Hill Making & Lessons for Living with WIRED Maverick Kevin Kelly

Andrea sits down with Kevin Kelly, a true pioneer in the world of technology and futurism. Known for his foundational work with Whole Earth, Wired Magazine and definitive pieces like '1000 True Fans,' Kelly shares insights from his early fascination with science fiction to his groundbreaking contributions in understanding and shaping the digital age and technological ideas. They discuss the profound influence of science fiction on technological advancements, the humanizing impact of the internet, and the vital importance of travel and curiosity for finding meaning. Kelly explains the nuanced continuum between biology and technology, the concept of 'hill making' versus 'hill climbing' in innovation, and how love and community remain central to his work. As they delve into Kelly's latest book 'Excellent Advice for Living,' this conversation offers rich perspectives on maintaining creativity, embracing complexity, and fostering an optimistic outlook in an ever-evolving world.

00:00 Introduction and Early Influences
00:05 The Role of Science Fiction in Shaping Technology
01:58 Discovering the Internet as a New Frontier
04:30 Welcome to Love and Philosophy
04:36 Kevin Kelly's Background and Achievements
09:30 Early Encounters with Computers
14:28 The Humanizing Effect of the Internet
17:42 Meeting Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth Catalog
28:01 The Importance of Travel and Broader Perspectives
33:38 The Transformative Power of Travel
34:37 Embracing Unique Paths in Life
35:47 The Value of Time Over Money
40:16 The Birth of Artificial Life and Wired Magazine
46:34 The Paradox of Progress and Creativity
53:38 The Importance of Noticing and Small Steps
01:01:33 Hill Making vs. Hill Climbing
01:02:59 Final Thoughts on Love and Life

Excellent Advice for Living

Kevin Kelly on Substack

https://kk.org/

Stewart Brand

Whole Earth Catalogue and Whole Earth Review

the WELL

WIRED Magazine

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Transcript

Before the internet was a country with Kevin Kelly, tech maverick and moutain maker

Kevin Kelly: [00:00:00] Was like, I'm not interested in this at all. I know what computers are. I read science fiction. I think if there was more, more transparency in scientific, uh, literature, if people were required to cite the science fiction influence on there when they were doing research.

We would discover the incredible role that science fiction has played in, in directing people's own research and travel actually helped part of that. Understood that, that that time was more valuable than money. And so there was this sort of shift in understanding that. Time wealth was much more valuable than money, wealth, it's there.

There's a lot of nuance. I would say outta control was fairly nuanced because it was not binary. I think there's very, very few things in the world that are binary, most are continuums, and that's part of the whole message, that there's a continuum between the most biological thing and the most [00:01:00] mechanical thing that they're actually just.

One long tenuous thing that that have different faces and it doesn't make any sense, but that's what it is. It's kind of superpositions. God's a superposition, right? God, not God. At the same time I write in order to find out what I think a lot of people's creativity and tremendous work and innovation and discovery and.

Good stuff comes from the fact that they noticed something and decided that rather than it being unimportant, that it was very, very important. I mean, that, that is one of Stewart's great, great strengths. He hit a good nose for a frontier that was potent he, he was always there at the front, but we both did, like, we were very early Burning Man attendees.

I, I was one among the first. My, my kids were the first kids at Burning Man. Um, when the [00:02:00] internet came along, I decided that I wanted to report on it as if it was a new country, as if I was a travel writer, and this was a new country. So I talked my way into the editors at Whole, Earth to give me access to the new experimental online systems that they were meeting on and.

That also just elevated, 'cause it wasn't just a bulletin board, it was the bulletin board with threads. And you could be on this all at the same time. And that was like, oh wow. And so this was a new country, so I was writing this stuff about, this was a new continent. And again, the informational aspect of it, of finding, um, this was the whole whole earth catalog.

Agenda that I was on of like trying to provide information that was hard to find that you couldn't find anywhere else. Being available in that kind of a way that having access to it that's also very human because you have someone who's looking how to do something and you help them do it. That's a [00:03:00] very human.

Emotion, a human quality of helping people accomplish things. There's a conceptual idea of landscapes that is really popular in computer science and biology, which is this, uh, landscape is a way of mapping the path, the process of an organization or organism or an individual. The idea that the higher it goes, the more perfected, more optimized it is.

and if you're designing something, you wanna kind of optimize it and there are algorithms and methods to kind of make sure you're always climbing the hill.

where you are actually going up the gradients all the time trying to optimize something. And the, and the issue is that when you get to the peak. The peak may not be the peak may be a local Optima. There may be higher peaks, more optimization on a different peak, but to get there, you have to kind of go back down, and that's really hard if you have an organization built for excellence and optimization to go back down where it's less optimal.

But the important thing is [00:04:00] that. To have the greatest effect in the world. You don't want to be hill climbing. You want to be hill making. You wanna make a new, new territory. You want to create the new continent. You wanna make the new mountain that can be hill climbed. And so this idea of hill making versus hill climbing is where I think the greatest rewards are, rather than trying to optimize what we already have.

You want to be on the frontier in making a new territory.

 Hello everyone. Welcome to Love and Philosophy. I'm so glad you're here. Today. I'm talking with Kevin Kelly. You probably know him as the founding executive editor of Wired Magazine, or if you're a fan of the Whole Earth Review and Stuart Brand, you know him from that because he was an early editor and publisher.

Tim Ferris also caught him the most interesting man in the world. And he just might be. He's been doing a blog since before there were really even blogs, at [00:05:00] least 20 years. He's the author of this sort of cult favorite essay, 1000 True Fans. He co-founded the Hacker Conference, which is still going on.

He's ridden his bike across America at least twice. He helped with the movie Minority Report. I could go on and on. Oh, he was a, among the First to Find Lonely Planet, and I think he was even the first to import it. And he was part of the co-evolution quarterly with people like Wendell Berry and Gregory Bateson.

John Todd, Donello Meadows. I think he wrote the second, if not the first book about complexity. Which is from 1992, it's called out of Control He is already talking about cryptocurrency, if you can believe it. Because he attended one of the first ever complexity conferences at Los Alamos put on by Guess who? The Santa Fe Institute. I mean, really this man, he, he seems to have been at the beginnings [00:06:00] of just about everything along with Stewart Brand

both of them are just fascinating people to me. And just before I had this conversation, two things happened. I was with a friend at a. Museum in Amsterdam, and I happen to see the whole Earth Catalog there, which is just beautiful. It's a huge book with the earth on the cover. It's very loving of the earth.

