Every single sentence that you produce
should not have existed anywhere else in the universe before. I find
that to be a very inspiring idea. It's about structure. You want the structure
to be so graceful that you don't notice it.
That's what we're doing when we're writing. We're polishing our ideas and then giving.
And that's why so many opportunities come to writers.
Amaze me. That's my first principle to the writers. Tell me something that I have no idea
about in a way that I'm gonna find surprising. I love this. This is very embodied feeling about
what good writing is. Blow me away, fire me up. We were talking last night about the
whole earth catalog and how in every edition you would try to piss off like
one fifth of the people. Talk about that. So, the idea is I was editing a magazine that was
about what I call um, unorthodox Conceptual news, a lot about ideas and um, I felt that we
were making our mark when one fifth of the people were kind of provoked by that to maybe
write in or say something, but I wanted to be sure that it was a different And Yeah.
One fifth each issue. Yeah. And I'd kind of like rotate, not meaning that there was five of
them, but that I would just, so that they weren't the same overlapping group of people. And um,
and so, so, so, so if there was some, I wouldn't say outrage, but if there was some disturbance.
That would mean that we kind of had reached it. And if it wasn't until we were hearing nothing and
nobody was a little bit kind of, um, as I said, disturbed by it, then it was like, hmm, we didn't
really quite go far enough. 'cause we wanted to kind of, um, advance the, the concepts, advance
the conversation. And to do that, you have to, you have, you have to, there has to be
a little bit uncomfort in doing that. How do you validate that? I, I found for me,
the retreat to honesty, Is the thing. Like if, if you really have uncommon honesty about
it, that you're able to, to do that. And, um, so the, one of the things I do when
I'm writing is in that secondary past, not the Genesis past where you don't want to
have your editor going, but the secondary past where you begin to evaluate.
I, is I question almost every single sentence and with two questions.
One is, um, do I really believe this? Um, and two, am I just sort of, is this a
phrase that would have occurred somewhere else? Like, ideally, every single sentence that you
produce... Should not have existed anywhere else in the universe before I think I think that
sentence I just said was probably like that Maybe I don't know but that's what would be my hope
that has really literally never been said before And so to do that one is it's like
do I really believe that am I just kind of parroting it and then to secondly?
Am I saying it in a way? That has not been said before. And then when you're doing that
with that kind of honesty, you're likely to, to hit a bone. You're likely to hit something.
You're more likely to hit it than if you were just parroting something that has been said before.
What does that honesty feel like? It feels great because you're being authentic,
but you're saying something that you, it's, it's a release. It's a, uh, it's a relief. It's,
um, It feels good and you can, at that moment, say, uh, that's me, that's, I am, I'm revealing
myself, I'm saying something, I'm contributing. So, so in all ways, it feels very good.
And that may be some mark about whether or not, um, it is honest. We're
talking about your career and you said, I wish I did
more. That was in response to, um, your comment that, that there were some things I
had said or written that had been picked up by, um, by the culture. And that's what I wished I had
done more of, being able to succeed in that sense. Not that I had written more words. I've written
plenty of words. I don't, I don't want to write more words. I just want to write more words that
have, that land, that have some impact. And so, how do you do that? How do you write the words?
Well, what I know and what I have seen, the only way to do that is to write a lot of words.
There's, there's, I mean, if we could get to the point where we only produce
great stuff, yes, of course, that's, that's the magic bullet. But the
only recipe that I have ever seen for writing great stuff has been to
write a lot of stuff. So how much of this is? Yes. I need to write more and
how much of this is I need to publish more. Here's the retreat to honesty.
Yeah. I don't like writing. I'm not a natural writer. I write reluctantly.
I'm a reluctant writer. I'm a born editor. I love editing. That first draft is just a killer for me.
Abysmal. Just, I just, I'm unhappy, I'm grumpy. Um, I procrastinate, I don't like to do it. And I
realized that when I'm doing it, I'm not a writer. Because here's the thing is, I
met Wired and at Whole Earth, I worked with writers and I
worked with some great writers who love to write, who have to write every day
or they're feeling uncomfortable, um, who write. In a, you know, um, in the way that I edit,
they, they, they like doing it and, um, I'm not one of those people and I don't write fast.
