The Inevitable Quotes

“A shoe, too, is no longer a finished product, but an endless process of reimagining our extended feet, perhaps with disposable covers, sandals that morph as you walk, treads that shift, or floors that act as shoes. “Shoeing” becomes a service and not a noun. In the intangible digital realm, nothing is static or fixed. Everything is becoming.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“Our attention is the only valuable resource we personally produce without training.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“El problema de las continuas transformaciones es que el cambio incesante puede cegarnos a sus cambios progresivos. Al estar en constante movimiento ya no notamos otro movimiento. La transformación es, de este modo, una acción de auto-ocultamiento que solo suele verse echando la vista atrás”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“We need a bit of top-down as well. Every predominantly bottom-up organization that lasts for more than a few years does so because it becomes a hybrid of bottom up plus some top down. I came to that conclusion through personal experience. I was a co–founding editor of Wired magazine. Editors perform a top-down function—we select, prune, solicit, shape, and guide the results of writers.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“In the coming years, our relationships with robots will become ever more complex. But already a recurring pattern is emerging. No matter what your current job or your salary, you will progress through a predictable cycle of denial again and again. Here are the Seven Stages of Robot Replacement: 1. A robot/computer cannot possibly do the tasks I do. 2. [Later.] OK, it can do a lot of those tasks, but it can’t do everything I do. 3. [Later.] OK, it can do everything I do, except it needs me when it breaks down, which is often. 4. [Later.] OK, it operates flawlessly on routine stuff, but I need to train it for new tasks. 5. [Later.] OK, OK, it can have my old boring job, because it’s obvious that was not a job that humans were meant to do. 6. [Later.] Wow, now that robots are doing my old job, my new job is much more interesting and pays more! 7. [Later.] I am so glad a robot/computer cannot possibly do what I do now. [Repeat.] This is not a race against the machines. If we race against them, we lose. This is a race with the machines. You’ll be paid in the future based on how well you work with robots. Ninety percent of your coworkers will be unseen machines. Most of what you do will not be possible without them. And there will be a blurry line between what you do and what they do. You might no longer think of it as a job, at least at first, because anything that resembles drudgery will be handed over to robots by the accountants. We need to let robots take over. Many of the jobs that politicians are fighting to keep away from robots are jobs that no one wakes up in the morning really wanting to do. Robots will do jobs we have been doing, and do them much better than we can. They will do jobs we can’t do at all. They will do jobs we never imagined even needed to be done. And they will help us discover new jobs for ourselves, new tasks that expand who we are. They will let us focus on becoming more human than we were. It is inevitable. Let the robots take our jobs, and let them help us dream up new work that matters.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“When robots and automation do our most basic work, making it relatively easy for us to be fed, clothed, and sheltered, then we are free to ask, “What are humans for?” Industrialization did more than just extend the average human lifespan. It led a greater percentage of the population to decide that humans were meant to be ballerinas, full-time musicians, mathematicians, athletes, fashion designers, yoga masters, fan-fiction authors, and folks with one-of-a-kind titles on their business cards. With the help of our machines, we could take up these roles—but, of course, over time the machines will do these as well. We’ll then be empowered to dream up yet more answers to the question “What should we do?” It will be many generations before a robot can answer that.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“As AIs develop, we might have to engineer ways to prevent consciousness in them. Our most premium AI services will likely be advertised as consciousness-free.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“What we want instead of conscious intelligence is artificial smartness.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“Protopia is a state of becoming, rather than a destination. It is a process. In the protopian mode, things are better today than they were yesterday, although only a little better. It is incremental improvement or mild progress.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“neither dystopia nor utopia is our destination. Rather, technology is taking us to protopia. More accurately, we have already arrived in protopia.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“W świecie działającym z szybkością Internetu ciągnąca się przez wiek prawna blokada jest poważnym uszczerbkiem dla innowacji i kreatywności. To przeżytek z poprzedniej epoki budowlanej w oparciu o atomy.
Cała globalna gospodarka wycofuje się z tego co materialne i zmierza w stronę niematerialnych bitów. Odchodzi od posiadania na rzecz zapewniania dostępu.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“Jeśli będę wyszukiwał własne e-maile (przechowywane w chmurze), żeby znaleźć, co powiedziałem (co często robię), czyli polegał na chmurze w kwestii mojej pamięci, pojawia się pytanie, gdzie kończy się moje "ja", a gdzie zaczyna chmura.
...
Jeśli McLuhan ma rację, że narzędzia są przedłużeniem nas samych - koło to przedłużenie nogi, aparat to przedłużenie oka - to chmura jest przedłużeniem duszy. Albo ujmując to inaczej, przedłużeniem nas samych. W pewnym sensie nie jest to przedłużenie nas samych, które posiadamy, tylko takie, do którego mamy dostęp.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“Po co mielibyśmy posiadać, skoro taką samą użyteczność w czasie rzeczywistym zyskujemy dzięki wynajmowi, leasingowi, licencjonowaniu i dzieleniu się.