It's kind of like Wikipedia in print form way back in the day of catalogs. But the point is there's a love of life that you fill immediately. The second thing that happened was I started putting seeds in the ground and they actually came up and I realized. This is incredible and no, I'm not on drugs and I do not do drugs, but honestly, being alive is just such a trip that you can actually put something a little seed in the ground and within a few days you have this green, beautiful creature growing in your garden that will then feed you.

[00:07:00] I say this just because Kevin Kelly Stewart brand, they have a lot to do with technology. With tra the trajectory of technology with words like futurism and all of this, but at the heart of their work, and there's so much rich work involved with them. There's such a love of life and of community and of helping people, and I feel like a lot of the people currently leading us, so to speak in the technological world, once had that same spirit.

And I wonder if they still do. I wonder if Gen Alpha, Generation Beta can fill that spirit and if the young Kevin Kelly's and Stewart Brands of the world right now are out there in love with life and the way these guys were and still are. I'll just leave that as a question because. F It feels like it's very related to ideas of other conversations.

Like, do we love [00:08:00] the world enough to take responsibility for it? Are we blind to the beauty and incredible, I don't know, existence that we're part of? I hope not. I know we're not. I know we can. We can find this. Again, it's in us. It is us, and yeah, I'm just gonna. Put that out there today. Off the top of my head, Kevin Kelly is amazing.

His work is amazing. it's always been about the humanity, the life, the connection, the growth, the opportunity, the positive, the optimism. I really appreciate that a lot, and I hope you'll go listen to some of his talks about optimism and think about Kevin and think about Stewart and think about.

These days when all of this was just beginning, the internet was a new country. And think about where we are now and what new country is before us, and where we wanna orient, what we wanna explore, and of course where the [00:09:00] love is and all that because it does matter.

Andrea Hiott: Oh, okay. Well, let's get started. Okay. hi Kevin. It's so wonderful to have you here. It's a real honor that you're on love and philosophy. Thank you. 

Kevin Kelly: You're really, really

welcome and I am really looking forward to this conversation. 

Andrea Hiott: Well, we're gonna talk about, your book was excellent advice for Living, but before we get into that, I wonder if we could talk about your living a little bit your, your life itself. to what I think might have been the first time you saw a computer.

I think it was with your dad when you were a teenager. Yeah. And yeah. So where were you and what was that experience like? 

Kevin Kelly: Yeah, yeah. Um, it was in the sixties. I was estimating that my number around 65, My dad was involved with computers at the very, very beginning of, of the, beginning of computers 'cause he, um, was using [00:10:00] them.

Uh, originally his degree was in meteorology, weather forecasting. And the weather forecasters were some of the first civilian use of computers and that's where he had the experience in the army. and. He was not a programmer, but he was what we would call today more like an IT person. And, um, he was very enthusiastic about them and he showed me all kind of books about it and, and it never registered.

I had no real interest in them, but he did want to take me to a computer show in Atlantic City. he thought it would be kind of cool. And so I went along and I was totally, totally bored. It was just, there were just big, big cabinets. It's like furniture. There was no screens. The, there was no keyboards.

You couldn't talk to them. You had to have the punch cards. You had trays of punch cards you'd give in, and then they would have, um, tape [00:11:00] machines and then they would have a typewriter. And that was, the output was just a typewriter. You couldn't even make pictures. Not really. And so it was like, I'm not interested in this at all.

I know what computers are. I read science fiction. I know a computer code. Oh, so 

Andrea Hiott: you were reading science fiction? I was gonna ask you. Oh, I was called into science fiction. 

Kevin Kelly: Okay. It's like I, I know a computer code. These are not computers. 

Andrea Hiott: That's wonderful. Oh, that's great. I loved it that you said you were bored, but that's even a better statement that yeah, you had something else in your imagination, 

Kevin Kelly: whelming.

Not, not because it was just like, there's, there's, they're, they're not computers you interact with. They, they're ais, they're, um, you can do stuff. I can't do anything here. So, yeah. So 

Andrea Hiott: you were already thinking about all that at a young age? Yeah, it was a total 

Kevin Kelly: science fiction buff at that time because this was before there was any science fiction on movies.

So, so there was no science fiction movies until 2001 and um, this was the [00:12:00] movie, 2001, 

Andrea Hiott: not the year. 

Kevin Kelly: I'm meant the movie. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, I know. Just for in case someone didn't know. 

Kevin Kelly: And so, um, like a lot of kids, we didn't really have TV in the beginning. And so reading science fiction was my entertainment and I was really into, into it.

And so, and so I had a sense of the future from the science fiction. I had a sense of where we were gonna go and what was really. the cool stuff, and it was not, it was not these cabinets. 

Andrea Hiott: It was not a room full of weird cabinets with no visuals. That's so interesting because a lot of people I've talked to who end up sort of having a good vision of the future or a vision of the future that ends up playing out as you definitely have did read science fiction when they were young.

Do you think it influenced your imagination in the way? Absolutely. Absolutely. 

Kevin Kelly: A hundred percent. and I, I think if there was more, what's the word? I want more [00:13:00] transparency in scientific, uh, literature. if people were required to cite the science fiction influence on there when they were doing research, we would discover the incredible role.

Science fiction has played in, in directing people's own research. I mean, you know, the, the route from the Star Trek communicator to the iPhone is pretty direct. Everybody had that vision of what it was that they were trying to make, um, because of, of, of Star Trek. And, and, and that, that bit of optimism it was, was very, very influential.

And, you know, even things like. I was involved in the minor narrative report stuff of, you know, um, gesture computing and all these things. They, they form, an image in our mind that it comes, uh, a guide. The guide star. 

Andrea Hiott: It's fascinating. Um, it also makes me think [00:14:00] that, you've said that maybe the real computers or the real internet started.

When you, it might have been when you were at US University of Georgia, I'm not sure 'cause we were just talking about that. Yeah. But, when telephones and computers met and was that when you started to get that sense of what you'd imagined as a kid? Could be possible? 

Kevin Kelly: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So even, even personal computers when they came along still were not that interesting to me.

I mean, they kind of made typing easier. I wasn't into spreadsheets in the beginning, so it was a little bit of typing maybe, but it really wasn't until computers married the telephone and you, and you were connecting them together. That for me, that was the aha that was like, oh, oh, I see what this is. This is this, this is a, a technology that, that I can use.