I'm a very slow writer. I don't even type fast. And so, um, it's just, uh, an ordeal for
me to, to write. I love having written. That is really great. Way better than writing. Way
better than writing. And so, um, but once I get something down, then I can begin to kind of work
and then it's sort of, oh, now I can get into it. And so, I wish I would succeed more often.
And it's not a matter of writing more, I don't think. I think that I might have more
success or my writing might have more success when it veers to the practical and helpful.
The metaphor that was coming to mind for me as you were talking about editing was pottery.
Yes. Pottery wheel. So, you have something there but you're shaping it. Through contraction
and expansion. Where does the editing happen? Are you a computer editor, iPad?
I'm migrating almost everything to, to the computer. Um, but I do at one stage, we'll
print things out and with a red pen, you know, but that's kind of pretty later on and just.
Um, just to go through, um, because there's something about, um, seeing it in a different form
and that's helpful. Uh, the editing, the editing process, I just kind of go back and forth the
entire way. It's not like I just write and then I edit. It's write, edit. I usually like to re read
and edit the stuff the next day that I've written the day before, kind of go through it.
So, um, so it's a back and forth dance the whole way.
Talk to me about Marshall McLuhan, the patron saint of Wired.
The thing about Marshall McLuhan, which I think he would approve of, is that I've
never read him, I've only heard what he said, which is his whole point. I tried reading
him, I was like, man, I'm just bouncing off. It hurts your head. Yeah, it's like, whoa.
I'd heard bits of McLuhan and his thesis, which is that, um, the medium that
you're writing has more influence on your thoughts than the actual content of
what's inside, which is a brilliant idea. And, um, but Louis Rossetto, who is, you
know, the principal co founder of WIRED, um, was a big fan of McLuhan.
And he said, when we're doing our masthead, this old fashioned idea of the masthead
in a magazine, which is the credits, the, you know, the assignment, the roles, um, he said,
I wanted to, I wanted to have a Marshall McLuhan on the masthead, which we call him. And I like
instantly, I just said, he's our patron saint. And this was a joke in some ways, because if you
know anything about McLuhan, he was very Catholic. And so I thought, okay, he's going to be our
patron saint. And um, so he was, and that was sort of the, the homage to, um, the guy whom I
had not really read very much, but, um, it was kind of a very wired thing to do at the time.
Yeah. Well, it's funny that you say it was a joke because when you talk about a lot of your
writing and your best ideas, you're like, Hey, they are jokes. That's where they, that's where
they're born from. It's in a state of goofiness and play. Those are the ideas that you should
trust. And that was the fun part about Wired was that, um, we were making a magazine
that we wanted to read that did not exist. And so the audience for this magazine was, was,
was us making magazine that we wanted to read ourselves. So we're going to have these writers
make the magazine that we want to read. And so, um, we had total control and it was total
fun in terms of doing whatever we wanted to do. And there was no, at that time,
nobody else to, um, to ask permission for. And so, um, so they're having, having
fun. Um, was definitely part of the, part of the mix. And by the way, that
was my instructions to the writers. Most particularly in the tech world, most, um, writers,
newspaper writers were kind of, um, trained to, um, target their writing to like the 11th
grader or something like that kind of low bar. And I told the writers, look, okay, here's,
here's who you're writing to. You're writing to me and I am bored by most of what I read. You have to
amaze me. Come amaze me. Tell me something that I have no idea about in a way that I, that you're
going to, I'm going to find surprising. And if you mentioned DNA, you do not have to explain it.
Yes. I know DNA. Yes. Okay, you know, I know whatever it is, I'm reading everything,
so you really have to amaze me. I love this. This is very embodied feeling
about what good writing is. You have to amaze me. Yeah, amaze me. Blow me away. Fire
me up. That's, that's, that was our thing. Amaze me. That's my first principle to the
writers. Is that something that you think
about for yourself? So I would try to write up whatever I could rather than to write down. And
when I'm writing articles for Wired and stuff, I generally try to write up and by that, I
mean, um, not having to explain everything, but explaining enough, figuring, you know, my
friend, how much do you understand about chat GBT? Well, Right. You probably know some of it,
I don't have to introduce everything but there's some things and so, that kind of like, I'm
gonna be aiming there but it's gonna be slightly up rather than having to explain everything.
One of the things that I was reflecting on your career that I just admire so much is you've just
been so connected to an internal joy and radiance and you haven't let yourself deviate from that.
