S7E29 | 凯文·凯利：不是未来学家，只想「预测」当下
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用 声音 碰撞 世界。

生动活泼。

各位 听 友 大家好， 欢迎来到 这 一期 的 科技 早知道， 我是 杜晨。 今天 我们 节目 的 嘉宾 如 你 已经 在 标题 里 看到 的 正是 科技 作家 凯文凯利 先生。

你 如果你 对他。

并不 熟悉 的话， 在这里 我 做 一个 简短 的 介绍。 凯文凯利 是 一位 极具 影响力 的 科技 作家 和 未来 学家， 作品 涵盖 了 多个 领域。 他是 连线 杂志 的 创始 编辑， 带领 杂志 成为 了 全球 最有 影响力 的 科技 刊物 之一。 除此之外， 凯文凯利 更为 人 熟知 的 身份 是 畅销书 作家 和 未来 学家。 他的 著作 如 失控 以及 必然 等等， 深入探讨 了 科技 对 社会 和 人类 的 影响， 并且 也 引发 了 许多 关于 科技 伦理 和 社会变革 的 思考。 他的 著作 对 许多 你 可能 更加 熟悉 的 科幻 作品 都 提供了 巨大 的 启发， 其中 最 著名 的 莫过于 黑客帝国 三部曲。

matter is a computer generated dream.

在 过去 凯丽 的 很多 知名 作品 都是 大部头， 但是 这一次 她 带着 一本 可以 说 非常 言简意赅 的 新书 来到 了 中国。 宝贵 的 人生 建议 是 这 本书 的 名字， 里面 有 500条由 他 亲笔 撰写 的 给 这个世界 留下 的 忠告。 然而 在 跟 他 交流 之后， 我 却发现 写作 这件 事情 对于 他 来说 并没有 变得 越来越 省事， 因为 越 短小精悍 的 文字， 越 需要 清晰 的 头脑 和 剪辑。 他在 这 本书 里 尝试 了 一种 全新 的 写法， 犹如 创作 诗歌 一般。 他 把 这些 人生 忠告 比作 种子， 每 一颗 都 足够 小巧， 但 可以 生根 发芽， 长出 一棵 参天大树。 在 九月 中旬 的 上海， 凯文凯利 做客 科技 早知道 博客 节目， 在 本期 当中 你 会 听到 她 为什么 不太 喜欢 未来 学家 的 这个 身份。 他 为什么 觉得 A I 的 影响 被 低估， 但 机器学习 技术。

却 被 高估 了？ The .

difference 他 为什么 鼓励 我们 所有 人这一辈子 都要 尽全力 不 成为 亿万富翁。

try as hard as you can to never have a billion dollars, 以及 他 对 马斯克 的 忠告。

节目 的 语言 将 为 英语。 好的， 接下来 让 我们 进入 节目 正片。

mr. Kelly, welcome to the podcast. I am personally a big fan of your work and i'm sure, uh, lots of our listeners are too but just in case some of our listeners aren't uh, that familiar with you, would you care to introduce yourself?

Yes, thank you for having me. My name is Kevin Kelly. I am a cofounder of wired magazine, which is about the culture of technology and i've been the author of several books trying to think about what technology means to us and where I might go and um I recently wrote a book the next five thousand days which is about what's next.

That's amazing. So welcome to shanghai and welcome to the show. I believe the last time you were here was IT .

in twenty sixteen in shanghai.

probably right? So back then, you laid out some possible options for shanghai in terms of which technology, uh, they can develop and what industry consolidation to work on. Uh, for example, you mention that you could work on artificial intelligence or maybe virtual reality.

From what I could tell, this city and its surrounding area has been, you know, putting much effort in the transformation of the automotive industry. For instance, uh, many public roles have been designated as high level autonomous driving test zones, and they are being utilized by lots of local self driving company. Is so on so forth. So I wonder what's your thought on shanghai's development uh for technology since the last time you are here and about china in general.