This is, this is. Technology that seems very human. This is a technology that seems more Amish than, you know, big [00:15:00] steam shovels or even big, um, skyscrapers. And the, and, and the kind of thing we had in mind about technology, what that meant before computers came along. So I had variable interest in technology until then, but once this communication version.

Came along the internet, it was like, this is powerful. This is humanizing, this is, this is, uh, this is our destiny, our direction. And so, so I switched into thinking more about what, what that might do for us. 

Andrea Hiott: What was it that was humanizing? It's, it's hard for me to imagine how that suddenly felt humanizing.

Was it the complexity of it, the connection, the relationship? Well, 

Kevin Kelly: because you're, because you're connecting other humans. It's, it's, it's like uhhuh because instead of being isolated, it was bringing humans together. Um. It was, [00:16:00] it was communities. I mean, that, that was the thing. All these bulletin boards set up in kids' basements and bedrooms.

And you would go in and you would be leaving messages and someone else would come in and it was like you were, you were connecting to people. Um, it was weirdly exhilarating because these are people that. They were conceptual neighbors. They weren't your actual neighbors, but they were neighbors in what you were interested in.

And that was, you were in a town where nobody was interested in what you're interested in, and suddenly you're connected to someone who's interested in what you're interested in. That's human. That's amazing. That's most of been exciting. And then, you know, and then you're producing information that you were looking for that didn't exist or you couldn't find, and they're helping you find it.

It's like, yeah, so, so, um. And, and you know, there was again the informational aspect of it with finding, and this was the whole whole Earth catalog agenda that I was on of like trying to [00:17:00] provide information that was hard to find that you couldn't find anywhere else. And being available in that kind of a way that having access to it that's also very human, because you have someone who's looking how to do something and you help them.

Do it. That's a very human emotion, a human quality of helping people accomplish things. so, so, so that's why I said it felt sort of Amish. 

Andrea Hiott: And that speaks to the, you, you enthusiasm comes up a lot in the advice for living and curiosity and connection and Yeah. So that, that speaks to that a lot. But you mentioned the whole Earth Catalog, uh, Stewart Brand.

When did you meet Stewart Brandon? When did you, was that your first job or how did, how does that relate to those two moments? The 13-year-old and then the, the 

Kevin Kelly: person who became obsessed with the abuse? So I countered the Whole Earth Catalog at the end of high school. 

Andrea Hiott: Oh, so early. Wow. 

Kevin Kelly: And It blew my mind.

It was, it kind of, it was [00:18:00] again, the perfect conversions for me. 'cause the things that Stewart was interested in. I was interested in the same kinds of things and, but I was doing it like completely isolated, alone. I had this, I was imagining like trying to build a house where you never threw anything away that was completely like recyclable.

This is like, you know, again, in the, in the, in the sixties, way before Who else? Nobody else was talking about that. No. I was trying to make these designs and stuff. You were thinking of 

Andrea Hiott: that when you were in high school? 

Kevin Kelly: Before high school? Yeah. 

Andrea Hiott: Well, okay. 

Kevin Kelly: Yeah. In middle school. I would sending away for catalogs.

I had, I discovered that you could, you could send away to get these catalogs. It was the only way to kind of find out stuff. And so I had this thing of trying to discover as many catalogs as I could. So here suddenly comes along the whole Earth Catalog, which is like. Doing that magnified by a million times.

They're interested in art and systems and all kinds of stuff that I was, and it was like, [00:19:00] this is my, this was written for me and I wanted to contribute to it. 'cause the model of the whole Earth, Kellogg was a reader, written, reader, supported ad-free mechanism. It was like substack. It was, it was. User generated content and a user supported subscription base.

And the idea was like people would discover something, they would send it in, they would send their blog in the review, the editors would evaluate it and then publish it. And it was like the internet before the internet orbit And so, That would immediately appealed to me.

And I decided that the only place I ever wanted to work was at Whole Earth, but I had no, nothing to offer them. But I, I started to try and, um, submit things, um, reviews of stuff that I kind of discovered [00:20:00] and, and, and Stewart kept rejecting them. He would, he would send a nice thing. No, I don't think that, you know, whatever.

so I never made much headway. Um, but eventually, um, after my travels, I, uh, for years and years of traveling, I was, you know, I would still read what they were. I. They were writing. I subscribed to the catalog, uh, and I read cover to cover. After traveling for years, I discovered that I knew something about budget travel that nobody else knew.

And so I started reviewing these, um, little known self-published, um, books. That, that Americans didn't know about or nobody knew about there. There was this book called Southeast Asia on a shoestring by Tony and Maureen Wheeler, and they were called, um, lonely Planet. Oh, okay. [00:21:00] So they had a little self-published thing and I started reviewing their stuff.

And then there was another guy named Your through the back door, and his name was Rick Steves. I was reviewing his stuff and saying, this is really cool stuff. Later on I started a business where I was importing those books in, into, into America and distributing them. There was another guy named Bill Dalton who had the moon publications, and so I, I, I, I, I started to have something to offer and I started to do the travel part for Whole Worth as a freelance writer and, So I was, um, when the internet came along, I decided that I wanted to report on it as if it was a new country, as if I was a travel writer and this was a new country. So I talked my way into the editors at Ho a horror to give me access to the new [00:22:00] experimental online systems that they were meeting on and.

That also just elevated, 'cause it wasn't just a bulletin board, it was the bulletin board with threads and you could be on this all at the same time. And that was like, oh wow. And so this was a new country, so I was writing this stuff about, this was a new continent and I was learning how to type. I didn't know how to type.

And my writing style is very telegraphic and it turned out to be perfect for the online. F text systems 'cause I'm, 'cause I'm very short and telegraphic and so, they offered me a job based on what I was writing online and I claimed to be the first person hired online in 83, 84. Wow. Um, so I went out to meet Stewart.

So, so, um, I met him kind of online primarily, and he met me online [00:23:00] primarily. 

Andrea Hiott: Fascinating that you two came together because you both feel like people who've been at the The sort of growing tip of everything, both of you, and even in what you just described with finding lonely planet and, and these sorts of things.

does that, is that ever frustrating? Or is that 

Kevin Kelly: frustrating? 

Andrea Hiott: Always being, so kind of ahead? 

Kevin Kelly: No, it's, it's sort of a job. 

And, um, it's, I mean, that, that is one of Stuart's great, great strengths. He hit a good nose for Frontier that was potent for frontiers that, you know, he, he, he, he was always there at the front.

But we both did, like we were very early Burning Man attendees. I, I was one among the first, my, my kids were the first kids at Burning Man. 