Right, right, right. So, So, there's a bit of
advice in the book that we might talk about. We're gonna talk about it. Which is
that, um, the thing that made you weird as a kid might make you great as an adult if
you don't lose it. So, so, yes. So, I have, um, really, really tried through my career not to
have a career or not to think of it as a career. To really, like, I'm. Unfortunately, my wife
complains, I'm not going to retire because there's never been any difference between what
I do for play and what I would do in my time off and what I do when I'm working. I mean,
they're identical. They're the same thing. There's, I mean, there's nothing. Like one
of the things I do is, um, I'll continue to write for Wired about one article a year.
And what it is, is when I, when I have something that I don't know what I think about and
I don't know about it, I get an assignment and the assignment is me. Basically, being paid to figure
out what I think about something, to give me, and that's the principle reason why I write.
It's really not to communicate to other people. I write to find out what I think about it
because I'm not the kind of person who has an idea and then I'm going to sit down and
write it out. It's the opposite. I don't know what it is and I attempt to write what I
know and I write one sentence. And I realized, oh my gosh, I have no idea what I'm saying.
This just doesn't make any sense. This reminds me, have you ever seen the series of sketches
from Picasso where he starts with a fairly complicated bowl, gets a little bit more
complicated and then eventually at the end he's left with the essence of the bowl?
I think that what's so illuminating about that is he can't get to the essence of the bowl
unless he goes through all the different stages. And so, so I sit down and then I said, I need to
go back and do some more interviews and whatever it is. And then I can, now I understand it.
Okay. And then I, then I write the next sentence, it's like, well, I, I really don't know what
this, this, this doesn't make any sense to me. And I go back and forth. And so this is, this is
this very painful process of me trying to write. And as I'm writing it. That's when I have the
idea, I get the idea literally in the act of writing. That act of writing it down, trying to
put it out, makes and gives me the idea. So it's like I didn't have the idea before, it's like I'm
like being channeled, I'm sort of like in some ways opening up, the writing is opening up this
space or process to allow the idea to be formed. In, uh, hands by, and so if I don't
write it, I won't have that idea. How much do you feel like you're, you're
writing or like the writing is almost coming out of you and you're not even in control?
It, it, it's, yeah, both. Both. Yeah, there, there, there is a sense in which, where
did that come from? Because I didn't have that a minute before I started to write.
It's like I'm writing, it's like sometimes people have it while they're
talking. You say something, it's like, huh, that was a good thing. I mean, saying it
generated it. And so, that's, so I write to think. So help me square these two
things. On one hand. You write when it's time to write, you're the reluctant writer.
On the other hand, a lot of ideas emerge while you write. Right. So, what creates the impetus and the
momentum and the, the big bang of the Kevin Kelly writing sphere? How does that begin? So, like,
okay, so, so something interesting comes along and, and, and I think I have a A good
nose for the editorial nose for what's new, but potentially important.
And so I'm looking at this and I'm saying there's something important going
on and there's, we can talk about what those signs might be. But often there's new language or
it's causing other people to freak out or whatever it is. And so I'm saying, I'm paying attention
to that and saying, that's really interesting. I don't know. I don't know much about
it. I don't know what to think about it. Um, but I feel that this is going to be
really important. So I, I, I should, I, and, and so there's something about it that appeals
to me. So this is going to be an assignment and I, I'm going to figure this out, figure
out what I think about it, figure it out. If I have a take on it, figure it out. And. Then
I'll make that into a project, whether it's an article or whatever it is, or just a blog post.
It's just, I'm going to attend to this. And then that begins that process of I write something,
it's like, I don't know, that doesn't make any sense. I don't believe that or whatever.
Okay, we're going around, um, talk to more people have, have been saying, Oh, there's,
there's something interesting. I just said, or I just wrote, I need to kind of, so there's
this investigation, the stance of a conversation with myself in some
ways. I like the idea of a nose. And you have had an amazing
sense of like intellectual smell for a long time. Stay hungry, stay foolish, isn't that, doesn't
that come from the whole earth catalog? So, you begin there and you've always had this
nose. And I think that something you've been very good at is injecting yourself into what
you call senuses. And I find that to be a very inspiring idea. So, how has your nose interacted
with the environments that you've curated for yourself?