Um I haven't been in china for four years so I feel very much out of sink um with what's happening here and that's when the reasons why i'm back is to kind of learn as much as I can. And i've said for a while, I think china is poised in its own development to generate a widely univerSally desired consumer device that's the highest quality design and technology. And I thought that IT would be something like an electric car or a self driving car maybe, but everything about china's capabilities and its own interest in A I, I thought that was a really good conjunction of a practical, implemented y technology at scale. And so whether IT happens in shanghai or not, I don't know enough about china's own internal industry, but I do think that I can easily imagine an iphone covell of electric car that everybody in the world wants made here and is .

exported worldwide. So um you have been recognized in china as a tech visionary, a future. I'm sure people ask you all the time questions like, uh, what's your take on the future? What's your prediction to sea? But I know you personally don't like to use the term futures to describe itself.

Uh, specifically, I listen to Steve donner of the economics radio intervene. You and you said most of what we're doing is trying to predict the present. So my questions are, why do you say that? What does predicting the present exactly mean? And how would you that is, if you would like to said the registry once and for all that you are not a future rest. You are not even trying to predict the future.

So I don't call myself the futures because I know that almost every single predial about the future be wrong, but you can be productively wrong. So I will talk about the future knowing that is wrong. But even though that wrong, that idea of IT can still be productive, is still can be useful.

So even if you have a vision of the future is not correct, the fact you had a vision that was positive can still be helpful. So I will continue to talk about the future. And in that sense, I guess i'm my futures, but i'm not the futures and trying to predict where things are going.

I'm trying to be useful in helping people prepare for the future. And as I said, the difficult part is really predicting the present. And by that, I mean, just literally being able to see what is going on right now. So I spent a lot time with AI.

And part of IT is to understand exactly what is happening with A I, not in the abstract sense, not in what the press release is, say, how do people actually use them? How does that actually change their job? How does that change about? How do you think about themselves? What actually is the present?

If I can get a Better look at what is happening, IT makes IT easier to think about the future. Part of thing about the future is that we have assumptions. We have stories and pictures in our own mind, and it's very hard to let go of those prejudices.

And so if we think about robots, we have pictures of the terminator with pictures of star wars. We think we know what robots are. But part of my attempt is to try to forget those pictures. Well, what is actually what do we have right now here? And then does think about the future.

So on the topic of A I, this is at least a one prediction that you made about the future. So earlier this year, with no smith, you said that artificial intelligence is common code and hyped and will be arguing, discussing and wrangling with the changes brought about by A I for the next decades largely because, uh, it's full effects on human society will take centuries to play up.

I real with that, but uh, people like us with thinking terms of five to ten years and most and some of us are already like scared about the possibility that are having to compete with A I in the future. And on that note, however, you are of the opinion that machine learning is over hype and it's not set at least at this stage. So my questions are, since we are talking about giving advice today, uh, what advice would you give to people who fear that the A I has already come and that human races, dom, whatever .

cleanest, clearest, quickest cure remedy for belief, the A I will take over, is to use IT every day. You'll very quickly understand that today's technology is nowhere close to replacing you. Now the question is, what work I go in the future? Well, that's a different question.

I think is not onna move as fast as people think. But if you start with what we have today, there's no fear. You'll not have fear if you start using IT everyday.

And the people that I find that are most afraid are really people who are not using IT all the time. If you use all time, you realized that there is huge differences between the way that IT thinks and the way that we think. And we're still figuring out what those differences are.

The way I like to describe the current batch of a is in the world, the large language models. The ones are making the news right now. They're not the only way to do AI, but they're the ones that are now the most popular and that have shocked us the most.

And the thing about the man is that many people will say that they're built to predict the next word. Well, that's true, but they start the only thing they're doing. So the big transition is that they are predicting patterns.

They're imitating humans, okay, so that they're good at. And IT turns out that language that only has a pattern of language, not a sense. But if you take a paragraph, there is intelligence built into most paragraph.

S if you take a book, that book will be making an argument or something that seems very intelligent. So the the language models the air can imitate the logic of humans. We say they're imitating genius, and so these are able to imitate the genius of a paragraph, the genius of a book that actually has intelligence in IT.

