Kevin Kelly on The Inevitable: 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

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Kevin Kelly has been a high profile maverick of both silicon valley and technology in general for the past 35 years. Some of his books have gained not just a best-seller status but a near-cult following in places like China. Popular personalities such as Tim Ferriss have called Kelly “the most interesting man in the world.” Thus I was very excited to have Kevin back on my podcast and discuss his latest book The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Tech Forces That Will Shape Our Future.

During our 90 min discussion with Kevin Kelly we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: why he thinks of himself as a sharer and packager of ideas; his Amish style beard; singular vs pluralist views of the future; the singularity and myth-making; what we can learn about technology from the Amish and his prediction about farm-land-ownership in the next 150 years; his 3 most important lessons about life in general, technology and ethics; his last two books What Technology Wants  and The Inevitable; whether technological evolution is inevitable and teleological or not; determinism and free will; Moore’s Law; the process of cognifying and why there is no such thing as general purpose intelligence; the dangers posted by AI; protopia, dystopia and utopia; the importance of asking questions…

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Who is Kevin Kelly?

Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He co-founded Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor for its first seven years. He is also founding editor and co-publisher of the popular Cool Tools website, which has been reviewing tools daily since 2003. From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox technical news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers’ Conference, and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985. His books include the best-selling New Rules for the New Economy, the classic book on decentralized emergent systems, Out of Control, a graphic novel about robots and angels, The Silver Cord, an oversize catalog of the best of Cool Tools, and his summary theory of technology in What Technology Wants (2010). His new book for Viking/Penguin is called The Inevitable.