It's funny because no one's really asked about that, but I think
that's really crucial. Um, I think I picked up this or I was attracted to Stuart Brand because
he's actually the OG of this. He is, his life is the Forrest Gump of our world because he has been
at the edge and the frontier and the forefront of almost most of the cultural movements.
And um, You know, like in 1972, he wrote an article for Rolling Stone about
computer hackers, 72, it's like he, there was, he was, and it was, there was some machines in
the, excuse me, basement of Stanford and there were these long hair guys playing Star Wars. It's
like he saw it. He saw the. And then he kind of just decided to hang out at that, um, frontier.
So I wrote a book called Out of Control that was published in 94. It was written late 80s
and early 90s. And I had a whole chapter on digital encrypted money, because I found those
guys really interesting talking about crypto, basically. But there wasn't blockchain.
There was other forms of encryption. And that was so much of a, um, Of a scene that
when we started Wired, I assigned, um, Steven Levy to kind of follow up and, and he eventually wrote
a whole book about that. So, um, so I like, um, you know, finding, identifying, looking for scene
uses and we'll explain what that is. And then, um, trying to hang around and seeing if.
There's something I don't understand that I want to write about in order to understand it myself.
Talk about what a senior says. So a senior is a term that Brian Eno coined. It was his observation
that a lot of the great artists of the world, that their genius kind of flowered primarily.
Um, when they were in a group of others who were egging each other on, they were urging,
they were slightly competing, they were trying to outdo and show off to each other.
They were, they were, the audience of their art was in some ways each other, their peers.
That structure produced really, really great. Um, works and that even people who were not,
or by themselves would not have been as great were amplified by being part of a, uh, of a
group. And he called that group a seniors. There was kind of like, it's like a
collective genius, the genius of a scene. And part of what you want to do is, um,
ideally you'd like to create these. And, and so I, I took Brian's idea and I
was kind of applying it broader to say, um, While there are scenicists beyond to say,
you know, the Paris in the 20s or whatever, um, and, and what would they be and maybe what
are some of the commonalities between them? And so I looked at things like the, um, Xerox park or the skunk works at Lockheed or camp
34 in Yosemite where all the climbing The outdoor climbing world and outdoor gear was
invented. There was a, there was a group of, um, undesirables who are hanging out, climbing all day
and inventing the world of, um, adventure sports. And so, um, I kind of made a stab at it, but it's
something going back to what we should do more of that I probably should have followed through.
Really done more work in writing on that could have been very helpful to people like, well,
how do I either find his seniors or make one? And some of the qualities that seniors share
are this sort of, there's a inside and outside, but it's a very permeable, it's much more
permeable than say, having a corporation. Where you have to, you're literally an employee
or not, it's kind of more binary. So they have a more, they do have an inside, but it's a porous
membrane in and out. And that's one of the differences between the seniors and say a company.
Yeah. It's something we think a lot about with rite of passage. How do we curate writers
in a way that they can come together? And one of the things I'm getting
from what you're saying right now is the right blend of supportiveness and
competition. I think we're a lot of the seniors that's happening right now is YouTube.
These little YouTube groups where someone has something they've discovered how to
modify, you know, a Harbor Freight, cheap Harbor Freight into something really cool.
And then someone else sees that, that's a great idea. My friend did that. I'm going to modify
it a little bit more and I'll make my video and goes back out. And then two days later,
someone else's, and so you see this. I mean, the really good YouTubers are watching all
the other YouTubers in their little seniors. And so, but it's kind of invisible and I can talk
forever about YouTube because I think it's way, way under appreciated in terms of the
amplification and accelerant it's having on our culture. If you walk into a
bookstore, you can kind of see, oh, there are all the books and here's the range of
books and you can see there's lots of things over in the self help astrology, whatever it is.
You get a map of it. There's no map for YouTube. There's no sense of how deep and how
vast what's going on. What's going on? There's no outside or easy look at it, it's not like
a magazine stand where you can kind of see, oh my gosh, there's lots of gun magazines. And
so, um, So, so we don't really appreciate it. But, but like, it's, it's like brain surgeons.
It's not like hobby. It's like brain surgeons who are posting or making videos of their
operations and they do a little innovation and all the other brain surgeons are watching
it and then they go and they try something their next time and they make a video of and post it.