And so we can say what, they are really intelligent because they're just invitation IT. But if they imitate IT, so well, then what's the difference? The question is, most of what they're imitating, they're imitating a certain kind of intelligence that we find in books and pictures and writing.

That's not the only kind of intelligence that we have. We do other things, we behave in other ways, is not captured by language. And that's kind of what's missing so far.

So they can do kind of a bookish intelligence. They can do analogies, they can do simulations, they can do lots of things that we could find reflected in language. But we are more than just language.

So that's what we have so far. What we have so far are AI that can the intelligence that we find in the language where we can make a logical deduction, we can make a inference, we can make an analogy. All those are found in what we write.

And so it's imitating that. And so that's very powerful. We don't know yet what we can do with IT, and we don't know what we can do with IT, but is very clear that what we do is more than just that, but nonetheless still a very powerful thing.

I mean, that's incredibly powerful. If we can have the intelligence of a book that's like, wow. And so we're kind of expLoring right now for the next five years, how far can we go with that kind of imitating genius and everybody will have access to one. And it's like, what can you do if you have a million little geniuses? And the answers probably are a lot, but not everything exactly.

You mentioned earlier that, uh, you are using A I every day, right? A would you like to a tell us like how have you been using them and how do you find them, uh, useful? A.

to you. Sure, sure. I use one set to do art. I cocreate art with them. And a lot of people, again, who are afraid of that.

The thoughts also can be, like, you just push a button and they make the art. No, no, no, no, doesn't work that way. A little bit like photography.

When photography and cameras first came along, the painters that all they just pushed button, that's not art. When anybody who knows a great photographer is that take hundreds of pictures, they can take a picture Better than you because they are moving through. They're picking the right perspective, the right lying.

There's a lot going on to just clicking the button. And the same thing with A I R is I would spend half hour an hour working on picture, going through iterations and asking me like a little bit like photography and hunting and looking for the prompt, the right perspective. So IT take a lot of time. And it's not just clicking a button, it's actually co creating and very confident and very comfortable putting my name with the AI. And so i'm making the r and then on the language models, what is good for is summaries, taking a lots of things and summarising him and categorising a kind of logically structuring things.

And the more weird and hard for us to kind of downadup, the more powerful they are and the good for going into places where I don't know anything, and it's really good at being kind of creative of doing something I could do, but would be so time consuming, like to take two different fields and match them together. That's something I could do, but many would you take me weeks to do IT? And they can do IT in seconds. So that kind of a summary of distilled lation and abstracting is really good IT is really good synthesizing things that are in between .

yeah those things that do not exist .

that do not overlap right Normally. And they will overlap things that don't Normally overlap. So you can write something in the style of poetry or rap, that kind of the thing, or right in the style of somebody you say, you know, I want put this in bullets, or put this in a poem, or put this in in a rap song, or put IT in a powerful point presentation.

So it's really, really, really good at that. And um the third way is in an idea generation, most of the ideas will be class. And occasionally there are ideas that I had not thought of that I thought we're bryant.

And so you cannot use these things by themselves. There are interns. You have to make them your own.

You have to rewrite them. They're not something you can just take off the shelf that they provide. So there's always a coporation aspect to us. And so I use this to help generate ideas for whatever is i'm doing call.

I mean, I personally find even some of the creations of those A I R class. I find them useful. I, you know, they can be used in circumstances where cliche is basically enough. For example, when we are having to deal with sometimes clients and we have to give them ideas, sometimes they will even go with the most class one.

Sure, sure. We could take our convention we just had so far, and you could ask to chat to summarize five bullet points from IT. Now that is something you and I could do, but has take us an hour to do IT well.

And and this will do IT in seconds. And you'll do a pretty good job. You're not looking for genius at that point.

You're just looking for something that's average and adequate and all that you need. And so there's a lot of chores like that. We're just having the median average intern thing is good enough for what we're trying to do.

The topics on artificial intelligence is really fascinating. I would love to, you know, have three hours to discuss that with you. But today we're on the more important topic of the book.

