Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists

Kevin Kelly

Articles

Articles on the web

What AI-Generated Art Really Means for Human Creativity
Wired, November 17, 2022

Kevin Kelly: The Case for Optimism
Warp News, August 2, 2021

Books Read By, April 1, 2020

Tim Ferriss asked me to rave about my favorite books. I chose four that changed my mind. I recorded it as a Ferriss podcast episode. The good stuff starts at 4:30:
Books I’ve Loved — Kevin Kelly (#432)
The Tim Ferriss Show, May 13, 2020

AR Will Spark The Next Big Tech Platform—Call it Mirrorworld (Chinese translation)
Wired, March 2019

The Life of a Backpacker in Asia in the 1970s
Perceptive Travel, December 2018

How the Internet Gave All of Us Superpowers
Wired, September 18, 2018

What Mongolian nomads teach us about the digital future
Wired, October 21, 2017

The Myth of a Superhuman AI, (Archived PDF)
Backchanel.com, April 25, 2017

With AI, Answers Are Cheap, But Questions Are The Future, (Archived PDF)
GE Reports, March 6, 2017

The Untold Story of Magic Leap, the World’s Most Secretive Startup, (Archived PDF)
Wired, May 2016

The Three Breakthroughs That Have Finally Unleashed AI on the World, (Archived PDF)
Wired, Business, October 27, 2014

What Bit Wants, (Archived PDF)
Medium, The Message, August 4, 2014

You Are Not Late, (Archived PDF)
Medium, The Message, July 26, 2014

Why You Should Embrace Surveillance, Not Fight It, (Archived PDF)
Wired, March 10, 2014

Dreams, (Archived PDF)
Wired, vol. 21, no. 5, May 2013

Better Than Human, (Archived PDF)
Wired, vol. 21, no.1, December 24, 2012

We Are Stardust
Response to the 2012 Edge Question: What is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, or Beautiful Explanation?, (Archived PDF)
Edge, January 2012

The Virtues of Negative Results
Response to the 2011 Edge Question: What Scientific Concept Would Improve Everybody’s Cognitive Toolkit?, (Archived PDF)
Edge, January 2011

Evolving the Scientific Method, (Archived PDF)
The Scientist, vol. 24, no. 12, December 2010

How Money Follows Attention–Eventually, (Archived PDF)
Technology Review, October 28, 2010

Achieving Techno-Literacy, (Archived PDF)
New York Times Magazine, September 16, 2010

Reading in a Whole New Way, (Archived PDF)
Smithsonian, August 2010

Window on the World,
13 of the Brightest Tech Minds Sound Off on the Rise of the Tablet (Archived PDF)
Wired, vol. 18, no. 4, March 22, 2010

An Intermedia With 2 Billion Screens Peering Into It
Response to the 2010 Edge Question: How Has The Internet Changed The Way You Think?, (Archived PDF)
Edge, January 2010

The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online, (Archived PDF)
Wired, vol. 17, no. 6, May 22, 2009

A New Kind of Mind
Response to the 2009 Edge Question: What Will Change Everything?, (Archived PDF)
Edge, January 2009

The Next One Thousand Years Of Christianity
Q monograph, 2008

Becoming Screen Literate , (Archived PDF)
New York Times Magazine, November 21, 2008

Infoporn: Tap Into the 12-Million-Teraflop Handheld Megacomputer, (Archived PDF)
Wired, vol. 16, no. 7, June 23, 2008

What I Changed My Mind About
Response to the 2008 Edge Question: What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?, (Archived PDF)
Edge, 232, January 4, 2008

The Technium and the 7th Kingdom of Life, (Archived PDF)
Edge, 217, July 19, 2007

Why Do We Still Have Big Questions In “What We Don’t Know”, (Archived PDF)
Wired, vol. 15, no. 2, February 2007

That We Will Embrace the Reality of Progress
Response to the 2007 Edge Question: What Are You Optimistic About?, (Archived PDF)
Edge, 200, January 8, 2007

More Anonymity Is [Not] Good
From The 2006 Edge Question: What Is Your Dangerous Idea?, (Archived PDF)
Edge, 196, November 10, 2006

Scan This Book!
(What will happen to books? Reader, take heart! Publisher, be very, very afraid. Internet search engines will set them free. A manifesto.), (Archived PDF)
New York Times Magazine, May 14, 2006

What Technology Wants
Appeared in the 75 Anniversary Issue of The Hollywood Reporter on “The Future of Entertainment.” Fall 2005.

Unto us the Machine is born, (Archived PDF)
Partial excerpt of “We Are the Web”, (pertaining to a global brain) in the Sydney Morning Herald, November 15, 2005

We Are the Web, (Archived PDF)
Wired, vol. 13, no. 8, August 2005

Audio file – low res (mp3, 20.5mb)
Audio file – high res (mp3, 41.1mb)

Artifact Networks
Appeared in Cool Tools, 2003, by Kevin Kelly

God Is the Machine, (Archived PDF)
Wired, vol. 10, no. 12, December 2002

Making My Own Music
(An op-ed piece on the copyright extension law), (Archived PDF)
Appeared in The New York Times, Saturday, October 12, 2002, Op-Ed

A Brief History of Betting on the Future, (Archived PDF)
Wired, vol. 10, no. 5, May 2002

Where Music Will Be Coming From, (Archived PDF)
Appeared in New York Times Magazine, March 17, 2002

