The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 132: Kevin Kelly - How To See The Future...

Episode Date: June 12, 2016

Episode 132: Kevin Kelly -  How To See The Future... Much of what will happen in the next thirty years is inevitable, driven by technological trends that are already in motion. In this fascinating, provocative new book, Kevin Kelly provides an optimistic road map for the future, showing how the coming changes in our lives—from virtual reality in the home to an on-demand economy to artificial intelligence embedded in everything we manufacture—can be understood as the result of a few long-term, accelerating forces. Kelly both describes these deep trends—interacting, cognifying, flowing, screening, accessing, sharing, filtering, remixing, tracking, and questioning—and demonstrates how they overlap and are codependent on one another. These larger forces will completely revolutionize the way we buy, work, learn, and communicate with each other. By understanding and embracing them, says Kelly, it will be easier for us to remain on top of the coming wave of changes and to arrange our day-to-day relationships with technology in ways that bring forth maximum benefits. Kelly's bright, hopeful book will be indispensable to anyone who seeks guidance on where their business, industry, or life is heading—what to invent, where to work, in what to invest, how to better reach customers, and what to begin to put into place—as this new world emerges. (Per Amazon.com) 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. His new book for Viking/Penguin is called The Inevitable, with a publication date of June 6, 2016. 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). Episode 132 Kevin Kelly – How To See The Future... Subscribe on iTunes  or Stitcher Radio The Learning Leader Show "Their success can prevent future success. It's difficult to move off that peak.  It's important to know nothing at times." In This Episode, You Will Learn: Those who cultivate, create, make, and have an ability to see the world a little differently sustain excellence With technology advancements, it's difficult to sustain a different view Why we should think of ways to optimize our lives The art of making allies instead of enemies "I write in order to tell myself what I think" The power of sharing your journal with the world Why humans will own less and will pay for access to more things Why do we need to sleep? Can we optimize it? Why hasn't the speed of commercials airlines increased in 30 years? "You are not late – Go do something now" "What are you trying to optimize in your life?" Continue Learning: Follow Kevin on Twitter: @kevin2kelly Read: 1,000 True Fans Read: The Inevitable: Understanding The 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape You To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12 You may also like these episodes: Episode 130: Ryan Holiday – Ego Is The Enemy Episode 078: Kat Cole – From Hooters Waitress To President of Cinnabon Episode 082: Dan Pink – The Science of Motivation, Legendary Writer & Ted Talk Episode 086: Seth Godin – How To Become Indispensable & Build Your Tribe Did you enjoy the podcast? If you enjoyed hearing Kevin Kelly on the show, please don't hesitate to send me a note on Twitter or email me. Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell   Bio From KK.org 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. His new book for Viking/Penguin is called The Inevitable, with a publication date of June 6, 2016. 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).

Despite all the appearances to the contrary, you are not late. This is the beginning. Everything that's important is ahead of us. And so there's no excuse in the world not to make something now. Go and make it happen. Are leaders born or are they made? Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other successful leaders.

Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk. Hey guys, it's Ryan Update in regards to the Facebook group we've set up. I'm so happy to see the response that we've gotten from so many great fellow learning leaders. The conversation and the dialogue has been fantastic, so I'd love to invite all of you to further the conversation and join us. Simply go to learning leader.com slash group learning leader.com slash group and we will add you to the community and you can join like

minded individuals to discuss leadership topics argue a little bit maybe we can disagree I think that's how we all learn but it's been fantastic so far I've loved really engaging with you guys the great listeners of the learning leader show so go to learning leader dot com slash group we'll add you and I look forward to talking with you soon. Hey, and welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk, and thank you so much for being here. I'm so excited about tonight's featured leader, because I've been reading Kevin Kelly's work for so long.