I have been blessed by you and the publishing house in china to have an advances copy of your upcoming book, accent advice for living with them. I wish I know earlier. So I believe around twenty twenty you had somewhere around sixty eight pieces of advice.

And last year you had over one hundred. But in this book you have as many as five hundred, uh, particularly for the version in china. Uh, what's the cause of the sudden inflation? Is IT ever going to stop? Well.

that's a really good question because I am am not a person that Normally gave advice even I have three children who are all Young adults now, and they can tell you that we do not have a lot of advice, particular expression of advice. But I have been collecting little bits of advice is that I kind of wrote down over time. Some of them I really did wish I known earlier.

And so I decided that I should write these down and give them to my kids so that they would see them when they were Younger. And um so I began writing them down and I was surprised because once I started doing that I had a lot to say. And part of IT is, as a writer, I enjoy the chAllenge of trying to reduce them a whole book of advice down to one little sense.

And so I really worked on putting them into my own words, in this few words as possible, to really make them I could tweet like something you'd find a way, bow a really easily transmittable and memorable little line. And so that was the joy. And I am still even know we have five hundred in the book.

I actually am still writing more so. So for me, the the criteria for the inclusions of these little girl, for those who haven't seen IT, it's a book. There has little five hundred little bits, little one line, two line, maybe three lines at the most, a little tweet.

That's a bit of advice, and that's the entire book. So IT serve like bible without any stories, just the advice part. The criteria for including a little bit is, one is I had to, I do really stand by IT, is to genuinely something that I believed to be helpful, and I had personal experience with, so something that was true to me.

And secondly, I had to be short and memorable. And thirdly, I wanted to be helpful and positive, uplifting rather than sarcastic. And so those three things are unified, and I find that i'm still right to this still complicated idea into a few words as possible that would be helpful to someone to repeat to themselves.

That is exactly the next question I wanted to ask you. As a former writer, I I still write from time to time. And uh, as a writer, as a former journalist, I personally suffer from the curse that is the impostor syndrome. I constantly fear that my writings may not be good enough to warn people's time um so the questions are what prompted you to write these pieces of advice and later on decided to publish them as a book and doing that process, did you ever fear that these pieces might not be good or distinct?

Now yeah yeah that is feeling the people who are making that they don't deserve to be same things or they don't deserve any of the recognition that they might get that they're kind of imposing. They're faking IT. It's a real thing.

And by the way, many, many celebrities still feel that way, even though there, by any measure, has succeeded. Something that, for some people, doesn't go away. They have to kind of confronted. So for me, this not been a problem.

I I feel that the only permission that you need is to be authentic about what is you're saying to be sure you're artist repeating what sounds good or where other people have said that if you're authentic tic, that's all that I need to be comfortable and giving my advice. I don't have to be an expert. I don't have to have a title. I don't have to have a million followers. I just have to be authentic and say this is true for me and that's all that anybody I believe needs.

And so in my advice then for the people who feel that is that um if you are really working to make IT something that only you can say or do that's coming from you and not imitating IT, then you are are the enduring, you are the god and so you don't need to feel pastor because you're not posing as somebody that's in pastor. You're posing. If you're not posing, then you don't need to have a feeling.

So let's step into the book on the topic of giving advice. He wrote on page uh, two hundred and one, I believe on the chinese version that the best way to advise Young people is to find out what they really want to do and then advise them to do IT uh so we are in a world that is uh as a diverse as possible and there are endless types of people uh with different ideas, believes, uh, goals and SATA and I personally find that conflicts can happen between two people, even if one of them is only trying to be helpful and give advice. So how can we be certain that we give actual useful advice to other people, especially to the Young people of today? And what is the best way to give this advice without sounding no constantly or causin other types of no antipathy?

Yeah, it's a good question. My solution, my remedy is the most powerful thing you can do is to tell your story with real honesty. It's impossible for me not to be who I am, but I can try and be a is absolutely honest and authentic and original as I can and that's the only thing.

And so my advice is putting a hat on. If it's not useful, you should ignore IT. You're certain that obligated to follow anybody's advice.

You should only follow advice if you find useful at a time. And that's the thing about advice, is that you may hear IT when you're Young that may not even register. You may have to get older to appreciate.