The Web Runs on Love, Not Greed, (Archived PDF)
Appeared in The Wall Street Journal, January 3, 2002

Lessons for The All Species Project from the Human Genome Project [via Internet Archive], (Archived PDF)
October 2001

Will We Still Turn Pages?
Time, vol. 155, no. 25, 2000, p. 90

Will Spiritual Robots Replace Humanity by 2100?, (Archived Transcript)
Seminar, April 2000, Stanford University

All Species Inventory, (Archived PDF)
Whole Earth, no. 102, pp. 4, 2000

Really Useful Websites, (Archived PDF)
Whole Earth, Winter 2000

True Films, (Archived PDF)
Whole Earth, Winter 2000, p.58

Tools Are the Revolution, (Archived PDF)
Whole Earth, 2000, no. 103, p. 4

The Rosetta Disk
Whole Earth, Winter, 2000, no. 103, pp. 10

Nerd Theology, (Archived PDF)
Technology in Society, 21, 1999, pp. 387-392

The Art of Burning Man
Whole Earth, no. 99, Winter 1999, p. 28

Pro-Choice: The Promise of Technology, (Archived PDF)
Organization & environment, vol. 12, no. 4, 1999, p. 428

Roaring Zeros, (Archived PDF)
Wired, vol. 7, no. 9, September, 1999

The Computational Metaphor, (Archived PDF)
Whole Earth, Winter, 1998, p. 5

One Huge Computer, with S. Reiss, (Archived PDF)
Wired, vol. 6, no. 8, August 1998, p. 128

The Third Culture, (Archived PDF)
Science, vol. 279, no. 5353, February 13, 1998, pp. 992-993

PUSH!, with Gary Wolf, (Archived PDF)
Wired, vol. 5, no. 3, March 1997

Bonfire of the Techies, (Archived PDF), (Magazine scan)
Appeared in Time Magazine, August 25, 1997

New Rules for the New Economy, (Archived PDF)
Wired, vol. 5, no. 9, September 1997

What are We Doing Online?: a debate on the social consequences of online communications; including excerpts from online chat sessions about Internet addiction, with John Perry Barlow, Sven Birkerts, Mark Slouka, (Archived PDF)
Harper’s Magazine, vol. 291, no. 1743, August 1995, pp. 35-47

The Electronic Hive: Two Views, with Sven Birkerts, (Archived PDF)
Harper’s Magazine, vol. 288, no. 1728, May 1994, pp. 17-24

The Electric Paperless Prototype, (Archived PDF)
Wired, vol. 2, no. 6, June 1994, p. 44, June

Cracking Wall Street, (Archived PDF)
Wired, vol. 2, no. 7, July 1994, p. 92

Two Dollars Per Hour, (Archived PDF)
Wired, vol. 2, no. 10, October 1994

The Dragon Ate My Homework, with Howard Rheingold, (Archived PDF)
Wired, vol.1, no. 3, 1993, p. 68

Unthinkable Futures, with Brian Eno, (Archived PDF)
Whole Earth Review, no. 79, Summer 1993, pp. 4-9

Apocalypse Juggernaut, Goodbye, (Archived PDF)
Whole Earth Review, vol. 65, no. 46, 1990, p. 38

Perpetual Novelty: Selected Notes from the Second Artificial Life Conference, (Archived PDF)
Whole Earth Review, no. 67, Summer 1990, pp. 20-30

Selling the World: Mouseketeers to Marketeers, (Archived PDF)
Whole Earth Review, vol. 65, no. 46, 1990, p. 36

Sticking Your Head In Cyberspace, (Archived PDF)
Whole Earth Review , no. 63, Summer 1989, pp. 84-88

Toward Artificial Life, with Chris Langton, (Archived PDF)
Whole Earth Review , no. 58, Spring 1988, pp. 74-80

Information Takeover, (Archived PDF)
Whole Earth Review: Signal, no. 57, Winter 1987, p. 2

The Bulletin Board Proletariat, (Archived PDF)
Whole Earth Review: Signal, no. 57, Winter 1987, p. 77

How To Ride A Bicycle Across A Continent, (Archived PDF)
Whole Earth Review, Spring 1987, pp. 128-137

The Consequences Of Treating A Fetus As A Human Being, (Archived PDF)
Whole Earth Review, Summer 1986, pp. 64-71

Digital Retouching; The End of Photography as Evidence of Anything, with Stewart Brand and Jay Kinney, (Archived PDF)
Whole Earth Review, July 1985, pp. 42-50

The Birth of a Network Nation, (Archived PDF)
New Age Journal, October 1984, p. 42

Information as a Communicable Disease, (Archived PDF)
CoEvolution Quarterly, Summer, 1984, pp. 98-103

Low-Rent Himalayas, (Archived PDF)
CoEvolution Quarterly, Fall 1981, pp. 109-115

Articles available in print

L’Anima delle Invenzioni (Italian, PDF)
la Repubblica, February 24, 2011

The Biology Of Business
Executive Excellence, Provo, Feb 2000

Stripping off the silicon
Management Today, 08/01/1999

MIND & MATTER The dissolving line between genes and machines
The Globe and Mail, 06/24/1995

The future is organic
The Guardian, 06/18/1995

Using The Gene In The Machine
The Age, 05/23/1995

Envisioning the Impossible
Wired, 1995, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 94

Cypherpunks, e-Money and the Technologies of Disconnection
Whole Earth Review, Summer 1993, no. 79, pp. 40(20)

See also