Yeah. My two girls that took them. It was totally crazy. Oh my gosh. Um, 

Andrea Hiott: do they remember it? Were they old enough that they Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh wow. Came 

Kevin Kelly: back and they were there for a while.

They were their only kids there. but, um. [00:24:00] So, so yes, so, so I, I, I think it's a, a, a practice. I think this is a, a noticing, um, of a emerging, something emerging. And I think the qualities that I, we look for are like, are are new words being invented? Is, is this a area where there's new language being invented?

Um, you know, the early crypto was like, I actually had a book, a chapter on crypto in my first book, 94. I 

Andrea Hiott: know Out of Control. I was gonna ask you, is that, is that the one 

Kevin Kelly: E-money? The e-money chapter yeah. Was about crypto, but it wasn't blockchain. and so, and that, that became, I assigned Stephen Levy to that, to the very second issue of Wired, and he went on to write a whole book.

But because I, when I went to, to visit these. Guys who were doing it. There was like a, there was new languages, there was new concepts, there was people using their free time to do it. Like Mark [00:25:00] Andreessen and other people say, they often like to invest in what founders do for fun. How do they spend your time when you're not working?

That's. Another kind of thing you're looking at is like, where, where is your, where's your passion time being, invested into? That's often where a frontier might be happening. And so, um, so Stewart had a really good nose and I learned to have a pretty good nose as well. and kind of, and then giving yourself permission to hang out there and, um.

See, you know, maybe even report on, on what's happening. and that continues today and it's, to me, I, I see it as my job. 

Andrea Hiott: It also connects to a lot of the advice, I think, because there's a sense of, cultivating awareness in a way. I don't know. You never say it like that, but Right. And I was wondering, as you were just saying that if part, did you have to learn how to be patient a bit too and No, I, and [00:26:00] persist, 

Kevin Kelly: I think I'm, I'm naturally patient 

Andrea Hiott: Okay.

Kevin Kelly: Doing photography. The kind of photography I was doing was incredibly patient. It's funny 'cause I don't have patience for other things. Like fishing never appealed to me. It's like, that just seems like an incredible waste of patience. But I have patience in photography where I will spend hours. Waiting for something to happen, I would say this, this situation is pregnant with an interesting picture, and I'm going to spend my time here waiting for it to align.

And so I. I have patience, I have a natural patience for the right things or the things that I'm interested in. Um, that's 

Andrea Hiott: actually very beautiful. That sounds to me, if one were to look at your career, probably not from your perspective, but, but from my perspective, it seems like you were doing that a bit.

For example, all of this stuff you were doing online was at a time when people didn't really think the internet was gonna be anything. And to me that seems like almost patience that you. You stayed with it and then, [00:27:00] you know, and a lot of things that I've heard you say when you say them, when I look back, I think people probably thought, no way.

And then over time it does align. You could see that there was something there worth waiting for. 

Kevin Kelly: yeah. Yeah, yeah. And, and there is an active imagination where you kind of, you can imagine it getting better or better than it is. Other times you, you, you're wrong about it. I mean, I mean, I've been plenty wrong.

Like, um, when eBay came along, I was like, I don't think so. I don't think this is, like, I don't think this is gonna work. But, you know, I, I was totally wrong about it. And so, uh, there, I just didn't have the imagination to, to see what it could, what, what it could do. Um. And so, so I think having an active imagination, is also very helpful.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. You, you also have some good advice for how to be wrong, right? And, and why being wrong is important, which is something I think we all need to hear right now in this world, right? Admitting your mistakes and that that's actually a [00:28:00] healthy thing in a way to grow. That's part of your book, but you mentioned travel and I wonder what, that seems like a very important thread in your life and what was that initial travel about?

And I has that helped you to see landscapes differently and, and these other themes we've, we've been talking about already. I. 

Kevin Kelly: I mean, I grew up with a father who was a little bit of a workaholic, but he never, he didn't believe in vacations. So we took very few family vacations, very, very few. And, um, I'd never, I didn't have any money.

I'd never really been out of New Jersey very much. I didn't have a car. Um, and so, when I did. Start to travel. It was mind blowing. And uh, it was a very severe jump from suburban, parochial, New Jersey to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan. And I'd never eaten Chinese food in my life. [00:29:00] I'd never hold chopsticks in my life.

There weren't. Any Chinese Orientals in my life. It was, it was, it was so parochial and then just being kind of thrust into this other world and at a time when it was still a lot of the old world happening, was the best university, the best, uh, wake up call ever? And, um. It became, it became my college where, where every day I am learning new things and changing my mind and having these aha moments, as well as, you know, trying to capture stuff with, with my camera.

And so, um, I, I, I came, I kept traveling. Uh, seriously after that forever even. I took a slight break for a while, um, when I started to have my family and I was trying to start a, kind of a real [00:30:00] career when I was 35. And so, um, uh, there was a small break, but then I tried to take my family on interesting family vacations.

You know, we went to, um, Bali when it was still pretty early, um, with my family. And, you know, went into the hinterlands of Bali. But, it, I, I came to, I came to view the benefits of travel as so, so important, particularly for young people that, that I am totally in favor of subsidizing. Young people to travel.

I think as a nation we should do that. I mean, I, I, I, I would go so far as I think we should have mandatory talking as American mandatory service. I. National service for two years, no matter who you are, you, you're handicapped or whatever it is. You have national service and you can do things like go to Peace Corps or whatever.

You gonna go to the military. You can do [00:31:00] public service at home, but there's, but travel would be one of the options. Travel meaning like you are going abroad and you're being funded and, um. I think that would transform America of having more and more people go outside of their culture and come back and look at themselves from outside.

And, um, among the many, many other values, uh, that you get from traveling. Um, I think that would be transformative. And so, um, you know, the Mormons do a great job with their two year abroad, and that I think is this hugely benefit. Their communities and those in, in Mormons and what they do. uh, there it was only men for a while.

I think they've changed it recently to have women go two years out as well. Um, but that, that is, uh, so important when you're young to get that orientation of stepping outside of what [00:32:00] everybody assumes, all the assumptions. You can kind of see the assumptions. That your own culture is sitting on, they become a little bit more visible and you get to think about it and question and it's the alternatives and, um, change your mind about things because of travel.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, absolutely. And another word that comes up a lot in your book is habits. And I, some of the book feels like you've been cultivating. Ways to catch yourself or ways to do what travel does, to turn your perspective a little. Yeah. Um, I think that relates to your complexity book a bit too, and I did the Peace Corps and, um, I I traveled early.

