, of a young person these days and they, they transmit well. So the version you have here has about another hundred that aren't even in this one.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:29:48

       Oh, look at this. Just when I thought [laughing] Christmas was far away.

    4. KKKevin Kelly1:29:55

       I tried to make them as practical as possible, actionable-

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:29:58

       Mm-hmm

    6. KKKevin Kelly1:29:58

       ... not conventional, positive if at all possible, and short.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:30:07

       Mm-hmm.

    8. KKKevin Kelly1:30:08

       So you can find no better medicine for your family than regular meals together without screens.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:30:14

       Mm-hmm. Let me throw a few out just because I have so many notes in here. So I'll, I'll mention a couple. And one that I, I may not get verbatim, but I've thought quite a bit about because when I look back at all the places I've spent time, it's totally true. It's something like if, if an outdoor patio is-

    10. KKKevin Kelly1:30:34

        Yeah

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:30:34

        ... less than six feet wide, no one will ever use it.

    12. KKKevin Kelly1:30:37

        A balcony. No one will use a balcony less than six feet.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:30:38

        Never, ever.

    14. KKKevin Kelly1:30:39

        Never.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:30:40

        And I thought about it. I was like that hundred percent maps to all of my experience.

    16. KKKevin Kelly1:30:44

        Right.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:30:45

        You have what you do on your bad days matters more than what you do on your good days.

    18. KKKevin Kelly1:30:49

        Right.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:30:49

        You know, this is also overlaps with a lot of my thoughts on, on ritual and routine-

    20. KKKevin Kelly1:30:54

        Mm-hmm

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:30:54

        ... versus [laughs] relying on, say, discipline. Greatness is incompatible with optimizing in the short term.

    22. KKKevin Kelly1:31:02

        Mm-hmm.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:31:02

        And it goes on and on. I'm just mentioning a few that, that I've highlighted for myself. You don't marry a person, you marry a family.

    24. KKKevin Kelly1:31:08

        [laughing]

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:31:09

        That's a big one.

    26. KKKevin Kelly1:31:10

        I decided you don't marry a family, you marry a country 'cause my wife is from a different country [laughing] , so.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:31:16

        And you know, who knows? Maybe a hundred years from now you don't marry a person, you marry a, a planet.

    28. KKKevin Kelly1:31:20

        A species.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:31:20

        A species. Yeah. If you can't tell what you desperately need, it's probably sleep.

    30. KKKevin Kelly1:31:25

        Mm-hmm
23. 1:33:12 – 1:36:53

    Don’t aim to be the best. Be the only.

    1. KKKevin Kelly1:33:12

       it's really true.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:33:12

       Very true.

    3. KKKevin Kelly1:33:13

       So one of my, my favorite bits of advice that can be expanded, which is don't aim to be the best.

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:33:19

       Mm-hmm.

    5. KKKevin Kelly1:33:20

       Be the only.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:33:21

       Yeah, category of one.

    7. KKKevin Kelly1:33:22

       And here's, here's the category of one right before us.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:33:24

       [laughs]

    9. KKKevin Kelly1:33:25

       You are living that. Like, even, you know, 10 years ago, I don't know when you started your podcast, but if-

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:33:30

        Almost 10. It'll be 10 years next year

    11. KKKevin Kelly1:33:31

        ... right, you want to be doing something where it's hard to explain to your mother what it is that you do, right? [laughs]

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:33:36

        [laughs]

    13. KKKevin Kelly1:33:36

        And so it's like, "What is it?" "Well, it's not quite radio. You know, I don't know. It's like talking." And so that's where you want to be. You want to be the only. And that's a very high bar because it requires a tremendous amount of self-knowledge and awareness to get to that point, to really understand what it is that you do better than anybody else in the world. And for most of us, it takes all our lives to, to figure that out. And we also, by the way, need family, friends, colleagues, customers, clients, everyone around us to help us understand what it is that we do better than anyone else. 'Cause, 'cause we can't really get there by yourself.

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:34:15

        Totally.