And there is this, this acceleration and speed at which this is happening. So there's a
lot of seniors in the YouTube verse. But it's basically invisible to most people.
You have the concept of a thousand true fans. How has that impacted your work? I mean,
certainly there's books like Vanishing Asia where that was funded by obsessive, obsessive fans.
Right. It was a Kickstarter funded. It was actually, I didn't learn, excuse me, I just
learned this recently, but it was the second biggest nonfiction book. Uh, funded in, in, in
Kickstarter history. It's so beautiful. It's, it's a, it's an overwhelmingly obsessive
book. Um, it's extravagant and, um. It's totally extravagant.
Yes. It's extravagant and self indulgent, but that's what I think is great about A Thousand
True Fans. Yes. Is that we can be followers of the Kevin Kelly wins and basically surrender to
you and basically say we're huge fans of what you're doing and wherever you take us, we will
go. The Thousand Truth Fans started off as a theory that I had, and it was something
that I was kind of like talking around to people for years, and then I kind of,
um, thought I should write this down. And then as soon as I began to write it down,
I had all these ideas. About it. And I said, okay, this is, this, this could be useful, but it
was, I was, it was before there was Kickstarter or patron. There wasn't any of the crowdfunding.
And I was saying, in theory, this should work. And then people like my friend, Jaron Lanier
were pretty critical of it saying, you know, it's not happening.
The, the, the people who are now surviving or, or, or living off of a thousand true
fans, they started off with studios or publishers They had them and they moved there. There's no
organic growth of people who are indigenously starting with A Thousand True Fans and going up.
And I investigated around and there might've been one or two people, but it was kind of iffy whether
they actually had the help of another career. But since then, without a doubt, I mean, I
get emails all the time from people saying... Took that and I done it and it's
started me off and say substack is right. Largely built on
this idea. Right. So, so, so by now it's no longer a theory. And again, I'll explain later on,
but I have not done the follow up book on this. Okay. Of, of, you know, the book, I still
have my original The piece and then the version that I rewrote for Tim Ferriss. Um,
and you, to be practical, to be helpful, a book about it should be written and I'll
explain why I haven't written it. So, one of the pieces of advice in this little book is, um,
don't be, don't aim to be the best, be the only. Of course, that's a classic Kevin
Kelly trope. And to have a deadline because What a deadline prevents you from doing is
being perfect, so you have to be different. Well, there's another piece of advice for young
people, which is if at all possible, try to work on something or somewhere where
there's no name for what it is that you're doing, where you might have difficulty explaining to your
mother what it is, because that is the spot where the breakthroughs happen when there's no name.
So it's like, it's like 10 years ago, you're kind of like you're doing podcasting. It's like, well,
it's kind of like radio, but it's not quite radio, it's sort of. And so, you're at the good spot.
And part of that is about not being the best, not aiming for the best, but to be the
only. And that is an incredibly high bar. That takes most of us, including me, most
of my life to arrive there, to figure out what that is. There may be some prodigies who
are born who very early on have some notion of what it is that they can do better than other
people, but most of us is going to take a long journey and that's why most successful people's
lives are kind of like, they're like detours, backtracking, hard rights, uh, dead ends.
Um, because they're on this journey of kind of figuring out this really good thing and they
might arrive finally at the place where they're doing something that only they can do. So go back
to, to, to the book is that while as at Wired, I learned very early on that the hardest
Bye. Bye. One of the most difficult, it wasn't the most time consuming, but one of the
most difficult parts was headlining the stories, making the headlines and making the covers.
And we'd have this tremendous intellectual battles and just, just, just purpose
in trying to extract out what the headlines and the covers was. So I said, well, we're doing this
backwards. Let's start with the covers and the headlines. And then make the article back. Let's
see what that is. What the, so, so let's, what are some of the most ideal, greatest covers we
could imagine for Wired and we'll make them happen if, you know, we'll say, is this possible?
Is there any evidence for this? And so we would go back from that. That produced means that
we would have story ideas and then we'd have story assignments. And so, um, for writers,
we'd say. We're trying to pitch the story, trying to find a writer for it. Sometimes writers
come to us with stories, it goes both ways, but we would commission a lot of stories.