You look back to 1,000 true fans, which has become one of the most popular post on the internet. It's influenced so many creatives, certainly including myself, and I'm so appreciative of Kevin in his work. Kevin is a senior Maverick at Wired Magazine. He co-founded Wired. in 1993 and served as executive editor for its first seven years. His newest book is titled The Inevitable Understanding the Twelve Technological Forces that will

shape our future. Tim Ferriss calls Kevin the real-life most interesting man in the world. Really high praise. A few of the topics we got into, why greatness is overrated. Really interesting, thoughtful answer from Kevin. And then the question we should be asking ourselves is, what are we trying to optimize in our lives? And we go much deeper on that topic. And then why today, right now is the absolute best time for you to start something new. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, it's Kevin Kelly. Kevin, it's an absolute thrill for me to have you here on the Learning Leader Show. So first, welcome to the show. It's a mutual pleasure for me. Oh, well, thank you. I appreciate that. And I got a question that is always interesting to me, especially when I'm speaking with someone who's studied success, studied sustained excellence like you have and you've embodied it as well in your career. I'm curious from your perspective, what are some of the common themes or virtues you found in people who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time?

Excellence discourse is a very broad criteria. And the kind of people that I respect for their sustained excellence are those who tend to cultivate, create, discover, make in themselves an ability to see the world a little differently. They see something that we don't see. When I'm talking to them, they will have a view that's different. And that is not just intellectual. It can be kind of like talking to an artist who just sees things differently or someone who notices something differently. Or it could be somebody who's very attuned to social dynamics that I don't see

or the subtleties of human emotion, which makes them a great actor. something. So there's there's there's something in the way that they see the world slightly different than other people and they're able to sustain that. And I think that's often the genesis of the of their success or the kind of success that I am looking for. I mean, there are people who make money who I find very boring. Some people would say that it's successful, but the kind of people what I'm attracted to or the kind of success I'm attracted to is the type that comes out of a different view, a sustained different view, kind of a reliably different. And that is actually very, very difficult to sustain.

And what's interesting is as our world and as technology becomes more and more globally connected and deeply connected, it becomes absolutely connected, it becomes absolutely. actually more difficult to sustain that different view because you have this tremendous pressure of conforming, a consensus. I mean, I believe that there are atoms because other people have told me that they're atoms. I mean, really. I mean, that's in the end. It's only because I've been convinced by all these other arguments that atoms exist.

And I would, you know, I would be pretty sure about it. but it's really all based on what people told me. Now, to believe otherwise, to have a different view, to see the world not as if atoms were real, but that there are waves or vibrations or something, requires something different to sustain that, and then to have not just that idea, but the next one, or not just that view,

or not just that feeling on a long time. I think is something that, in some ways is a very deliberate cultivation or discovery that a person like that is working on that in a certain sense. They're trying to reward what it is that they've done to get there and it may be more natural in others, but there is a sense in which that is their thing. And that's what I respect. That's an awful long, when you'd answer, but there it goes.

I appreciate it. what I was feeling there when you were answering was that in order to sustain it because of the technology, especially globally and the spreading of ideas quickly, that you almost have to be willing to reinvent yourself. And other leaders have told me that, especially when they've spoken of other greats, whether it's, you know, you name the famous ones like Elon Musk or Steve Jobs, but they're willing to look forward a little bit differently and solve new problems or create something that no one ever thought of creating. And so I'm curious when you, you know,

sustained excellence means something different to everybody. And I specifically use those two words for a reason because I know it means something different to everyone, but I do think the word sustained is important, meaning they continue it. Who are the first people that come to your mind when you think of that phrase, though? Yeah.

So let me just, I just want to clarify something you were kind of trying to hint at about having to reinvent themselves. I think it's a little bit deeper than that. I think there is an element in which, for a successful person, particularly one who's been success early or they have one big one, a real challenge for them is their success

is the thing that will prevent them from success the next time. It's the most self-limiting character in a certain sense because the more successful you are, the more difficult it is to move off that peak and go down to where you are, again, a newbie, a permanent newbie, or that you are, do you know nothing, or that you are not excellent, that you're going to embrace, you know, have failure. That becomes more and more difficult, the more successful you are. And so that's true for companies as well as individuals. So I think this, the thing you're emphasizing, the sustainable part, the sustaining part, is much closer to the difficulty of discovering who you are, discovering that view that is unique and different. And that is for most of the people to get to answer your question that I think of when I think of that word, this is kind of a lifelong project. It's a very, very difficult thing to figure out.