    15. KKKevin Kelly1:34:16

        You can't do thinkism. You can't think your way [laughs] there. You have to try and live it out. And that's why most people's remarkable lives are full of detours and dead ends and-

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:34:25

        Yeah

    17. KKKevin Kelly1:34:25

        ... right turns, because it's a very high bar. But if you can get there, you don't need a resume. There's, there's no competition, and it's easy for you because it's-

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:34:37

        Yeah

    19. KKKevin Kelly1:34:37

        ... you're doing it. You're not looking over your shoulder. You're just right there. So don't aim to be the best. Be the only.

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:34:46

        On the easy front, a question that I've sometime asked my friends, because the things that are right in front of us all the time are sometimes the hardest to see-

    21. KKKevin Kelly1:34:54

        There you go

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:34:55

        ... is what do you think is easy for me that is harder for other people?

    23. KKKevin Kelly1:34:59

        Right, right.

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:34:59

        Because sometimes you ta- I shouldn't say so... oftentimes-

    25. KKKevin Kelly1:35:02

        Right

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:35:02

        ... take it for granted-

    27. KKKevin Kelly1:35:03

        Right

    28. TFTim Ferriss1:35:03

        ... because it's just what you do.

    29. KKKevin Kelly1:35:04

        Yeah.

    30. TFTim Ferriss1:35:05

        And you don't even see where you have-
24. 1:36:53 – 1:40:17

    Good uses of time spent with one’s children.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:36:53

       I want to ask a follow-up question to one of these. For the best results with your children, I starred this one, spend only half the money you think you should, but double the time with them.

    2. KKKevin Kelly1:37:01

       Yeah.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:37:02

       One of the letters, don't get a lot of physical letters, but one of the letters that I most look forward to every year, I think it's your year in review-

    4. KKKevin Kelly1:37:11

       Mm-hmm

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:37:12

       ... or Christmas perhaps-

    6. KKKevin Kelly1:37:12

       Mm-hmm

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:37:13

       ... but you give a recap, and you talk about the family and adventures and so on. What have you found to be some of the best investments of time with your kids?

    8. KKKevin Kelly1:37:24

       Mm.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:37:24

       Because abstractly I bet most parents would nod their heads and say, "Of course that makes sense. Absolutely."

    10. KKKevin Kelly1:37:32

        Right, right, right.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:37:33

        But not all ways of spending time with kids-

    12. KKKevin Kelly1:37:37

        Right, right, right

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:37:37

        ... are equal, I would imagine.

    14. KKKevin Kelly1:37:38

        Right, right.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:37:39

        For building intimacy and a relationship with your kids or maybe other things, what have you found to be really good uses of time?

    16. KKKevin Kelly1:37:48

        I don't know enough about this generally, but I can only tell you what we have done ourselves. And for me-

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:37:52

        [laughs] That's what I'm asking

    18. KKKevin Kelly1:37:53

        ... yeah. For me, what I've seen is a couple things. One is making things together.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:37:59

        Mm-hmm.

    20. KKKevin Kelly1:38:00

        And I'm a maker, and so I have to kind of work against my better instincts to be too involved or take over too much, but to really allow that kind of cooperative joint making together. And it's fun for the kid and it's fun for me, and you get to see frustrations, overcoming frustrations, making mistakes, overcoming mistakes. So there's, there's a tremendous amount going on, both them learning and me learning about them, and that togetherness is really great.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:38:29

        What kind of stuff have you made together?

    22. KKKevin Kelly1:38:31

        We've made go-karts. We've made gingerbread castles. We've made Styrobot. I don't know if you went in my office-

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:38:39

        I remember Styrobot

    24. KKKevin Kelly1:38:39

        ... and you had Styrobot with my son making... It was, was made from recycled styrofoam. It's, was nine feet tall. Just, you know, art projects, helping in the garden, doing chores together. I would say travel is undoubtedly one of the best learning experiences, so much that I think as a nation we should subsidize travel, but as a family if you can afford it... And I don't mean as like going on vacation. I th- I-- the kind of travel I like is where you are learning. It's kind of like a learning experience. It's an experience. And oh, my gosh, is that so powerful. And I would say one thing about it that I've learned doing it, and that is that I was a little concerned when we were doing very intense travel with my kids at a younger age. They kind of at times didn't seem to be paying attention. They seemed not to be aware or they were kind of maybe wanting to stay in their hotel and play cards or things like that when they were-- we were in Tibet, you know, whatever. But later on I found out that actually they were paying attention, but they couldn't process it at the time.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:39:50

        Hmm.