And, um, one of the things I noticed about commissioning stories is I would have a
great idea often that I just couldn't sell to anybody. And they were, I'm not that interested,
or that's not a good idea, or meh, boring, you know, whatever. So, that's just normal
for things. Okay, here's some more ideas. And, um, but occasionally There would be, um,
an idea that I would want to come back to. I would say, you know, whatever, it was a year
later, I think that's a really great idea. We need, we need to do this. And I would try to
sell it again and nobody, and then it could maybe come back a third time. And I'd try to sell
it and it won't work. And then I would say, Hmm, okay, I see what's happening here.
I think this is a great idea. Um, no one else wants to do
it. This is what I have to do. Okay. And those are often being my best pieces.
And, um, the thing about it is that at that point, there's no... I don't have to worry about
someone else coming along and do them because I've spent two years trying to give it away.
Right. Marshall... And so, I would talk about the things I'm working on all the time in the hopes
that someone else will steal it and I don't have to write that one. Man, you really are lazy, huh?
Right. I don't have to write that one. I only want to write the things that only I can do. Right. And
that's why I haven't done the Thousand True Fans book is because somebody else...
Could do that. I'm interested in where ideas come from, and in
this book, Excellent Advice for Living, you wrote this on your 68th birthday, the original...
Blog post that this came out of and you wrote 68 pieces of advice for your kids So tell me
about these Genesis stories for your books. So, um, again, this is sort of an inadvertent book
I didn't intend to write a book when I started I Was in the habit of writing down Mantras that
I liked that I that I could repeat to myself to change my behavior an example would be If I know I
have something in my household and I can't find it And then I look for it and I finally find it, the
little mantra that I began repeating to myself is, don't put it back where I found it, put
it back where I first looked for it. Or another piece is, um, when I get an invitation
to do something, to speak, to travel, to meet someone for coffee, to, um, you know, appear
somewhere, whatever it is, I always ask myself, um, would I do this if it was tomorrow morning
as a filter? And mostly it's like, no, you know, even though six months, it's going to be
tomorrow morning and then I'm going to say. You know, I wish I wasn't doing this. So, so
I asked myself, um, you know, would I do this tomorrow morning? That kind of immediacy filter.
And so I was writing these kinds of things down to help me condense that kind of, to help change my
own behavior. And I was realizing that, um, some of these things took me a long time to kind of
arrive at, and I wished I had known them earlier. And, um, as, And so in our family, with our kids,
um, we try to train them and model behavior rather than giving advice. Like we just weren't in advice
giving mode. So I never gave my kids advice. And um, uh, I just actually sent the book to my son
and I said, you know, What do you think? And he says, it's kind of weird because even though
you never said these things, we got the message. So, so, but I thought it would be useful to
them and others to have it written down so they could do what I do, which is kind of like have a
little mantra that would help them. And so I. I began writing these down and I
thought that I would do the Irish Hobbit thing of giving away presents on my
birthday and um, they went viral when they were shared to the family and then more than that.
And so, I thought I'd do that again next year and I had more to say than I thought.
It's funny, you have a, you have a line that it probably applies less to this
book, but Definitely applies to your other books that you should really write the
book after you do the speaking tour for this book. Yes, because you're constantly speaking and
refining over and over writing from conversation. Yeah And then every single time
that you're talking about hey, this is what's in the book Here's the core idea
now you have the essence and uh oh. The book was published a year ago. Yeah. No, uh,
it's absolutely 100 percent correct I mean if I knew I knew now about the book
I should really rewrite it and it'd be much better because now I know what it's about.
So one of my books, The New Rules for the New Economy, which has been very overlooked.
You have a great article about that. I have an article. I started on an article and
that's what it was, is I was giving that talk. I love that article. I was giving that
as a talk for years and therefore I could, I wrote the book very, very fast because I'd
already been talking about it for several years. And so, um, So, that's another way to write
a book, is if you talk about it first and then write it. Is that something
that you cultivate consciously? No. I think, um, so, I'm doing
a talk at South by Southwest on, um, the AI chatbots and generative art and I wrote
a little bit of it but it's really hard because, I mean, because I'm still thinking about it.