You may have to hear that more than once. And so I often call them reminders. You have to be reminded. I rode them down to help me remind myself .

on page tree, you wrote that being enthusiastic is what, twenty five I Q points. And you also wrote on another page, I believe that the world is defined by optimists. It's being optimistic. The secret sauce for you to become and remain thoughtful and wise is optimism, the major divider between average people and people who go on to change the world.

Yeah, there's a kind of maybe two different things. Enthusiasm and optimism aren't aren't the same. But enthusiasm for me in my own life, when i'm high, mary, I am much more likely to hire someone who is very enthusiastic versus very, very, very smart.

And so enthusiasm is literally often more valuable than just being smart. People who are smart tend to overrate the value of smartness. And that's when the reason why we have difficulty imagine the future of ai, because IT turns out the smartness is not the only thing that you need to get things done in the world.

You need other things. You need grit, you need perseverance, you need imagination. Many, many other things. Just besides, smartness is not the smartest person that does all the great things is not the smartest company wins. The unicorn is, in fact, sometimes smartest can be a handicap.

And so you need lots of other things besides I Q enthusiasm is one of those things that it's about commitment, encouragement, the drive to and backing. It's it's kind of a little bit of a loyalty. There's a lots of things about enthusiasm.

Private is positivity. It's like saying you are going to try and make things happen. And then positivity, optimism is also one of those qualities, just as valuable as intelligence. You've probably never met a very, very successful pessimistic person, very, very rare.

You have to be optimistic in some ways to have success at a high level, because part of optimism is seeing a future and making IT happen and believing that I could happen. That belief is very, very important because you you're not going to work eighty hours a week and something you don't believe is possible. That belief is optimism.

And so our world has been created by past optimists, the people who believe that this railway could happen, people believe that this vaccine would work, people who believed that, you know, we could go to the moon. And so that means that in the future, our future worlds can be created by people who are optimistic today. So I think the value of being optimistic tremendous.

How can we be optimistic when the world is kind of going crazy? The sudden explosion of artificial intelligence, and particularly checkbox powered by large language models, are seeing in the relevant industry as the next big thing. But overall speaking, this only further edit fuel to the fear that A I is taking over more and more jobs, and the economy here is pretty bad these days. And gully, the employment rate d says, are so bad. Can being optimistic shepey us through this economic downtown?

sure. sure. I I think he can. And I find there's a couple of things to help me maintain my optimism, actually not maintain IT.

I am more optimistic today than I was yesterday. So I believe optimism is not in emotional state, is a deliberate choice. You choose to be optimistic, and we can choose to be as optimistic as you pass we can.

Now what helps me is reading history. The more history you read, the clear IT, is that progress is real, and at the past is not a place that you want to live in. So as bad as they may seem right now is not as bad as as been.

We will, on average, make things a little Better. Of course, there are parts of the world like ukraine, in other places where you have a healthy body, even healthy body will have some areas that have cuts and bruises, and you want to recover from those as fast as possible. But on average, we can be optimistic because we are in a world where we can improve a little tiny bit.

And so the other thing that helps you be optimistic s to realize that those improvements are almost not visible there, just a few percentages, but they're compounded. So you can be optimistic because you understand the value of compounding one percent compounded every year over thirty years is incredible. So there's two things, the longer view of the past, understanding history and taking a longer view of the future.

The higher and longer your view is, the more optimistic you can become. And so I am optimistic because I take a long view. I tried to think about a generation or two and there the fact that you have only a small accumulation of a few percent Better, but it's accumulated over decades, that's incredibly powerful. And that is where our optimism comes from.

On the internet, people just can't stop sharing their opinions on anything. Sometimes they do in a very aggressive manner. I believe you wrote on one page that, uh, you don't have to attend every argument you are invited to. Uh, the questions are, how do we resist the urge to argue with other people and to follow up on that question? How do we popular ze the idea that IT is okay to have different opinions, that arguing meaningless ly is such a waste of time, energy for the society.

