Here are some of his quotes and statements I have collected while reading his books and thought that it might be interesting for you too.

Kevin Kelly Quotes

Summarizing the memetics and some other similar ideas:

Humans are the reproductive organs of technology.

On emergence and evolution:

A brain is a society of very small, simple modules that cannot be said to be thinking, that are not smart in themselves. But when you have a network of them together, out of that arises a kind of smartness.

On what technology wants:

Extrapolated, technology wants what life wants:
Increasing efficiency
Increasing opportunity
Increasing emergence
Increasing complexity
Increasing diversity
Increasing specialization
Increasing ubiquity
Increasing freedom
Increasing mutualism
Increasing beauty
Increasing sentience
Increasing structure
Increasing evolvability

On how the technology has helped us to know ourselves more than before:

Technological advances could allow us to see more clearly into our own lives.

We are reaching deep within ourselves to adjust the master knob.

On the emergence of a global brain (or machine):

All these computers, all these handhelds, all these cell phones, all these laptops, all these servers – what we’re getting out of all these connections is we’re getting one machine. … We’re constructing a single, global machine.

A mechanical/evolutionary view of the world:

Clearly, we are self-made. We are the first technology. We are part inventor and part the invented

Future is not so far from now:

The very long tail of the future is already here.

Life is just a complicated technology; technology is just a simplified form of life:

Life is the ultimate technology. Machine technology is a temporary surrogate for life technology. As we improve our machines they will become more organic, more biological, more like life, because life is the best technology for living.

Noting the attention economy:

The only factor becoming scarce in a world of abundance is human attention.

Describing the mission of every system (restatement of survival goal):

Each system is trying to anticipate change in the environment.

A simple definition of singularity:

Singularity is the point at which “all the change in the last million years will be superseded by the change in the next five minutes.”

Evolution as a dynamic – constrained process: 

When you are embodied in a location, in a physical plant, in a set of people, and in a common history, that constrains your evolution and your ability to evolve in certain directions.

One of his few motivational statements:

In the context of your dreams, knowledge will always give you enough reasons not to act. Act regardless and execute exceptionally.

On the distributed intelligence:

And they discovered something very interesting: when it comes to walking, most of the ant’s thinking and decision-making is not in its brain at all. It’s distributed. It’s in its legs.

On evolution and the meaning:

Evolution doesn’t care about what makes sense; it cares about what works

Further quotes and excerpts

Here you can find a list of some other quotes and excerpts from his works:

• Everything is a remix
• Digital socialism
• Immediacy is something people are willing to pay for

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The statement mentioned above is part of the Bloom’s argument in defending his notion of mastery education and his position on the weakness of the classic approaches followed by education professionals. Regardless of the interview’s subject, there’s a very delicate point about his statement.

Bloom regards the above statement so clear and evident that uses it as a basis for proving that the same impotence can happen to other fields as well.

I’m sure that Morozov would enjoy reading Bloom, even though I believe that he hasn’t read him yet.

Morozov escalates Bloom’s war against professionals to a higher level:

Professionals can survive for thousands of years with so many good solutions without being successful in finding the relevant problems.

P.S.: I love the Douglas Adams’ brilliant book The hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy. Especially chapter 28 where the computer (Deep Thought) after a couple of million years of calculation reaches to the answer 42. But when it is asked about the question, confidently says:

I checked it very thoroughly, and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.”

The post Benjamin Bloom and the medicine appeared first on webmindset.

Against Solutionism

I believe that not everything that could be fixed should be fixed – even if the latest technologies make the fixes easier, cheaper and harder to resist.

Evgeny Morozov – To Save Everything Click Here

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It’s rather the result of limitation in understanding physics.

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Longform’s last week suggestion was an article from Scientific American. The article is an excerpt from Michael Tennesen’s last book called: The Next Species.

Sure the book is centered around sustainability and evolution. But it was appealing to me because of the title and style of writing.

Whoever knows Vegas, is familiar with its famous slogan: What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. The title of the article is a creative variation of the original slogan: What will happen in Vegas, Won’t stay in Vegas. It tempts you to take a look at the body of the article.

But what I fell in love with, was Tennesen’s magical style in painting a picture of Vegas after the drought:

Sure the Mother Nature would have a smile on her face reading this artwork of words. This famous city once rebelled against her and grown in the heart of the desert, now called a sin city taking a final bow.

But may she also laugh aloud, as we have called her the card holder and not the table owner!

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