Yeah, yeah. And so I know, I, I know very well what you're saying there. It, it really does. The world becomes a kaleidoscope in a way, or, or the way that you're, you talk about thinking a lot, you know, in terms of all of these themes, and you learn how to switch your thinking a bit, don't you? 

Kevin Kelly: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I'm just curious where you were, uh, stationed for the Peace Corps? I went 

Andrea Hiott: to Mongolia. [00:33:00] 

Kevin Kelly: Oh 

Andrea Hiott: yeah. My dog is from there. She's here. You can't see her. Oh my God. She just barked. Sorry about that. But Mongolia. Mm-hmm. Where 

Kevin Kelly: Mongolia were you stationed? 

Andrea Hiott: Um, I was in a different places because I did a sort of, I had to do a travel through, but I was mostly enjoyable son, so.

Okay. And Lum Batar for a bit, but mm-hmm. Yeah. And then over near Kazaki Stan a but mostly Choan 

Kevin Kelly: on the Yeah. No, I had a fabulous time in, in Mongolia. Um 

Andrea Hiott: hmm. 

Kevin Kelly: It was, it was just, it was. Anyway, we won't talk about Mongolia, but now, but yes.

Yeah, we could talk 

Andrea Hiott: about that for hours, so 

Kevin Kelly: I understand. Uh, 

Andrea Hiott: but yeah, the point was, I guess that it changes, it helps you understand, I think similar to the way reading does when you're a kid reading science fiction, you, you can switch into different mindsets. And for me, and I kind of heard you saying it a bit when you're traveling, you start to realize you can, yeah, there's different ways of perceiving.

Set. 

Kevin Kelly: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's just a fundamental one, but, but there's, I mean, I think we can make [00:34:00] a long list of all the other, habits, all the insights that you get from traveling, um, from learning a language if you need to, and how that changes your mind to, um, just learning. Um. Social skills. Yeah, there's, there's, there's so many things.

so anyway, I, I would be totally in favor of having programs where the, where youth are subsidized to, to travel in some capacity. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, me too. I, I, I totally support that. Um, yeah, it is one of those hard things that you can't explain. I mean, you only know it once you do it too. And that's why it can be hard to just, yeah.

But you said something about you when you were in your thirties, you started, were gonna start a real li job or something like this. And that reminded me of one of your pieces of advice. I'm probably not gonna get it exactly right, but don't try to be the best, be the only. Mm-hmm. And, did you live into that advice?

Kevin Kelly: Well, you know, the subtitle of my book is, um, advice I Wish I had Known Earlier. So No, [00:35:00] I did, I didn't know that at the time. I wish I had, um, that came much later. Even in, in writing the book when I kind of, part of writing the book I write in order to find out what I think. And so what the book did was help me clarify.

Some of my own ideas that I had but didn't, I hadn't be able to say. Um, but, but I, I, I didn't, I wasn't on the program to try and find my only, I only understood that fairly late in life that, that, of that power. And, um, but I was absolutely on the road to the only, I just didn't know it. You know, I mean, I, I was like, I've always had a lot of confidence about kind of doing things my own way and not really caring about whether other people, because I, I, I also [00:36:00] was expecting to be poor all my life and I was making a, a trade for having control of my time, even as a young person.

That's, that's what I was signing up for. I was like, I. I know that I won't have a career and I won't have money, but I'm gonna have time to do these cool things that I wanna do. And I'm happy with that thing because I understood for some reason, and travel actually helped part of that. I understood that, that that time was more valuable than money.

And I had had, had an encounter in Nepal, where I was trekking. I spent months tricking by myself without a porter, just with my backpack through the, you know, on the treks. And, um, I met, uh, there was some organized, this is in the seventies when there were some organized treks that did with many porters carrying their tents, the rich people who were doing these tours.

[00:37:00] And, um, there was a guy, young, uh, an older man. Who was obviously very wealthy just because these were very expensive things and um, we were mingling at some, some place or other where they were camped out where I was, I was sleeping in a tea house on the floor and, um, he was commiserating with me, hearing where I was going, what I was doing.

He was saying, I'm so envious of you because. You have all this time to see all these things, and I don't. And it was like, aha. Here's the rich guy saying that I was wealthier than he was, and I was. And I realized I was. And so there was this sort of shift in understanding that. Uh, time wealth was much more valuable than money, wealth, and so, so that I, I, [00:38:00] I, so I was constantly leaning into this idea of seeing my time as, as my wealth and not being, I couldn't really understand 

Andrea Hiott: that.

That's a, I had a similar, I. Feeling uhhuh and uh, yeah, but I, I said live into, I probably didn't say it clearly, but that living into not trying to be the best, but be the only, I feel like, because you, to go back to that, you said you were starting a real job at 35. I mean, maybe we can say what you meant about that, but you know, by kind of whatever traditional standards, at least there's a sort of pressure to do certain things within a certain time, and that mindset you are cultivating is not.

It's, it's very different from that. So, yeah. Yeah. I, 

Kevin Kelly: I, you know, when I was three five, I, I got married and I was gonna, I decided to have a family and so then you kind of have to think about, um, a regular income. So I got a, I worked at Whole Earth. I was getting a $10 an hour at, at the nonprofit, and that was [00:39:00] my.

That was my job. It was like a $10 an hour at a nonprofit. Okay. Let's, you know, but it worked. It was, you know, and, and my wife, to her credit, um. She married me. Um, she was way overeducated. She was making a lot more money than I was. Um, but um, it is kind of a mystery why, because I had, you know, no college degree and 

Andrea Hiott: well, this is love and philosophy, so love is powerful.

Kevin Kelly: Yeah. So, um, but again, I, I, I was signed up for, um. Um, you know, a, a different route where, where, again, I wanted to, to maintain control and so I had a lot of control of my time at Hall Earth. Um, I mean, I, I, I was kind of running this stuff and I was the publisher and editor, and so I still, and so I, you know, I, I, I had, I had a fair amount of control over where I worked and when I worked [00:40:00] and, you know, I could, I worked a lot, but I, you know, I could take time off if I needed to.

Andrea Hiott: And you were, you were cultivating all these skills that actually were gonna come in handy. Yeah. 

Kevin Kelly: But I didn't know that. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, but you didn't know that. But how did that, how did that switch? Like maybe I'm thinking about your first book out of Control, how did we get there? But, and like also, I think you were writing it.

That was the first one, right? That was the first 

Kevin Kelly: one. So, so, so, um. 