I'm still figuring it out. I haven't given it. This is the first time I'm ever talking
about it, not at all ready for a book but maybe In a couple of years, it might be. But I have
to say one other thing which might be a little, what's the word I want, um,
radical for this conversation, um, I have promised myself that I'm not going
to do any other native books, books native. What does that mean? I think the center of the
culture has moved away from books to moving images, to video. That is the culture. My kids are
not reading books. Their friends are not reading books, they're watching YouTube, and that is now
the center of the culture. So, I wanted to do something that's native to that, and they can have
like a spin off book that comes out of it, but it's not, that's not the native thing, the native
thing that I want to be, I want to be present. In this arena where all the attention is, I
have a little media empire where we do, uh, we do newsletters, we do some podcasts for a
long time, we do a daily blog for 20 years, um, you know, I have books and stuff and social
media and YouTube channels and the only place where we see a growing audience. Is in YouTube.
Uh, one thing that I've been thinking a lot about
spending time with you is you are remarkably calm for somebody who's so productive,
Yeah. I, I, yeah, I am. Um, I don't know why, but yes, I am, um, um, able to be very
common. Calm is contagious. I wrote a blog every day for 20 years
and also I'm a reluctant writer. Yeah. How are those two things existing
in the same person? That to me feels like something that we need to just go at and figure
out what's happening there. That's magical. Well, so my daily blog, I was not writing it, it was
a cool tools blog. I have my own blog where I was writing, but that was not
in a cool tools, recommendos, screen publishing, street use.
I mean, there's so many different ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well,
most of those are more abundant now, but I have that technique in where I try to
write often. Actually, I have in my notion thing, I have probably a hundred things that
I've written but not published. Because, um, um, what's the word I want, um, because
I haven't gotten over that habit. I, I switched to trying to do daily art every
day and I was committed to that to kind of switch away from the, um, the text only. And so
also to, to learn new tools and, and skills. So, um, and where I'm hoping to go is to, to,
to release like a video every week. And so, I also have been recording tons and
tons of video, mostly in my making mode. But I'm been really hard, it's been really
difficult for me to gain enough abilities to edit to be able to do it because every time, I
don't know what it is, but my mind keeps forgetting the, it's like learning a language.
These softwares are so complicated that it's like learning a language and I haven't
gotten conversationally fluent enough to not even think about it.
I can do that in photography, I don't even think about it, I can
do it almost blindfolded in a certain way. David McCullough has a line where he
says that learning to paint taught him how to write because writing and painting are both.
Stan... Seeing. And there are different ways of seeing. Right, right, right.
How has the photography that you've done influenced your writing?
One of the reasons why I photograph is to see, and that's why I draw is that you,
like particularly if you're drawing something real. You can't draw that without really, really
seeing it and most of the time you're spent is looking at the thing trying to comprehend it.
Photography for me was an excuse to go see things and I use that way. It's like if I
hadn't had photography, I would not have traveled anywhere near the extent that I have
and that book is a reflection of the fact that I have. I've been almost everywhere in Asia
and I claim, and I'm waiting for someone to refute that I've been to more places in Asia than
anybody alive, or probably everybody who's lived. And so, um, and that photography was that kind
of propulsion, the excuse. To go out and spend all day looking and interacting and seeing.
One thing that we were talking earlier about, you spend so much of your life trying to
figure out what your purpose is and sort of the meandering that you were talking about.
Right. But I think that there's something about. The connectedness to what you are innately
drawn to and just trusting that and going with it. And you have that in spades.
One of my bits of advice in the book is that in your 20s, you should spend a good
hunk of your time doing something that is. Obviously, not successful or success oriented,
that it's weird, crazy, unpredictable, unprofitable. Something people are going to mock
you for maybe. You might be mocked for, that is, um, silly and extravagant and dumb and
in any way as far from success as you can imagine. And that time and that stuff
that you do will become your touchstone. And the thing that you will go back to, to
generate your success later on. And so, so, so I'm a big believer in sabbaticals and Sabbaths
and taking time off and goofing off. What does that mean to you? Where you are, you have no
agenda for what you're doing other than the, the pleasure and the, the thing itself.
I did a, um, a drawing. A piece of painting, uh, and posted it every day for a year.
There's no, I have no agenda. There was like, I'm doing it and posting it only because that
act of, of doing it was pleasurable and this book of 50 years of photography. I was doing
it, again, almost like a compulsion. There was no economic possible reason for doing it.