Tak czy siak, nasze życie przyspiesza, a jedyną adekwatną prędkością jest natychmiastowość. Tempem przyszłości będzie szybkość poruszania się elektronów.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“Z czasem, kiedy wszystkie książki staną się w pełni cyfrowe, każda z nich zgromadzi to, co dzisiaj jest odpowiednikiem podkreślonych na niebiesko fragmentów, bo każde literackie odniesienie będzie zsieciowane wewnątrz tej książki na zewnątrz do wszystkich innych książek. Każda strona w książce będzie odkrywać inne strony i inne książki. Książki wysuną się spomiędzy okładek i splotą się razem w jedną wielką metaksiążkę - uniwersalną bibliotekę.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“A single thread of self generation ties the cosmos, the bios, and the technos together into one creation. Humans are not the culmination of this trajectory but an intermediary, smack in the middle between the born and the made... The arc of complexity and open-ended creation in the last four billion years is nothing compared to what lies ahead.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“Many of the jobs that politicians are fighting to keep away from robots are jobs that no one wakes up in the morning really wanting to do. Robots will do jobs we have been doing, and do them much better than we can. They will do jobs we can’t do at all. They will do jobs we never imagined even needed to be done. And they will help us discover new jobs for ourselves, new tasks that expand who we are. They will let us focus on becoming more human than we were.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“the total amount of material we use per GDP dollar is going down, which means we use less material for greater value. The ratio of mass needed to generate a unit of GDP has been falling for 150 years, declining even faster in the last two decades. In 1870 it took 4 kilograms of stuff to generate one unit of the U.S.’s GDP. In 1930 it took only one kilogram. Recently the value of GDP per kilogram of inputs rose from $1.64 in 1977 to $3.58 in 2000—a doubling of dematerialization in 23 years.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“Propaganda is less effective in a world of screens, because while misinformation travels as fast as electrons, corrections do too.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“All these inventions (and more) permit any literate person to cut and paste ideas, annotate them with her own thoughts, link them to related ideas, search through vast libraries of work, browse subjects quickly, resequence texts, refind material, remix ideas, quote experts, and sample bits of beloved artists. These tools, more than just reading, are the foundations of literacy.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“The last 30 years has created a marvelous starting point, a solid platform to build truly great things. But what’s coming will be different, beyond, and other. The things we will make will be constantly, relentlessly becoming something else. And the coolest stuff of all has not been invented yet. Today truly is a wide-open frontier. We are all becoming. It is the best time ever in human history to begin. You are not late.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“The Sensory Substitution Vest takes audio from tiny microphones in the vest and translates those sound waves into a grid of vibrations that can be felt by a deaf person wearing it. Over a matter of months, the deaf person’s brain reconfigures itself to “hear” the vest vibrations as sound, so by wearing this interacting cloth, the deaf can hear.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“The visitor waiting for the demo stands in the center of an actual real nondescript waiting room. A pair of large dark goggles rest on a stool. The visitor dons the goggles and is immediately immersed into a virtual version of the same room she was standing in, with the same nondescript paneling and chairs. Not much is changed from her point of view. She can look around. The scene looks a little coarser through the goggles. But slowly the floor of the room begins to drop away, leaving the visitor standing on a plank that now floats over the receding floor 30 meters below. She is asked to walk out farther on the plank suspended high over a most realistic pit. The realism of the scene has been improved over the years so that by now the response of the visitor is very predictable. Either she cannot move her feet or she trembles as she inches forward, palms sweating.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“Way back in 1971 Herbert Simon, a Nobel Prize–winning social scientist, observed, “In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” Simon’s insight is often reduced to “In a world of abundance, the only scarcity is human attention.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“This bottom-up overturning was also not in anyone’s 20-year vision. No web phenomenon has been more confounding”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“We don’t need to be blind to this continuous process. The rate of change in recent times has been unprecedented, which caught us off guard. But now we know: We are, and will remain, perpetual newbies. We need to believe in improbable things more often. Everything is in flux, and the new forms will be an uncomfortable remix of the old. With effort and imagination we can learn to discern what’s ahead more clearly, without blinders.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“I feel a deep connection to the primeval. I feel like an ancient hunter-gatherer who owns nothing as he wends his way through the complexities of nature, conjuring up a tool just in time for its use and then leaving it behind as he moves on. It is the farmer who needs a barn for his accumulation. The digital native is free to race ahead and explore the unknown. Accessing rather than owning keeps me agile and fresh, ready for whatever is next.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“The fears that technology makes us more uniform, more commoditized are incorrect. The more we are personalized, the easier it is for the filters because we become distinct, an actualized distinction they can reckon with.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“(The pseudo- and parasciences are nothing less, in fact, than small pools of knowledge that are not connected to the large network of science. They are valid only in their own network.)”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“Banning the inevitable usually backfires. Prohibition is at best temporary, and in the long run counterproductive.”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

“their social influence (how many people followed them and what their influence was) in order to optimize attention and influence per dollar. Done at the scale”
― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future