And people, when they're younger, have great difficulty. Like I didn't like many people, of even knowing what is that? I mean, I don't know how I think differently. I don't know what I'm passionate about. I don't know what I'm better at it than anybody else. And so I don't know how I see the world differently. And so finding that, getting there, making that, because finding and making is really the same thing, is a long process with many detours,

many backsliding, many false steps, many, you know, moments of despair. It's not at all evident, and it's extremely difficult, and it will continue your whole life. So it's not a matter of kind of why I figured I need to reinvent it. No, I need to find it in the first place. So who are the people, or are there people that you think of? Well, I have people that I know that I've worked with. And I tend to have greater admiration for those kind of people because you, rather than just kind of reading about them, when you know someone, you have less of a cartoon image of them,

you see the cost. You see what it cost them to do that. And by the way, I think that greatness is highly overrated. What do you mean? Most of the people that I know, and I've met, that the world was sort of generally consider as great in some, you know, like a Steve Jobs who I met or, you know, a Jeff Bezos who I met, or Elon, for that matter.

there's a price that they've paid for that, that greatness. Greatness is kind of an extreme thing. They're great because they're extreme in something, and that extremity comes at a cost of something else. So the image that I always have in my mind is, what is the difference between persistence and stubbornness? It's almost the same thing, but there's just a little bit of a difference in charge. one is sort of like

stubbornness is sort of like persistence with ego with a lot of ego and persistence is you have less ego and it is in my book I mean it's kind of like it's like those two are very closely related you know generosity and foolishness

are very very close so there is a sense in which somebody who is great is also extreme by necessity with these other things and it's overrated and sense that they are extreme in certain dimensions, which makes them hard to live with,

which makes them difficult to do other things, which, you know, I mean, again, the Steve Jobs, who's now the kind of posterboard for this, was a very, very difficult person because he was so extreme in some of these other traits. So he was great in that sense, but that greatness is overrated in the sense that it's ignoring a lot of the cost that is associated personal cost, just the tradeoffs that are necessary because you cannot be great in all the dimensions. And so we're treating back to your question about the people I respect, the ones I respect the most of the ones that I actually know, and I can see the costs, and I still really, really

admire them for this sustained success. and to name names, which is what you're asking for. So Stuart Brand, whom I've worked with for, I don't know now, 30 more years, almost every day having some interaction with them, the more I know him every day, the more that I am impressed by him, by his ability to do what I was just suggesting, which is see the world in a different way. And yet he keeps teaching me and I admire how he goes about it in his way of making allies instead of enemies. I mean, I have a long list of things that I admire about him. And my admiration is elevated with each interaction that I have with him, which I can't say for very many people.

You said greatness is overrated, highly overrated. Would you consider yourself great? No, I would. I'm not extreme enough. I'm not, I'm much too well-rounded and moderate, so to speak. So it's not something you say. So like if somebody says, Kevin, what do you strive for? Like, what do you say?

I definitely am not striving for greatness. Right. So what would you say? So I ask this question in kind of a different way. Yeah. I ask people, what are you trying to optimize in your life? It's interesting. I asked Tim Ferrissette on stage once.

So I would say, unfortunately, I'm not trying to optimize a single thing, but one of the things I'm trying to optimize is learning is how much I can learn and how much I can increase learning in general in the world. And the second thing I'm trying to optimize is I'm trying to optimize possibilities, to open up possibilities. So I want to, so what I'm trying to learn is how to open up possibilities. So I want to increase the number of possibilities in the world for me

and for anybody alive and maybe even in the future of people to come. So that's why I'm really very pro technology because I think that's what technology gives us in the end, even though it makes up so many new problems, is that it's giving us more and more choices. and I want to increase those choices for myself and for everyone else. So technology is a great way, but we also, I want to encourage or invent the systems that deliver those choices to people to make sure that we can match up every soul, every person with the choices that they need