As for most arguments are not about the thing that's being argued about, and most people's opinions on things are not come from reasoning and logical, so you can use reason or logic to undo them. You actually need a more emotional thing if you want to change someone's people mind. Actually, I have found the most useful thing is to try and understand what IT is and why they believe something.

And you're more much more likely to change your mind if you can come to some understanding of how they got there. It's not about logic or anything cerebral. It's people absorb a lot of their views without even thinking about them and so you can't unthink them.

So that would say one thing is your likelihood you changes one's mind by arguing is very, very, very low. And that's one reason why you don't want to attend to them. And I find that you can actually affect more change in people by changing yourself.

For me, the most powerful way to criticize something is to make something else, is not even, don't even try and tear down the thing that have, just make something Better, whatever is. And and I I find myself in the social media that I just don't follow people who are outraged. I am much rather follow someone who is building something or making something or has a positive solution.

But to me, outrage is just like the cheapest. It's like sex. It's like, yes, it's very base. It's very fundamental and cheap on page .

sixty years old and I am personally fascinated by this. The worst evil is committed by those who truly believe they are combatting evil. I wonder what's the source of this piece advice more specifically? I wonder if you, uh, rote this peace with some of the most brilliant tech founders in.

no, I had in mind things like the not sees in the us. The people promoted slavery. They were very religious people.

They believe they were doing good nine eleven. The g hot islamic people, they believed they were doing the work of god. They were limited evil in the world, and they were willing to do those kinds of things. And so my advice is that if you are trying to eliminate evil, be very careful. Because if you're trying to eliminate evil, there's a chance you can be tempted to do this evil things.

So let me refer my question on the uh, tech internet side of that question is, do you have any advice for tech founders, internet company founders these days that are saying they are changing the world for the Better? But however, years later, you find them, thought the dress for two lion became the dragon itself.

Yeah, I you know I know a lot of founders and have been Watson through. I think there they are, belief and trying to do good as genuine. When you have power. It's easy to corrupt somewhere else in the book I said, you know, the the real test of character is not university is power. It's really, really hard to have power without corrupting you.

People who start up believing they are doing well, they often come up with this idea of of the means justifying the end is like, yes, they are going to do some thing. They're making trade ffs. And so sometimes the trade offs make a reasonable the time and looked terrible in a retrospect that something else that happens is that today we would be very, very hard on things that we're done in the past.

But at the time in the past, there are more accepted. And so it's hard to judge people in the past to our standards because we believe things today, you and I, that are going to be embarrassing to people in the future. I don't know what they are, but I know that there's some of my beliefs maybe like eating meat, right?

I mean, one thousand years now, whatever people we, Harrison ed, that you had to kill a pig and eat the flesh of the pig, we'll see that is completely Barbara. Well, i'm just using example of things that we could be doing today that will be seen in a very, very poor light in the future. So so we can't really judge all the time from the view of where we are in the past.

So I think in terms of tech founders, I applaud the desire to try and do good. I think they deserve whatever feedback to pressure ism, whatever accountability IT makes someone comfortable, but they're Better for IT. And so that to me, the solution is just to continue to look at them closely and hold them accountable.

Of course, lots of people are things that they criticize people for and they're going going to ignore some of that and some of IT should be ignored. And there's kind of two politically correct. I'm not really harsh on the tech founders. I think it's a tough position .

to being yeah at .

least they are building something and you make the piece of advice want .

to talk about on page five you wrote that we shouldn't be afraid to ask, uh, stupid questions. Ask someone who used to ask questions and cause other people for being myself uh, I alcoa with this, uh, a lot. Can you give me one example of a stupid question? What's one stupid questions that you have ask recently to anybody or to yourself? Yes, I said I .

don't really think to our stupid questions you kind of want to ask question you're thinking of and IT may seem stupid because you think everybody knows the answer to this, but I don't know the answer is i'm gonna. So I have heard a lot about A I or something and I am going to go in and someone's I could say I do the CEO and they're saying they use kind of dragon. I feel perfectly fine saying, explain that to me.

I don't get this tp s thing. What is that? And so that's what I meant by a stupid question.