    26. KKKevin Kelly1:39:50

        So the experience was there, and they would reprocess it over time, and it would become more and more valuable as they had more and more to kind of interpret it. And that trip, which I kind of thought was a failure at the time because they were sort of not really appreciating it or atten- actually grew in importance. And so don't be dismayed if you take your kids on a great adventure and they're kind of like not impressed or they're not changed or whatever. No, no, no. They haven't yet been able to process it, and they'll process

25. 1:40:17 – 1:44:00

    Tips for traveling with children.

    1. KKKevin Kelly1:40:17

       it over time.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:40:18

       Any other tips for traveling with kids? Because I can imagine a family trip-

    3. KKKevin Kelly1:40:24

       Yeah

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:40:25

       ... that it is almost certainly very different from [laughs] like having a family trip where a family has gone to five countries, they've stayed at the Four Seasons in each one. The kids have been on their phones the entire time.

    5. KKKevin Kelly1:40:37

       Yeah, yeah.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:40:38

       And you can fill in the rest of the picture.

    7. KKKevin Kelly1:40:40

       Right. Yeah.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:40:40

       So what would be perhaps some recommendations? And I'm not saying people should sleep on the sidewalks.

    9. KKKevin Kelly1:40:46

       Sure, sure.

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:40:46

        It's just that you can travel and not actually leave the comfort of your own-

    11. KKKevin Kelly1:40:50

        Yeah, yeah

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:40:51

        ... usual scaffolding.

    13. KKKevin Kelly1:40:52

        Yeah. No. One of the bits of advice is, you know, like a vacation plus a disaster equals an adventure [laughs] .

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:40:58

        [laughs]

    15. KKKevin Kelly1:40:59

        You know? So, so like one of the times I rode my bicycle across the US was from Vancouver down to Mexico on the coast, and I ro- and I rode with my son, who was a teenager. And I had his nephew, who was a teenager, along. That was an incredible experience, and doing that together, kind of like an adventure together, was tremendous for them because it took them out of the San Francisco bubble and could see the real world and again, was a learning experience about overcoming, you know, doing things that seemed hard but turned out to be things that you just could do. So I would say yes, try new things. Another thing that I think is really good for travel is to almost go somewhere at random.

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:41:49

        Mm-hmm.

    17. KKKevin Kelly1:41:51

        I mean, literally, like our policy for our family was to follow passions and interests rather than destinations.

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:41:57

        Mm-hmm.

    19. KKKevin Kelly1:41:58

        So every kid would have a... We would say, "We're gonna follow your passion for our vacation this, this year. Whatever you're interested in. You know, if you are interested in Anne of Green Gables, okay, we're gonna go to Nova Scotia and visit all the Anne of Green Gables sites."

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:42:12

        What is Anne of Green Gables? I probably should know.

    21. KKKevin Kelly1:42:14

        Anne of Green Gables is a popular children's or young adult's story.

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:42:20

        I see.

    23. KKKevin Kelly1:42:20

        Anne of Green Gables and, and there was like a series of books.

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:42:23

        Mm-hmm.

    25. KKKevin Kelly1:42:23

        And it was based in Nova Scotia, and there's kind of a big following about that.

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:42:27

        Got it.

    27. KKKevin Kelly1:42:29

        Our son was interested in dinosaurs when he was very little. Okay, we're gonna go to all the dinosaur digs and dinosaur museums and dinosaur excavations that we can find. And that was the theme, and they were very engaged in that vacation. We were in, we were in an RV, and we were going around visiting dinosaurs because that child got to pick.