and keep expanding them overall. So I did a book called Cool Tools, which is based on a website called Cool Tools, which is about tools, and the subtitle is the catalog of possibilities because I want everybody to know. You have so many choices that you don't know about to do things that you maybe even knew you could do,

and maybe if you knew you could do them, you would excel, you would connect with that, and you would go on and surprise us. And I think the, What I'm trying to optimize is that expansion of possibilities. You mentioned Tim Ferriss asking him a question on that question up on stage. Tim has called you the most interesting man in the world, which is extremely high praise given the fact that he basically has access to just about everybody on the planet if he wants.

When somebody walks up to you, Kevin, and says, what do you do? What do you say? The honest answer is I change My answer varies depending on this situation So I have many hats And it depends on my mood too, I have to say So I think if And so sometimes I will have fun with that

In the sense I can give them my official title Which is a very whimsical title That actually is my title at Wired I'm the Senior Maverick And it can run to a kind of a more truthful. I mean, I'm always truthful about it, but, you know, the description of kind of what I do is I package ideas and concepts, but that, you know, that's an abstract way of saying it. I can tell you a couple things that may surprise people that I don't normally describe myself as, I'm not, I don't describe

myself as a writer. Wow, that's the first thing I thought you were going to say. No. I've never wanted to be a writer. Writing kills me. It's so, so hard. I am really grumpy when I'm writing. And I'm actually, don't think it's my best strength.

I am much more a natural editor. Editor in a sense of what we kind of call these days, everybody calls curator. Somebody who is seeing so for me the writing the words part is just part of a bigger picture like if you have a magazine article there's all the photographs and the design and all that is contributes as much

to the communication as the words and that was sort of part of what the fun of wired was because I started off as a photographer so I think very very visually and you know there's in in a movie there's a million hours and there's some much smaller portion of that that's about what the words are. I was involved with some screenwriters in doing this huge, huge graphic novel and I was really stunned by the process, which is one of the reasons I signed up was to learn how this is done because they would work on it for years working on this script,

but there was no words. I mean, there were kind of cards that you're moving around. It was all architecture. It was the structure. and once you got the structure of the story right, then you added all the words. You added the dialogue. It was like the last thing you did.

The structure was everything. And that kind of structuring is part of what editing is about is the architecture of stuff, the things in addition to the actual words, the wordsmithing. So I'm working, I had published a book of photograph. I'm working on another one. I think very visually, and the word part is, in some way, secondary to my strength.

I have to work really, really hard to write, but I can edit without increasing my breath, without elevating my heart rate, I can edit. So I think of myself as an editor. Yeah. It's interesting about the writing. the reason I initially said that is because some of your pieces of writing have influenced me as much or as more than just about anybody out there. And specifically, I'll start digging into some of the pieces that have done that for me.

Well, let me just say one thing about writing. Yeah, go ahead. And this may be useful to people, which is I write, and the reason why I've written a lot, is I write in order to tell myself what I think. because I, for whatever reason, don't have access to what I think unless I write it. And sometimes I think I know what I think, but as soon as I start to write it, I realize I have no idea what I'm thinking about this. And so that's true on a kind of several levels of like I will actually go into a project,

say like recently in VR, because I didn't know what to think about it. And so I will take an assignment from Wired or other place. and basically I'm going to get paid to figure out what I think about it because I don't know. And so I'll do all the research and all the interviews and all the reading and I'll spend months and months and I'll gradually start to have some ideas. But even at that point, I'm not even sure what my ideas are until I actually start to try and write them down and I discover, you know, I have no idea what I'm talking about. It's like, what is this? And then gradually I will start to have these ideas because it's like anything else you just keep doing.

it even though it's junk or crap or whatever you're going to throw it away and most of it is thrown away. I'm in that process of writing it. The articulation will come. And then suddenly I'll, and then I'll see it on the page and say, oh, that's what I think. Now I know what I think. And so that's why I write. And by the way, I work with enough writers and others to know to work with real writers and the real writers are doing that. A writer like Neil Stevenson

is writing thousands of words a day every day because unless he writes he goes crazy because this is kind of like Bruce Sterling and some of the they just flows out of them and they just do it because they really enjoy it because it makes them feel

good. That's not me. So essentially it feels like you're sharing your journal with the world. Yes, my book report. I'm going to, yeah, it is. That's actually sharing your journal is a really good, but a highly edited journal, right?

