Curated Questions: Conversations Celebrating the Power of Questions! Kevin Kelly: The Future Belongs to the Question-Makers | Kevin Kelly #31
"In any vibrant, ongoing discipline, questioning has to be at the heart of it, or there's no growth." - Kevin Kelly
Kevin Kelly is one of the most original voices in technology and culture. Kevin's career is a journey through the heart of innovation. He helped launch Wired magazine, shaping our understanding of the digital revolution. Before that, he edited the Whole Earth Review, spotlighting trends like virtual reality and online communities before they entered the mainstream.
He co-founded The WELL, one of the earliest online communities, and the Hackers Conference, which brings together the brightest minds in the tech industry. His books, including What Technology Wants and The Inevitable, challenge us to view technology as a living system, one that evolves alongside us, shaping our lives and choices.
Through his Cool Tools Project, Kevin champions practical tools that empower individuals while his work with the Long Now Foundation pushes us to think on a grander, multi-generational scale, like a 10,000-year kind of scale, whether chronicling disappearing cultures in Asia or exploring the emotional bonds we form with machines. Kevin brings relentless curiosity and optimism to every subject.
In this episode, Kevin shares his insights on the power of questioning for personal and societal growth, discussing the role of questions in driving innovation and fostering understanding. He emphasizes the importance of inefficiency and exploration in formulating impactful questions, contrasting this with AI's tendency to provide average answers. Kelly also discusses his long-term projects, such as the 10,000-year clock with the Long Now Foundation, emphasizing the importance of long-term thinking and striking a balance between stability and adaptability. The discussion highlights the value of embracing disequilibrium for intellectual and technological advancement and challenges the notion of productivity by suggesting that waste and failure are integral to the discovery process.
Episode Notes
[00:00] The Importance of Questioning
[01:21] Introduction to Curated Questions
[02:20] Meet Kevin Kelly
[03:56] Kevin Kelly's Mentor: Stewart Brand
[05:33] The Role of Questions in Intellectual Traditions
[06:47] Disequilibrium and Growth
[10:21] Embodied Questions and Exploration
[11:11] Balancing Exploration and Exploitation
[11:50] The Inefficiency of Questioning
[15:53] The Abundance Mindset
[18:39] The Inevitable and Quality Questions
[19:26] Hill Climbing vs. Hill Making
[22:28] The Challenge of Innovation
[24:13] The Beauty of Engineering and Innovation
[24:34] Navigating the Frontier of New Technologies
[25:33] The Role of AI in Question Formulation
[26:43] Challenges in Advancing AI Capabilities
[29:11] The Long Now Foundation and the 10,000 Year Clock
[29:56] Transmitting Values Over Time
[31:03] Ethics in AI and Self-Driving Cars
[33:26] The Art of Questioning
[34:04] Photography: Capturing vs. Creating
[36:12] The Inefficiency of Exploration
[38:36] Daily Practice and Long-Term Success
[40:17] The Importance of Quantity for Quality
[43:22] Final Thoughts and Encouragement on Questioning
[46:24] Summary Takeaways
Resources Mentioned
What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly
The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly
Kevin2Kelly on Instagram
Questions Asked
When did you first understand the power of questions?
Can I do that?
Can that be something that you can learn?
How did questions function differently between Eastern versus Western intellectual traditions?
What role do you think embodied questions those we explore through doing rather than thinking play in developing wisdom?
What's on the other side of the hill?
What happens if you go to the end?
What's the origin of this?
How should one think about the exploratory in one's life?
Is there anything that you would add to your list of 15 statements that define what makes a quality question?
Is there a qualitative difference between the questions humans are asking and the questions our AI systems are beginning to formulate?
What do you think would help them get there?
Any idea on a forcing function on how we get them [LLMs] to ask the better questions so that they might improve in that direction?
What were some novel questions that broke your brain at the time in thinking about this 10,000-year clock or beyond?
What's it good for?
What would you use it for?
What else could you do over the long term for 10,000 years?
How do you transmit values over time?
How do you evolve values that need to change, and how do you make a difference?
How do even know what you don't want to change?
What do you want to continue?
What's the most essential aspects of our civilization that we don't want to go away?
What are the rules?
What is the system?
How do you pass things along in time and not change the ones you don't wanna change, and make sure you change the ones that are more adaptable so they can adapt?
What do you think about questioning itself as an art form?
How has being a photographer influenced the way you question reality, visually compared to verbally?
Are you a photographer that takes photos or makes photos?
What will happen?
What will happen next?
What are your right now questions that you are wrestling with or working with in your life?
Can someone else do what I'm trying to do here?
Am I more me in doing my art or more me in doing the writing?
Do you have any other thoughts or encouragement about questions that we haven't explored?
What makes a good question?
How do you ask a good question?
What questions do you dwell on to be in purposeful imbalance?
What is your practice in embracing the inefficient nature of questions to achieve breakthroughs?
What are the new hills you can build and frontiers you can explore?
How can you use your curiosity and humanity to pursue questions that trend toward the fringes?