Where is a genuine question? You generally confused, but you shouldn't be embarrassed that you don't know. Don't be embarrassed by your own ignorance.

right. Uh, I want to move on to a part where, as a writer, I want to discuss with you uh, topics on writing so so you have been writing for decades about technology, about human society. And I say on behalf of many of your readers in china, that we love your writing for the complexity demonstrated. And now you come out with this new book, which is as short as IT gets when IT comes to writing. So the questions are, how difficult is IT to write concisely while conveying as much as possible and what advice can you give to um aspiring writers about writing conciousness?

yes. So this is a book that has four and fifty sentences, will say your five hundred sentences it's very really short and it's very telegraphic I use our telegraphic IT really compresses a lot is almost poetic in that sense. In fact, my other writing is also telegraphic.

I am packing in a lot using a telegraphy. The writing styles are very, very similar in a certain sense. It's is that the ambition of the scale? What i'm trying to do is much smaller in this book.

And so this was, in a certain sense, a continuation of my style by just to remove any need to tell any kind of the story at all. And i'm just can give you the punch line. I'm just gonna you the to .

take away and uh, I find IT very interesting that you compare these are pieces of vice in the box as seats that each of them can be sort of sold and grow into a full length peace. Uh, on the topic, correct me if I am wrong. There are writings that are just short and do the job versus writing that are not only concise, but also they are like seats.

They can grow into something. They inspire readers to think beyond the content. Is there difference deep down between writers and editors just, you know, deleting words from the article versus carefully pealing the fruit and revealing the seat? Is there a difference deep down between?

I think there is a difference, even in my nonfiction writing and when I was editing wired, what we really try to do is to remove all unnecessary words because people have a short attention span. And the the smaller things are, the easier they are to consume. So you want things to be as small as possible.

There's also a beauty in words sometimes require your lengths. So there's A A balancing thing to say something in a very lyrical way can help you remember IT. So there are competing different factors in trying to edit something.

It's not only a short of version. You want to clear this version, you want the version that most memorable. So there's lots of competing things.

And so I don't know there's a huge difference between removing everything and then trying to have IT as a seed that the sea thing, I think, is close to what poetry tries to do. Poetry is sort of evoking IT doesn't want to say things. IT wants you to say that in your mind. He wants to evoke, suggest, hint at something.

And then have you fell in? So I think this book is a little close to that in the sense of, oh, is going to say something that might remind you or something that you begin to fill in and that seed sense of growing where you were kind of doing more of the work. And that's one of the reasons why poetry is harder to read, because you're having to work a little bit.

You've gotta make up the answer. This book may be a little closer to that in a sense that people tell me that they read two pages and they saw they can read, they have to think about IT or they don't want to read. I mean, they could, but they want to kind of take your time to contemplate IT, to unpack IT because is little like poetry, and sense that you were kind of bringing to IT the completion of a in your complete in your mind.

Would you suggest a right way to read this book like maybe one two pages per day?

yes. In fact, origin IT was gonna one a day. My treat stream, I release one a day. And people, we talked about an APP that did one a day. So I think in fact, the the best way is to read one a day.

Uh the next question from whom do you seek advice, describe who they are, what they're like, and tell us how do we go about finding people like them to get advice for sure?

That's a good question. And I was very fortunate to have some and tourists and people who that I worked with, who I respect tremendously and admire. I always valued wisdom over intelligence. And I always were, were seeking out those who were wise IT wasn't so much things that they said.

I think there was copying down IT was the life they were living in, their priorities they had and the the way they made the trade off and the decisions that they made in the process they had IT. Those are what impressed me. And of course, as I said elsewhere, I think part of wisdom is having a longer view. And and so these are people who involved the foundation, and they had a long view. And that long view, I think he helps you make me wise.

See, sort of my last or second last question, the world is rapidly changing. I wonder if you are worried about anything or anyone in particular. For example, for me, one person i'm worried about is, you know, musk, he's changing the world for the Better and the worst at the same time.