I mean, it's like, sure. But yeah, so, so I have to say one last thing since you got me on a roll. I think actually language itself is primarily that, that part of why. we invented language, we being the human rights, humans, was in order to access our own thoughts.

That this was a way that in the speaking and talking is also the same kind of thing. It's like we had things there that we didn't have access to accept through language and that's why we kind of like talk to ourselves in some sense.

This is that this is a mechanism for us to get access to us that we actually have thoughts that are kind of pre-language. They don't even language is the vehicle that we can use to extract them. So I think

evolutionarily, there's a basis in understanding that language is how we access our own minds. I got you. So I want to get to your latest work, Kevin, and that is a book just released called The Inevitable, which is essentially a guide through the 12 technological forces that will shape the next 30 years and it's

going to transform our lives. So I'm, I got a couple topics I'd love to hit on and then maybe you can expand upon them from what I found interesting from your work. Is that cool? Yeah, go ahead. Okay. So one of the parts is you mentioned that humans will own less and we will pay to access more things anytime, anywhere. So like what type of access will people begin to pay for in the future? and what do you mean by owning less? Yeah, yeah. So the origins of this general observation is, you know, my own realization that I basically had stopped purchasing movies.

And I was, I have a website called True Films where I've been reviewing the best documentaries for, I don't know, 16 years now or something. And it's hard to believe it, way back 16. years ago, the only way to see a documentary was primarily if it showed up in a local movie theater. You could believe that. You had to be around and aware and you had to drive and see this weird documentary. And then there was the emergence of the VHS tape.

And there was a small set of documentaries that were available on VHS tapes. And so I was purchasing these movies. and like many other people who purchase VHS tapes of movies, they have a whole little catalogs. But what I'm saying is I was one of the first subscribers to Netflix, which was this new model of subscribing. And over the years, as Netflix went to streaming, I realized that, you know, I hadn't bought a movie in a long time.

The same thing was happening with music was I was buying less and less music, subscribing to it more, because I had access to that movie or that song, anytime I wanted to, anywhere in the world, from any device, and that was better than owning it, because instead of having tapes that I had to store and file away and maintain if they broke or upgrade if there was a new addition, I didn't have to do any of that. I just had access to it, and it was so much better for me than,

having to buy these things and take care of them. And so looking around, it became evident that this was sort of something larger than just movies or music. There was, you know, there's the Kindle Unlimited Library where you don't buy a book. You just access, pay for the library. They take care of all the maintenance and games, PlayStation Games. I don't know what they call it, the studio or something. that has all the games that you could want. And more and more of the world was going this direction, including even the on-demand economy,

which was saying, if you could get something very, very rapidly, if not instant from anywhere in the world, whenever you wanted it, that was almost as good in many cases even better than owning it. So why own a car if you could summon a car at any time you want it anywhere? and that's Uber. And then why you own a hotel room, if you're a hotel company, when you could just

get instant access to any room anywhere in a world through something like Airbnb. So Airbnb, now the largest lodging company world, doesn't own any real estate. And Facebook doesn't own any of the content. It's the largest media company world. It doesn't own any. It's all produced by the

users. And Alibaba is the world's largest retailer, and they don't have any inventory. They don't own any inventory. So this idea of the benefits of accessing things, if you, again, have this technology that allows you to instantly get it anywhere, anytime, that is transformative and that will continue as more and more things and not just the digital things, but also the physical things, whether that be something that could be 3D printed instantly or transported very, very quickly from an elaborate network as Amazon's trying to do with same-day delivery, if not the same-hour delivery.