    28. TFTim Ferriss1:42:48

        The follow-up question I had after the, the bicycle story was whether your kids have always been game for these adventures or whether you've cultivated/Jedi mind tricked them-

    29. KKKevin Kelly1:43:05

        [laughs]

    30. TFTim Ferriss1:43:05

        ... into being more game, because I, I would have to imagine-
26. 1:44:00 – 1:46:53

    Being a tourist in your own town and troubleshooting advice.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:44:00

       All right, I'm gonna grab a few more here. If an elementary school student is struggling, first thing, check their eyesight. Great advice. Something I need to get checked. My family has quite a bit of glaucoma and-

    2. KKKevin Kelly1:44:12

       Uh-huh, uh-huh

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:44:12

       ... intraocular pressure issues, and I haven't had them checked in a long time, so I'll get there. Purchase the most recent tourist guidebook-

    4. KKKevin Kelly1:44:18

       Mm

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:44:18

       ... to your hometown or region. You'll learn a lot by playing the tourist once a year. This is something I did. I went out and I actually, I actually got the guidebooks, and you do pick up a lot.

    6. KKKevin Kelly1:44:27

       Yeah, yeah.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:44:28

       You pick up a lot. I did this in San Francisco too.

    8. KKKevin Kelly1:44:30

       Yeah, yeah.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:44:30

       It's shocking how much you miss.

    10. KKKevin Kelly1:44:32

        Yeah.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:44:32

        I remember growing up in New York, I never made it to the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building until a German friend visited me like 10 years ago-

    12. KKKevin Kelly1:44:44

        Uh-huh

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:44:44

        ... and was shocked-

    14. KKKevin Kelly1:44:46

        Me too

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:44:46

        ... that I had never been to either of these things, and I was like, "You know-

    16. KKKevin Kelly1:44:48

        [laughs]

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:44:49

        ... maybe I should-

    18. KKKevin Kelly1:44:50

        Yeah, yeah

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:44:50

        ... at least spend an afternoon-

    20. KKKevin Kelly1:44:52

        Right, right

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:44:52

        ... and go see these things."

    22. KKKevin Kelly1:44:53

        Well-

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:44:53

        And it was a blast. It was well fun

    24. KKKevin Kelly1:44:55

        ... one Thanksgiving Day, we went into San Francisco and rode the cable cars-

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:44:59

        Mm-hmm

    26. KKKevin Kelly1:44:59

        ... which we had never been on.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:45:01

        Yeah.

    28. KKKevin Kelly1:45:01

        And it was the perfect day because there was nobody [laughs] else on them. It was Thanksgiving Day, and so yes, it's a way of... Again, I favor things that help you learn, give you new experience, and treating your own neighborhood is, is a great way to do that.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:45:20

        All right. So I'm, I'm giving some more example. I could keep going 'cause there's so many good ones, but I'll give an example of highly tactical and specific. All right? To signal an emergency, use the rule of three.

    30. KKKevin Kelly1:45:28

        Right.
27. 1:46:53 – 1:48:16

    What Kevin hopes readers will take away from Excellent Advice for Living.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:46:53

       what would you hope this to do? What would be success for you, or is it already successful? You're like, "Eh, I've done it."

    2. KKKevin Kelly1:47:01

       Generally, my books have an audience of one. You know, I did this big Asia book.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:47:05

       Yeah.

    4. KKKevin Kelly1:47:06

       30 pounds, three volumes.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:47:08

       Spectacularly beautiful, gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous book.

    6. KKKevin Kelly1:47:11

       You know, 9,000 images. There was n- one voice.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:47:14

       You took every image.

    8. KKKevin Kelly1:47:15

       I took every image.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:47:16

       Wrote every caption.

    10. KKKevin Kelly1:47:17

        I did all the layout. Every... There's 1,000 pages. Each one has a different design. I did the whole thing, and there's nobody who enjoys that book more than me, just going through it. Of course, I, I was there, but I made up one prototype book, like this book here is a prototype, and all I wanted was one book. If there was no other books made, I would've been happy. But since I was making one, it's so easy to make others.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:47:43

        Uh-huh.