And i'm worried that he's becoming an idle for so many people, particularly his arrogant and considered side. If I were to give him an advice, I would want him to be just be a nicer person. But I know lots of people are telling him that at the end of the life, if you were to meet a leader of this world of any domain, tech, government, whatever, and give them a piece advice, which person would you choose and what would you?

Oh, I see. okay. Well, first of all, I guess i'd have to believe that my advice might make a difference.

So who is more except table, putin, iron and jeff basis? My vice to elan is very simple as get off twitter. If he was only not on twitter, just like completely nine percent, don't let them tell twitter.

Don't let me back on, no matter what I say, never let me back on. If he was off twitter, half of his problems would be solved. So I I was around some billionaire, and I was telling them i'm the richest guy here.

I don't I don't have any rate, billion or even one hundred million. I don't have anything. But i'm the Richard guy here because I have total control of my time.

I don't have a billion dollars. And that's one of things I tell Young listeners. S is like, if my advice to you try as hard as you can to never have a billion dollars.

You do not want a billion dollars. A billion is terrible for your kids. It'll be a full time job.

You never get rid of IT. You can spend IT and just keep coming back. You are now chained that billion dollars.

That's the dilema that the very super rich have is that they are they've all these obligations because of their wealth. They don't have total actually don't have total control time. I have, I have free time.

They don't have free time. Time is the most precious thing, and so I feel wealthier than they do. They're kind of stuck because this the bin, ours owns them.

In some ways, money is a means to get other things, but is not something you actually want in the end. And because you're gonna take IT with you. So try to have your definition of success that doesn't involve money very much.

Don't rely on other people's definition of success, because then you can be more authentic. It's more likely to come down to something that you and your own talents in own experience can do. You don't want to be a influencer celebrity that's already occupied to a lot of people.

They are already yes, you want to have something be doing something that nobody has a name for that really hard to described to someone what is, is you're doing it's kind like fifteen years ago, if you told people, yeah, i'm doing something, it's like radio but not it's called a podcast and people say, what's that I never heard of that you want to have your own being, your own movie. You don't want to be in someone else's movie. And a lot of people are shooting like elon mask.

They want to be ill on mask. No, you don't. They're already doing that. That's occupied. You want to be a category of one where you are not the best, but the only .

from writing about the creativity of mankind, predicting how technology evolves uh, to giving Young people sage advice which might be interpreted as one of the low hang fruits when IT comes to right a book um I wonder what about Kevin Kelly has changed and what hasn't you you mentioned earlier that you are uh, writing another table. Are you still continuing your good work in thinking and writing about technology, predicting the present besides packaging your life's experience .

as advice? Yes, I am. My current project is called the hundred dear desirable future. And it's i'm trying to make scenarios, not predial, but scenarios for a future in one hundred years, a fill of AI and genetic engineering and monitoring that I want to live in that's not tobia.

That's actually protopithecae current projects and is looking at one hundred different vertical like sports, fashion and food and stuff. I think one of the things has change in recent years is my commitment to become even more optimistic than I have been to make IT, again, a deliberate choice, to become erratically optimistic. When was in high school, I was trying to decide where good article or science, and I decided to to go science.

But I think I might have been happy if you're going to art intelligence is overrated if you put einstein in a tiger in a cage who wins? Not the smartest. So the smartness is not the only thing we need.

And I think the kinds of things are doing are necessary for for us. And as A I does more of the intelligent stuff, I think we want to, we humans find ways to apple fy the other qualities that humans have besides intelligence. And so that sort of what I am thinking of these days is worse besides I Q. What else besides intelligence is necessary for us?

Thank you, mr. Kelly. IT has been a wonderful experience speaking with you, getting all my answered.

Some of them might have been stupid questions, i'm not sure, but, uh, it's really a great experience talking with you. Thank you so much. And I would highly encourage our listeners to get mr.

Kellys upcoming book excelling advice for living western. I wish i'd know earlier, right? Think mr. Kelly.

thank you. I really appreciate being here. You didn't ask stupid questions.

For me, a real joy is to be asked questions that haven't been asked before and you ask some of those. So that's that makes me pleasure for me. So thank you for having thank you so much.

Thank you.

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