So for many people, getting something delivered within an hour is almost better than owning it because they probably would take an hour to find it in their basement. So it started with digital goods, but it goes to the physical. there is a general drift to offshoring, to outsourcing the duties of ownership to someone else, and having consumers just enjoy the benefits of accessing them. So when I was preparing for our talk, Kevin, I was thinking of something that would be what some people might think is crazy and to ask you your thoughts because, you know, people, you know, you're a futurist type. you're studying this.

And so one of the biggest things that annoys me that I wish I did not have to do that I think is the biggest waste of time in my life is sleep. I hate sleeping. I hate just the act of doing it because I feel like I'm wasting time that I could be productive doing something else.

And I brought this up to my wife and other people and they all think I'm absolutely crazy. But I said I believe at some point in my lifetime, mine, not my children, but mine, somebody will create something. that can make it so I don't have to sleep for seven or eight hours a night. And maybe I could trim that down to one hour or none. What do you think about that?

Is that crazy or is that possible? I think it is possible in general, but I would bet almost anything ahead that is not possible in your lifetime. So I hate to disappoint you that way. but I think there's probably nothing inherently about it that would suggest that we couldn't figure out a way to do that. But the reason why I think is so unlikely in your lifetime is that we, most people don't realize how incredibly ignorant we are about our own minds. This is, by the way, one of the chief benefits of AI. AI, among all the other things that's going to be doing for us, is going to be the number one tool that we use to figure out our own minds.

We can't really experiment on our own minds very well. But in the many thousands and thousands of attempts and failed attempts to recreate how we think, we're actually going to figure out how we think because we don't know. don't have even a definition of intelligence that's scientific. We don't really know how our own intelligence and minds work to be able to solve this problem of like how do we reduce or eliminate sleep. And until we do, there's no way that we're going to be able to do that in terms of having someone survive. You can maybe do it for three weeks and then you're dead. But I think it's not an inherently intractable problem. It's just that our stage of ignorance is far deeper than it appears.

But I think we'll make progress on that once we begin to make more and more complex AIs because that will be the instruments that we use to try. You mean, you can think of it as we're doing experiments on it, as we try different ways to do that. And one of the questions will be, by the way, is do AIs need to sleep? And it's not, I would not be surprised if we make artificial sleep for the AIs in the beginning,

that there will be some version of that. Actually, just this week, I put up a little device that may review and cool tools that actually shuts down my internal, you know, router, Wi-Fi system every night at 4 a.m.

it reboots it. Why? Because there's this, this technology stuff just accumulates bit rot or something when it's going. And I would actually like to do it like once a week. I don't think it needs it every day, but once a week it does. And rebooting it seems to clear it. And so it's basically we reintroduced the kind of artificial sleep. It's only for 30 seconds.

But it's being rebooted. And that's sort of kind of what your mind is doing when it sleeps. So that's, anyway, that's what I think AI is going to teach us more than just how to make robots and things. But it's actually going to, the long-term effect will be, it's going to tell us about ourselves. I got you. Hey, two more questions. Because I want to think one more crazy one and another cool quote that something you read that I already wrote that I'd like to read. I was just reading about this and listening to a different podcast where I never thought of this,

but a commercial airliner. So let's say you get on an airplane in New York City and you fly to L.A. I know, you've done this. You're on a middle of a book tour right now. Right now today, we fly at the exact same speed from New York to L.A. than we, as we did 30 years ago. We haven't improved that one, literally not even one mile per hour. And that seems insane to me that we can't get from New York to L.A. quicker now than we did 30 years ago. How, how is that not progressed? Well, the only way that's progressed is that it's gotten cheaper. Well, right, but they kept the speed the same and it's gotten cheaper. And it's kind of a reverse of computers because what's really curious about computers is in terms of real dollars, you're spending

exactly the same amount on your computer as you did 20 years ago. But they just got a lot faster. Yeah. So it's kind of like the inverse. So the airplane's gotten a lot, lot cheaper, but we're not going any faster. And our computers have gotten a lot faster, but they're not even cheaper. So, but I think your point is well put, which is that we haven't seen the same kind of progress in, say, aviation that we have seen in other things. And one of the reasons why I'm so excited by, you know, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos's private space. and now the auto-driven cars is that there is this, you know, renewed interest in trying to apply some of the principles of Silicon Valley to these other industries that have been kind of stuck in, you know, in autopilot, so to speak, for a very long time.