    12. KKKevin Kelly1:47:43

        And so it's like if I can share it with you, send it to my friends, that makes me even happier. So the success for that was having the book. This one is not so much for me. It is if other people are also can gain and find ways to repeat these things and improve their lives, that is success for me. So I would hope that a young person like me would hear some of this advice and be able to encapsulate it and repeat it to themselves and make their lives better. That would be a success for me.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:48:15

        Hmm.

28. 1:48:16 – 1:54:24

    Sabbaticals.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:48:16

       I'm gonna take a slight detour because that is my want. I'm gonna take a slight detour because this is on my mind. Do you still recommend sabbaticals?

    2. KKKevin Kelly1:48:27

       Oh, my gosh.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:48:29

       And how would you suggest, maybe for people who have, have not heard our prior conversations-

    4. KKKevin Kelly1:48:34

       Yeah

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:48:34

       ... think about sabbaticals, the value of how to actually take a sabbatical. What does that mean?

    6. KKKevin Kelly1:48:40

       Right, right, right. No, I'm a huge fan of sabbaticals, and I think I had some advice in the book. I put it that I think we overemphasize our productivity and efficiency, but there's... The most powerful thing you can do for your productivity is to... The best thing for your work ethic is to have a rest ethic.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:49:04

       Yes.

    8. KKKevin Kelly1:49:04

       Okay?

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:49:04

       Actually, that's one I've started.

    10. KKKevin Kelly1:49:05

        Right, right.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:49:06

        Something along the lines of the key to a great work ethic is having a great rest ethic.

    12. KKKevin Kelly1:49:12

        Rest ethic. So this idea of, I think goofing off, wasting time, sabbaticals, Sabbaths, taking a Sabbath, are all essential to, to the creative life. They're just, they're just abs- it's almost like sleep. You just have to do it, and it does it by re- rejuvenating you and shifting your perspective By releasing you from... I mean, there's just so many things that it works on. And most, I think for me, in my own experience, the, the best things that I've done came after, you know, taking shifting. It's like the clutch. When you're shifting, you want to put the clutch in.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:49:54

        Mm-hmm.

    14. KKKevin Kelly1:49:55

        Right? Otherwise you just kind of grind. So I think it's really valuable and, and again, not just like every seven years, which is a technical sabbatical, but like Sabbaths, like vacations, but more importantly, time off and goofing off.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:50:11

        Mm-hmm.

    16. KKKevin Kelly1:50:12

        And I think I find that the young people, believe it or not, the ones that I am associated with don't goof off enough. They go right from college and their first job, and it's like, "No."

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:50:25

        Yeah.

    18. KKKevin Kelly1:50:26

        Don't [laughs] ... There were, there were people at Wired that came right from college, and after seven years they were still there. It's like I sat down like, "Why are you here?"

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:50:35

        [laughs]

    20. KKKevin Kelly1:50:36

        It's just you should not be here.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:50:38

        [laughs]

    22. KKKevin Kelly1:50:39

        It's just when was the last time you goofed off or wasted time?

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:50:42

        Yeah, yeah.

    24. KKKevin Kelly1:50:43

        And so, so, no, I'm a, I'm a big believer, so-

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:50:46

        I can imagine the rest of management must have loved that.

    26. KKKevin Kelly1:50:48

        I was the management [laughs] .

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:50:49

        No, well, were, were you the only management? Anyway, we don't have to belabor the point. I'm just imagining [laughs] .

    28. KKKevin Kelly1:50:54

        [laughs]

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:50:55

        Why did seven people quit last week?

    30. KKKevin Kelly1:50:56

        Oh.
29. 1:54:24 – 1:58:11

    How Kevin uses YouTube.

    1. KKKevin Kelly1:54:24

       for an influencer-

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:54:25

       I heard a story. I'm not going to name names.

    3. KKKevin Kelly1:54:27

       Yeah.

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:54:27

       [laughs] Actually, I can, I can name one name, but I don't want to mention all the names.