Andrea Hiott: That was in the nineties, I guess 

Kevin Kelly: this was in the nineties, so there was already, I was already online and like around 1998 there was this embryonic. So, so we, we, we, I was involved in starting the, well, which was the first public access. So I was on the internet. 

Andrea Hiott: That was with Stewart too. 

Kevin Kelly: Yeah, it was with Stuart too. Okay. And so, um. There was a thing that came over the internet, which was this announcement, that this guy was gonna start, um, have a conference called [00:41:00] Artificial Life. And he just basically said, if you're doing artificial life, come to, it was in Los Alamos.

Oh, wow. And it was like. I'd never been to a scientific conference before. I thought artificial life, man, that is so cool. I don't have anything but I want to, I want to go and attend. And I'd never been to a conference and I didn't have any money, but I remember it. So it was a very small fee, like a hundred dollars or something.

And um, I was camping in a state park 'cause I didn't have enough money for the hotel. Um, in Los Sound, which was pretty high up and cold. Um, and so I, uh, and so I was attending this, this conference and I decided to, um, do a summary of every talk and post it onto the internet onto the well. And so it was like the first like real time conference reporting.

Oh, [00:42:00] cool. Um, and so I did a summary of every talk There were. I don't know, maybe 60 talks over the conference. And each one was kind of blowing my mind and I was trying to report and understand it and did this little summary that I would post every night and that for the tiny little internet at the time, it went kind of viral into the internet.

Wow. And so, that 

Andrea Hiott: sounds wonderful. Does that still exist by any chance? 

Kevin Kelly: I would 

Andrea Hiott: love to read that. 

Kevin Kelly: Oh. Oh, it's on the, well, it must be. It must be somewhere on the, well, Later I'll, yeah, I never, I never thought about that. It must be out there. Must. Yeah. Um, I didn't take it down. I don't, yeah. So, um, so, so that, based on their reaction to that, I thought there's something here I'd like to do kind of a book on artificial life and all these connections.

And because, because what it was was, um, there were, there were economists, there were computer scientists, there were biologists, there were all these people [00:43:00] talking about the same kind of thing that later on, um, would, would come to be like the Santa Fe Institute and Complexity stuff. 

Andrea Hiott: I was just about to say complexity.

That's what the book is. Yeah. In, in Santa Fe. That's, that's what it was. So, so that was the beginning. Huh? 

Kevin Kelly: That was the beginning. And, um, there was, there was one other. Journalist there, and that was James Glick. 

Andrea Hiott: Oh, wow. So there you go. Chaos. Yeah. So he and I, he and I 

Kevin Kelly: were attending, you know, he, he, he, he, he was just, he was just a little ahead of me and, um, in terms of writing ability and all these kind of things.

So, um, so yeah, so there was something happening and, um, I came back and I said, I think I should write a. I like to write a book about this. So I had this agent at Whole Earth that I was doing books with, and I pitched him a book and it got accepted and, and then I was in a problem because I'm running a magazine, so I took a sabbatical [00:44:00] from Whole Earth to write the book, um, which was the big step because, you know, it was not as, not very much money.

So I'm kind of, you know, um. Taking a risk there. I just got a job and now I'm taking a sabbatical from the job, un unpaid sabbatical. And, um, while I was finishing the book, which took longer than I thought, that's when Wired came along. 

So that's a word, complicated story that, that, um, But, but, but the Yeah. Yeah. What what, what happened though was that I, um, I agreed to start editing wired, but I said, I'm gonna have to take a sabbatical after the first couple issues. To finish my book. so I was taking a sabbatical within the sabbatical.

Um, when I started Wire, I, I let Howorth know that nested 

Andrea Hiott: sabbaticals, that's very complex system come back systems. Well, the whole 

Kevin Kelly: idea was, was that this was a, a book that kept a being delayed. And so, [00:45:00] um, so the book finding came out and the book also, while I was writing the book, the chapters that I was writing became.

The early issues of Wired, like as a, oh, that's one of the chapters of Yeah, book was on E-Money, so I assigned Steven to write a whole bunch of 'em E-Money and the first issue of Wired was Bruce throwing and I had written a chapter on God games and simulations and I had Bruce go take my contacts and write the story for Wire.

So I was using the early my, my book. The research that I had done and the frontiers that I was exploring, I used that to shape the, the first issues of wired. So there was, it was useful in terms of what I was doing. 

Andrea Hiott: That's so interesting too, because just even if you look at the table of contents of that book, it's like the next.

50 years of Yeah. Topics that will be discussed. So in it is kind [00:46:00] of wonderful, isn't it? That you actually, that all that came together in that moment. I guess it's no coincidence, but 

Kevin Kelly: Yeah. Yeah. There was actually a chapter on economies that I never got to write. Um, it was too big as it was, but yes, it was, it was all there.

And, Uh, it worked out in the end with, with, um, wired. So I only missed a couple issues and then went back. um, and so I learned a lot about writing a book, um, which is that, um, the first. The last 90% takes longer than the first 90%. And so, um, they're just, they're just never ending. Um, you have to abandon books.

You, at least that's my experience. You, you don't actually finish them. You just abandon them. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. Or that sometimes I just think of it as like mini all one sort of book and you just have, you know, you let one book go, but then you continue the subjects elsewhere. 

Kevin Kelly: Exactly. 

Andrea Hiott: But that kinda relates to [00:47:00] the way that book begins and the orientation of that book about what's, between being what's born and what's made, how do you say it?

Uh, the marriage between 

Kevin Kelly: the world. Yeah, the world. The Born and the World. The made, yeah, the marriage. Yeah. Yeah. It's, that is, that is still, you know. Um, what's the word I want? There's still a, I'm still writing about that. Yes. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. And the technological, the biological right. That actually, I hadn't thought of it till you said it, but you could almost, blurb wired magazine's, um, edge or what, what was different about it?

With that, couldn't you 

Kevin Kelly: part of it. It was, and also part of it was optimism. Yeah, the optimism too. That was another part of the, of the secret sauce. and then the other genius, that was not my idea, and that was entirely due to Louis, who Louis was at a, the, the, the, the, the founder, the co-founder of Wired.

He, um. He, I, I was at Whole Earth. I was running the magazine with what I call conceptual news, [00:48:00] which was new concept, new stuff. And Louis said, that's interesting, but that's not mainstream. What we wanna do is we wanna wrap around the people. We want to make the geeks, the heroes. We want to talk about the people who are making this stuff and what their dreams are.