And because technically there are probably many things that we could be doing. You know, there was the Concord, of course, which did do supersonic, but with problems that probably could. could be solved. So, you know, the old saw that, oh, we were promised flying cars, but we only got 140 characters. I think, first of all, I think 140 characters is probably better than flying cars. Agree. And secondly, I think we are going to make flying cars that maybe 140 characters was necessary to make flying cars first. Yeah, the 140 characters, Twitter has been a life-changing thing for me. I love it. All right, Kevin, I have one more quote of yours that I want to read back to you. And I want you to, if you have a minute, I know you have to

get to a book signing here coming up, but I want to read this to you and get your thoughts, and then we'll wrap up. You written this right now today in 2016 is the best time to start up. There has never been a better day in the whole history of the world to invent something. There has never been a better time with more opportunities, more openings, lower barriers, higher benefit risk ratios, better returns greater upside than now. Right now, this minute. This is the moment that folks in the future will look back at and say, oh, to have been alive and well back then.

What a beautiful piece of writing that you put out there. I'd love for you to expand on it. I don't think I can expand on it. I think it said all I could say. But to explain to maybe the context for the listeners of what I'm trying to say is that, you know, if you look back 25 years ago, there was no web. I mean, the web is sort of, for most people, probably the greatest thing we've ever invented. The broadest, you know, Internet web smartphones thing, this thing.

It did not exist at all 25 years ago. And yet, so 25 years ago, if you were thinking about, if you're making all the lists of all the things that were really important, Almost nobody predicted the web. And I know because I went back looking for it. And so this was on nobody's horizon. So in whatever it was, in 1970, let's go back a little further, the greatest thing that running our lives today had not been invented. And I think it's highly probable that even though I'm really, you know,

I think AI is going to change the world, and I think VR is going to be the new platform, et cetera. I'm also pretty certain that the biggest, most impactful technology in, say, 30 years from now, has not been invented today. It's not either of those two that I just mentioned. It's something else. And, you know, we, which means that all the good stuff is in front of us. It means that when they look back, they'll say, you know, you didn't have.

have the internet back then. You know, what we have in the future is it, but you didn't really have very much. You were still in the beginning, you were still at the dawn. And, and the,

and, and if only I could have been alive back when you were there because all these things were just ready for anybody to do, sort of like it was 30 years ago when you could grab any domain name you wanted and you could just take anything that existed in the real world

and you could just put it online. and there was just easy pickings and that's where we are right now there's easy pickings and people will say don't you see you just take something and add artificial intelligence to it and then you've got an instant hit

so I don't know what those things are they're not obvious but it is obvious that they are here right in front of us and that despite all the appearances to the contrary you are not late.

This is the beginning. Everything that's important is ahead of us. And so there's no excuse in the world not to make something now. Go and make it happen. What a great way to end, man. I love this, Kevin. Thank you so much.

Where would you send everybody to learn more about you online? I have a website, kK.org, kK.org, where most of my stuff appears. I've been twittering this new book, The Inevitable. I've been twittering the entire book. I know. And I think Kevin 2. Kelly.

And I have a public email that's been public for almost 30 years, and you can look at it on my website. Thanks again, Kevin, for being here. I really appreciate this is great. I'd love to continue this dialogue as we both progress, man. And I'm so thankful for the work you put out in the world. Sure, and I'm really heartened and glad, and there's nothing that makes an author happier than here that somebody enjoyed their book. So I hope that your readers will also enjoy The Inevitable. Absolutely.

Thanks so much, Kevin. Yep, bye-bye. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over, but we have plenty more to keep you locked in until next time. Head over to Learning Leadershow.com for more information and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world-class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time on The Learning Leader Show.