    5. KKKevin Kelly1:54:32

       Right.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:54:32

       So mutual friend, Matt Mullenweg.

    7. KKKevin Kelly1:54:34

       Right.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:54:34

       We were just spending time together, and he said you went on, on a walk with one of his friends-

    9. KKKevin Kelly1:54:38

       Yeah

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:54:38

        ... and y- the two of you just talked about YouTube-

    11. KKKevin Kelly1:54:40

        Yeah

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:54:40

        ... for two hours straight.

    13. KKKevin Kelly1:54:42

        Yes, I know [laughs] .

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:54:43

        So why don't you expand a little bit? What do you do on YouTube?

    15. KKKevin Kelly1:54:47

        I watch.

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:54:48

        Watch [laughs] .

    17. KKKevin Kelly1:54:48

        No, no, no. I'm sorry. I-

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:54:50

        It's a thing called YouTube. It has videos, Tim.

    19. KKKevin Kelly1:54:52

        [laughs] No, I watch people work.

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:54:54

        You watch people work?

    21. KKKevin Kelly1:54:55

        Yeah, I watch people making things.

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:54:58

        Like what?

    23. KKKevin Kelly1:54:59

        Like people restoring cars, people making boats, people making clay things, people making... I... Just watching people make things.

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:55:08

        Huh.

    25. KKKevin Kelly1:55:08

        Because I'm a maker, and because I learn so much by watching people work, much more than you ever learn in a book.

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:55:15

        And are these just full capture videos, or are they giving commentary as they go?

    27. KKKevin Kelly1:55:21

        They, they, they-

    28. TFTim Ferriss1:55:21

        Or are they just a, a kind of a peek over the shoulder as they do their thing?

    29. KKKevin Kelly1:55:24

        All of the above.

    30. TFTim Ferriss1:55:25

        All right.
30. 1:58:11 – 2:01:58

    Why is Kevin huge in China?

    1. KKKevin Kelly1:58:11

       Right.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:58:11

       That was one... I'm not gonna go through all the pages to find it, but that was actually one I had my thumb on literally that I was gonna bring up-

    3. KKKevin Kelly1:58:19

       Right. Right

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:58:19

       ... because that is a piece of advice in the book. I have to ask because I've never been able to figure it out, probably because I haven't asked you specifically. Why are you so... You're like the David Hasselhoff is to Germany what you are to China. Like you-

    5. KKKevin Kelly1:58:35

       Yeah. Yeah

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:58:35

       ... you're huge in China. What is the reason for that?

    7. KKKevin Kelly1:58:38

       It was an accident. It was an accident.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:58:40

       Oh.

    9. KKKevin Kelly1:58:41

       So I wrote a book, Out of Control, in the early '90s that was ignored in the US.

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:58:48

        Uh-huh.

    11. KKKevin Kelly1:58:48

        It was way too early. It was just too early. It was talking about decentralized systems. It had a whole chapter on crypto-

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:58:54

        Mm-hmm

    13. KKKevin Kelly1:58:55

        ... in 1994 that actually, that I gave to Steven Levy and assigned him to follow up, and he later wrote the book on the crypto stuff. Crypto not being the money, but mine was about digital money, and so it was just too early. But it was translated into Chinese-

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:59:13

        Mm-hmm

    15. KKKevin Kelly1:59:14

        ... at the beginning of the aughts, around, I don't know, 2006 maybe, '05. I don't remember exactly. And it was actually crowdsourced translated, which was even more interesting.

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:59:24

        Okay, because there was so much demand by-

    17. KKKevin Kelly1:59:27

        No

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:59:27

        ... the native Chinese?

    19. KKKevin Kelly1:59:28

        It was just some fans-

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:59:30

        Okay

    21. KKKevin Kelly1:59:30

        ... in China. Basically it was-

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:59:31

        That's a task

    23. KKKevin Kelly1:59:32

        ... it was crowdsourced.

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:59:34

        Yeah, I, I get it, but crowd-

    25. KKKevin Kelly1:59:36

        Right. [laughs]

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:59:36

        It's, it's still a task.