And so we, we don't gonna have technology on the cover. We're gonna have people faces on the cover, and that was the brilliance. Of, of Lewis and, um, the reason why Wired worked and the difference between, you know, I was doing the same thing at Whole Earth and it had an audience of 40,000 people at the peak, with no ads and Lewis doing the same thing, the same kind of concepts.

But at Wired now, we suddenly had the audience of millions and we're at the center of the, of the, of the whole conversation. And so that was because of, of Lewis's instinct that, that you wanted to be talking about the people who were doing it? 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. But I can also see how it fits very well with [00:49:00] even what we've been talking about, the trajectories of the science fiction or, you know, that marriage of technological and biological and seeing the world in different perspectives.

And so it seems like it was a good meeting of minds, so to speak. 

Kevin Kelly: Oh yeah, absolutely. For sure. Sure. 

Andrea Hiott: I, I wanna move towards the book a bit before, before we leave and, or. Uh, to me, this, these two books actually feel very close though. I don't know if 

Kevin Kelly: which two? The 

Andrea Hiott: out of Control, the one we're talking about.

And the last one. Excellent Advice For Living. 

Kevin Kelly: Oh, that's interesting. You have to explain that. 

Andrea Hiott: Well, I think it has to do with, you know, it would take me too long, but the complexity and also that idea of marriage between what is Born and made and this. I feel like you've, from the beginning, had a lot of different, this multiplicity or this kaleidoscopic vision that I'm just trying to describe can be very hard to communicate.

Right. Or to kind of make into something sustainable and real. Right, right, 

Kevin Kelly: right. 

Andrea Hiott: And [00:50:00] it if you look at advice, excellent advice for living. to me it seems like the way you've been able to find habits to do that better, to clarify and communicate better, to be a better person without losing the complexity.

I don't know if that makes sense at all. 

Kevin Kelly: Yeah. Um, I think that's fair. Um, it's there, there's a lot of nuance in, in, in the book, and I, I would say outta control was fairly nuanced, uh, because it was. Not binary. Um, I, I think there's very, very few things in the world that are binary, most are continuums, and that's part of the whole message of outta control, which was that there's a continuum between the most biological thing and the most mechanical thing, that they're actually just one long, one long

a continuous thing that, that have different faces. And so I think there is a lot of that kind of, um, non-binary in, in, in the book. Um, exactly. 

Andrea Hiott: That's exactly what I was moving towards because a lot of this is about [00:51:00] trying to hold. Dichotomies or binaries, which doesn't mean you collapse them, right? It means you explore the space around them, you let them be what they are.

And when you explore the space around them, suddenly you see the multiplicities. They're not actually binaries. And you talk about that in the book in a way, right? And this, this paradoxical nature of life of 

Kevin Kelly: right, 

Andrea Hiott: of, how do you say it, you know, that we're, we're shaping what shapes us or we create what creates us, or something like this.

Right, exactly. What, what is that paradox that you bring out? 

Kevin Kelly: Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and, and I, my own personal theology right now is that the origin of the universe rests on necessary paradoxes, the inescapable paradoxes to our, what we would, to our minds called paradoxes, which is like, you know, the, the origin of the universe in any, any story you wanna tell is just unacceptably.

Illogical, right? I mean, it's like, well, there's God, [00:52:00] well, where did God come from? Always was, you know, whatever. Self-created. it's not going to parse. And the same thing with free will and determinism. Yeah. They're both there.

Absolutely. They're, they're both operating at the same time. And it doesn't make any sense, but that's what it is. It's kind of superpositions, God's a superposition, right? There's, it's God, not God at the same time. And so, um, so there's fundamental paradoxes and which I'm become much more comfortable with and I like little, um, I like.

Even quotes and statements that contain a little bit of that kind of, um, paradoxical quality. and so I I, so I'm, I'm pretty so, so, you know, so, so some of the fundamental mysteries are, are paradoxical and, um, I am much more comfortable with those than than ever before. 

Andrea Hiott: I think it's a skill we really, really need right now.[00:53:00] 

Being, being able to hold paradox. I'm, I'm actually very serious and, and, and for the reason that I also think everyone needs to read your book right now because, because you know, like everything, nothing makes sense right now. you can't reconcile everything together. Right. Right. And part of being able to make sense of it in this paradoxical way that you describe in that book, I think is, is learning that, that you have to hold the space, not try to reconcile everything.

Kevin Kelly: Yeah. 

Andrea Hiott: Uh, and I feel like some of the, the advice you're giving is ways of doing that of, and also I, I brought up awareness earlier. Right. And just uhhuh taking a minute to notice the space. 

Kevin Kelly: Right, right, right, right. Noticing. Yeah. There was, um, noticing is. Someone was, oh, I, I, I think I subscribed to this, um, Rob Walker's little newsletter on noticing.

So he's as big on noticing. Yeah, I write that down. And, um, different ways of noticing. And one of the things I think he was saying was this idea that, um, a [00:54:00] lot of people's creativity and tremendous work and innovation and discovery and. Good stuff comes from the fact that they noticed something and decided that rather than it being unimportant, that it was very, very important.

And, and, and there's a sense in which through childhood and beyond, we're often taught to dismiss. The th we notice is unimportant. And he said that the people who kind of can retain. The seriousness of the stuff that they noticed. Whether this tiniest little thing is saying that's really important, and making something out of that tiny noticing, you notice it, you give it attention.

As you give it attention, you find it more interesting. And so it's kind of like, and, and what you've learned, or at least I've learned, is that you can start with the [00:55:00] tiniest, tiniest little thing. And if you take it seriously, it can become something. Big and huge and interesting to other people. If so, you don't wanna lose that ability to not just notice things, but to take it seriously as well.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. That's another thing in the book, you talk about small steps or Right, right. This thinking small, but not thinking in a small way, but noticing the small things. And I've, I've also noticed that even some of the things from your book where you, because sometimes things that seem obvious to you. If you notice them, you realize they're not obvious to everyone else.

Kevin Kelly: Right. Right. 

Andrea Hiott: Some of your life, maybe it has been like that. Things that maybe you just noticed that you knew that other people didn't know. 

Kevin Kelly: Exactly. Right. And, and, and, and, and not to dismiss them as being, well, that's not really important. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. Or because no one else notices it must be wrong or something that's not true.

Right. 

