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