    27. KKKevin Kelly1:59:37

        Yeah, so there was one guy, and I owe it all to one guy, who was a real true fan, and he organized the crowdsourcing translation of it.

    28. TFTim Ferriss1:59:45

        Oh.

    29. KKKevin Kelly1:59:45

        And it came out at the right of the moment that Jack Ma and Pony Ma were beginning to build their, do their internet things, and it was hugely influential on them. And they talk about the book.

    30. TFTim Ferriss1:59:57

        Ah.
31. 2:01:58 – 2:05:38

    Fully becoming yourself and other parting thoughts.

    1. TFTim Ferriss2:01:58

       Well, is there any other advice you would like to give or anything else you would like to say about-

    2. KKKevin Kelly2:02:05

       Mm

    3. TFTim Ferriss2:02:05

       ... Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier, or any other thoughts you would like to share? Any closing comments, requests of my audience?

    4. KKKevin Kelly2:02:17

       Yes. Uh-

    5. TFTim Ferriss2:02:18

       Formal complaints you'd like to lodge?

    6. KKKevin Kelly2:02:20

       [laughs]

    7. TFTim Ferriss2:02:21

       Anything at all?

    8. KKKevin Kelly2:02:23

       There is one little piece of advice at the very end which maybe sums up the assignment, which is kind of your goal in life is to be able to say on the day before you die that you've fully become yourself.

    9. TFTim Ferriss2:02:38

       Mm.

    10. KKKevin Kelly2:02:39

        So I really want to emphasize this idea of fully becoming yourself and the difficulty and the challenge that is to, to discover what that is, but how powerful that is. And that's true whether you're making... You know, starting a company or becoming a, an artist or a teacher, whatever it is. And the reason why I'm very pro on technology is that I think it enables us, helps us generally to become more of ourselves, that we all have mixtures of talents in, in us that actually need external tools to help us express things. And so I am interested in kind of increasing that pool of possible tools in the world so that all of us would have some chance to really expressing our genius and fully becoming ourselves. And, you know, that includes, like, having clean water and education and access to transportation. Those are all the fundamental tools in addition to the kind of high-tech stuff. But I really do believe that all of us have a unique genius. I mean, every evidence I've seen in the world and people around the world suggest that that's true. And so if I can at all unleash people to attempt to fulfill their best self, to be more of theirselves, to be fully them, then that would be a success for me.

    11. TFTim Ferriss2:04:08

        Mm. Kevin, so nice to spend time with you. So much fun. Always is.

    12. KKKevin Kelly2:04:12

        It always is, Tim. You make me happy. I just love your sincerity. Thank you.

    13. TFTim Ferriss2:04:17

        You too, man.

    14. KKKevin Kelly2:04:18

        Yeah.

    15. TFTim Ferriss2:04:18

        Thanks so much. And I have read my little bootleg copy-

    16. KKKevin Kelly2:04:23

        [laughs]

    17. TFTim Ferriss2:04:24

        ... of Excellent Advice for Living probably-

    18. KKKevin Kelly2:04:27

        Yeah

    19. TFTim Ferriss2:04:27

        ... 20 times. It really is something that you can refer to again and again and again, and each time you read it with a new pair of eyes because you're in a different state, maybe a different place in your life, you also glean different things. So I really can't recommend this book enough. It's so easy to read. Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier. Kevin Kelly. Go get it, folks. You will not be sorry. You will thank me later. And you can be found on Twitter, the tool of the prophet-

    20. KKKevin Kelly2:05:02

        [laughs]

    21. TFTim Ferriss2:05:03

        ... @Kevin2Kelly, and on the website, certainly kk.org, where people can also find 1,000 True Fans, which everyone should read. And for those listening, we will have links to everything in the show notes as per usual, tim.blog/podcast. Until next time, be just a little kinder than is necessary to not just other people, but yourself, and strive to become fully yourself. And tools are part of that. Advice is certainly a part of that, and maybe a combination is part of that. So till next time, thanks for tuning in.

Episode duration: 2:05:59