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Kevin Kelly

Scooter ContraptionYesterday

Originally posted in Street Use

I can't tell what this is for. Might be a portable night market stall (for food?). There's a generator on the tail and a light bulb hanging in the middle. Seems to be in Korea. That's all I know.  (Thanks Dave Gray)

Protect long incubations.Yesterday

Originally posted in New Rules

Because the network economy favors the nimble and quick, anything requiring patience and slowness is handicapped. Yet many projects, companies, and technologies grow best gradually, slowly accumulating complexity and richness. During their gestation period they will not be able to compete with the early birds, and later, because of the law of increasing returns, they may find it difficult to compete as well. Latecomers have to follow Drucker's Rule--they must be ten times better than what they hope to displace. Delayed participation often makes sense when the new offering can increase the ways to participate. A late entry into the digital camera field, for instance, which offered compatibility with cable TV as well as PCs, could make the wait worthwhile.

The Choice of CitiesJuly 2

Originally posted in The Technium

Cities are technological artifacts, the largest technology we make. Their impact is out of proportion to the number of humans living in them. As the chart above shows, the percentage of humans living in cities averaged about one or two percent for most of recorded history. (The chart's Y axis is a logarithmic scale of percentage.) Yet almost everything that we think of when we say "culture" arose within cities. After all, the terms "city" and "civilization" share the same root. But the massive citification, or urbanization, that characterizes the technium today is a very recent development. Like most other charts depicting the technium, not much happens until the last two centuries. Then populations booms, innovation rockets, information explodes, freedoms increase, and cities rule.

Cities may be engines of innovation, but not everyone thinks they are beautiful, particularly the megalopolises of today, with their sprawling rapacious appetites. They seem like machines eating the wilderness, and many wonder if they are eating us as well. Is the recent large-scale relocation to cities a choice or a necessity? Are people pulled by the lure of opportunities, or are they pushed against their will by desp

Futurama Death ClockJuly 1

Originally posted in Kevin Kelly

Matt Groening, creator of the Simpsons and Futurama, once told me that he was inspired by my countdown clock, and wanted to use it in Futurama. In my version I found actuarial tables to calculate my average longevity and devised a countdown clock aimed at my roughly estimated day of death. Since I am not a regular watcher of the show I had never seen what happened to the idea.

A profile of Groening in Wired catches him as he plays with the idea, and you can see how he immediately spots the ridiculous and funny:

Back at Groening's studio, he is talking up an idea he had for another episode inspired by Kevin Kelly's death clock. Kelly recently calculated how much longer he had to live — he estimates around 23 years — and posted his own personal life countdown clock online. "I started thinking, wouldn't it be cool if you had a death wristwatch?" Groening says.
He and Cohen bat around the story potential of the death wristwatch. Surely, by the year 3000, a gadget like that could recalculate the time of your death on the fly, beeping if you are in imminent danger of dying? They start toying with the concept: Wouldn't it be funny if the death wristwatch were running fast? What if the ba

Investigative journalism by amateursJune 30

Originally posted in ct2

Will bloggers ever go to the same lengths that professional journalists do to get a good story? I mean, without a payroll? Newspapers claim it will never happen.

Sometimes it will. The following is a wonderful case where very passionate fans did their own amazing science and investigative research worthy of any national newspaper or world-class magazine.  The story is about whether vegan resturants in LA are truly vegan, but the larger story is how deep and thorough their investigation was. I'd be curious to know where they learned their skills.

Oh, if you are a vegan (or even a vegatarian) you'll want to read this.

Operation Pancake.