Kevin Kelly: So, but you say No, I think this is, I think there's something there. I think I'm, I'm and, and even isn't it girl, [00:56:00] I'll make something there. And so, um. I mean, I, you know, like Jerry Seinfeld's entire humor isn't noticing little tiny things and making a big thing about taking 'em seriously. And so, um, uh, writers do can do the same thing where they, where they notice something and they turn it into the world.

And that is, that's a, a beautiful. Thing that I think we do as children a bit and are, are kind of educated out of it. Um, yeah. And so I I, I like the idea of trying to return to your childlike fascination with things and, and kind of using that as a guide. 

Andrea Hiott: And that's where the enthusiasm is too. Enthusiasm is also a big word in your book, and it reminded me of that quote.

Enthusiasm is the supernatural serenity, which I've always loved by Thoreau. And that the way you describe kids, that's kind of what you have as a kid. You know, you can look at a [00:57:00] little flower or whatever it is, and there's a whole world that opens up, right? And I think we don't realize that's actually the case.

All the time. Still in the way that you said, if you look at something with a certain awareness long enough, it opens up and, and the book you wrote, a lot of these little things are like that, aren't they? There're sort of these distilled little cones or tweets. Mm-hmm. I, I don't tweet is gone now, but you know what I mean?

They, these things where they look small, but you could kind of unpack them for a long time. 

Kevin Kelly: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's, it's, oh, well, yeah. The, that, that's exactly right. In fact. I did a version, a prototype, because I'm big into doing prototypes of things. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, I saw that on your, um, when you make all the things that you, you did the little prototype.

Yeah, I, a little 

Kevin Kelly: prototype book. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. That's cool. Oh, wow. 

Kevin Kelly: And it was called Seeds for Contemplation. 

Andrea Hiott: Oh wow. That's beautiful. Actually 

Kevin Kelly: was, and they have little, it has my little doodles in which the, um, publishers. There were was too homes spun. [00:58:00] 

Andrea Hiott: Oh no. I know. Wow. You, that looks very special. I know. It should be a re-release.

Kevin Kelly: Um, but the idea was that these things were little seeds that you would unpack. 

Andrea Hiott: Oh, okay. Oh, well there, 

Kevin Kelly: right there. It's wonderful. Um, yeah, so prototyping is, is, is is the way to go. You want to try things out in small steps and learn like the ferry 

Andrea Hiott: door. It reminded me of the ferry door that you made. 

Kevin Kelly: Yeah, exactly.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. Or you did it on cardboard first, but 

Kevin Kelly: Yeah. 

Andrea Hiott: But another important thing in the book, I think, and, and one thing that's cultivating this, thinking paradoxically, or being able to hold the space does, is. I have to bring up love, but I think it's in the book a lot. It's mm-hmm. It's, it helps you be able to, um, be responsible.

Mm-hmm. To say when something is wrong, to not take yourself so seriously, to not get caught up in all the optics that seems so flashy and wonderful, but actually kind of make you miserable, you know, no matter how much money you have. And all of this feels very important to me today. I [00:59:00] don't know about to you, but mm-hmm.

The, the one thing, for example, that you say, if you're not becoming more responsible, you're not growing, or something like that. 

Kevin Kelly: Yeah. Right. If you don't feel you have, um, more responsibility, then you, then you're probably not growing. Um, I, I, I, I, you know, I, I, I'm a big believer in process and growth and. If you have protopia, you have processing, you have process, you have growth.

And even, even my own personal theology is that God itself is also in a process. Um, and we're, we're part of it, having its own understanding about what it's doing. And so, um, process and moving. That's one of the constant things in the stuff I talked about is this idea of progress, of movement, of growth over time.

And so I have a very process [01:00:00] view of the world, uh, of our own nature, of the nature of everything, this sort of evolutionary movement of betterment, ideally and, and, um. And so, yeah, so, so that's just kind of my bias and Well, 

Andrea Hiott: it reminded me when you talked about the internet as a landscape or something.

Kevin Kelly: Yeah. 

Andrea Hiott: To, to me, I, I feel that movement, it's, it's part of the philosophy I do is thinking of even thinking itself as an exploration of a landscape. Absolutely. Yeah. And I, I feel that a lot in your work that you were already working from that place, maybe even very young, 

Kevin Kelly: the. There's a conceptual idea of landscapes that is really popular in computer science and biology, which is the sign of landscape, is a way of mapping the, the path, the process of a, of an organization or organism or an individual.

And the idea [01:01:00] that the higher it goes, the more. Perfected more optimized. It is. And that what you're kind of, you're kind of always climbing the hill. So they call it hill climbing. Hmm. So you wanna be always climbing up the hill towards optimization. And if you're designing something, you want to kind of optimize it and you're, you're kind of, there are algorithms and methods to kind of make sure you're always climbing the hill.

So they call it gradient descent, where you are actually going up the gradients all the time trying to optimize something. And the, and the issue is that, um. When you get to the peak, if it's, if the peak may not be the, the peak may be a local Optima, there may be higher peaks, more optimization on a different peak, but to get there, you have to kind of go back down.

And that's really hard if you have an organization built for excellence and optimization. To go back down to where it's less optimal is very, very difficult. But the. Thing I wanted to talk about was this other [01:02:00] peak, like you could be optimizing elevated, optimized typewriters, and they got stuck there because in word processors there was a bigger mountain and they couldn't get off of that.

You have to kind of go down, and that's why the startups have an advantage, because they have nothing to lose. They're, they're, they're, they're not pursuing excellence. It's all very, very low margins there. But the important thing is that. To have the greatest effect in the world. You don't want to be hill climbing.

You want to be hill making. You wanna make a new, new territory. You want to curate the new continent. You wanna make the new mountain that can be hill climbed. And so this idea of hill making versus hill climbing is where I think the greatest. Rewards are, and if you personally are trying to do something, rather than trying to optimize what we already have, you want to kind of be on the frontier in making a new territory.

[01:03:00] Andrea, it's been great. That's beautiful. 

Andrea Hiott: I know you need to go. You don't have anything to say about love by any chance at the very end. 

Kevin Kelly: Oh, I love, love. 

Andrea Hiott: Okay. That's all we need. Okay. 

Kevin Kelly: Thank you, Kevin was wonderful. Someday. 

Andrea Hiott: Yes, please. 

Kevin Kelly: Okay. 

Andrea Hiott: I'll talk to you soon. Thank you so much for your time. 

Kevin Kelly: I enjoyed it. I love your spirit. wish you the best. 

Andrea Hiott: I have so much I love about your work. Alright, thank you. Till, till another time then. Bye. 

Kevin Kelly: Bye-Bye.