There's no demand for, we need pictures of the disappearing cultures of
Asia. Nobody was saying that. You didn't hire McKinsey to do,
uh, there was two by two axis, this was the best, most efficient thing to
do. Exactly. Exactly. So, this sort of, um, playfulness, generative creativity. That
I think people should do more of and I would recommend that for the pleasure and not
always be thinking about the productivity. Success part of it because you can do that
because I can guarantee you that it will be later on. It's, it's a weird thing
of the universe. It's like this other weird paradox of the universe that makes no
sense whatsoever, which is that the more you give. The more you get. Okay. Why? I don't
know. It doesn't make sense that the most selfish thing you can do is to be selfless.
That if you really were aiming to get a lot, that you have to give away a lot. That's a
fundamental paradox, but that is so reliable. I mean, most of the major religions of the
world kind of based on that, that's utterly, you can count on it. And so, this is part of us,
like, you know, playing around, being generative, creating, even if it's just for
yourself, is by far, in the long view, the most selfish thing you could do.
Stan. I mean, you could say writing is a form of giving at scale. Absolutely.
That's what we're doing when we're writing. We're polishing our ideas. And then,
Giving. Right. And that's why so many opportunities come to writers. I feel
you have a duty to share your art, otherwise you're kind of cheating us with your life.
Huh. A duty. A duty. You have a duty to write, to do art for yourself because that's only how
you're going to express your genius and that's, I mean, my, my goal is to increase learning
and to increase the options and opportunities so that everybody on the planet, born
and yet born, would have the opportunity to share their particular genius.
And I think we often need technology to do that. So the little story that I
tell is imagine if Mozart had been born before there was the piano invented or the
symphony. He would have been And maybe he could make some kind of music and, you know, thousands
of years ago, but what a loss to us and to him if, um, he wasn't born after this was invented.
And then, or Hitchcock born before there was cinema or Van Gogh before there was oil paints.
What a loss. And so, There is a Shakespeare somewhere today who was born, and she's waiting
for us to make the technology to allow her genius to be expressed and shared, and so we have a moral
obligation to keep increasing those choices and those possibilities, and that's what I am on, is
I feel a moral obligation to enable everybody. To have the chance to express their genius.
How much of what you say is something that you've written down before?
Such a good question. I would say a lot of it by now on certain subjects,
on certain subjects a lot, but... Clearly haven't written about the photography and the
writing, so gotta turn that one into a blog post. But I learned something from my
mentor and friend Stuart Brand. I have observed him for 40 years, in all kinds
of situations. And he had a particular quirk. So he was, invented the Hallworth catalog
and I'd been around, which was 50 years ago, I think. And I've been around multiple
times when people come up and say, you know, they want to talk about the Hallworth catalog.
Changed their lives, whatever it is. And in those uncountable number of encounters and
times I've been around, I've never heard Stuart repeat himself about the whole of Kellogg. Is that
right? He'll explain it in a completely different way each time. Wow. And I've never heard him
repeat anything. He'll have a great line and yet when he says it, he'll try to make a new one.
It may not be as good, but it'll be different. And so, part of what I try to do is not to repeat,
like, word for word, maybe the basic idea is, but not to just... Again, to try and reinterpret it
and, um, uh, I'm not always successful as Stuart cause I think he has a little quirk in his brain
that allows him to do that without much trouble. I had another friend who was inver I mean, he
was a, he couldn't help himself making puns and it was almost like a, a tick. And I think
Stuart has a little bit like a little tick where he's just like not gonna say the same thing
again. Well, I've been thinking a lot about like a central question that great artists have and
then how that question actually manifests itself. So they're always orbiting around something but
it manifests itself in all these different ways. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Take someone like Rembrandt. The
portrait, the way that light shines on the face. So, that's a central question that he's constantly
orbiting around, but the expression of that, the answers that he's bringing out are always
changing, always in flux, deeper and deeper every time trying to hit the next
layer there. And most great artists kind of have some larger
theme and then we can recognize that. And in part, that's why they're kind of a great because
they're extreme in that way. So I actually think a greatness is kind of over overrated.
All the people that I know who are great, they're extremely great in certain
dimensions but that greatness... Always has a corresponding weakness and they're
great because they're extreme in that fashion, which also exposes this extreme weakness in
another area. And so, so there's a high price to pay for greatness. What price have you paid?
I'm not great. Yeah, you are. No, no, I'm, I'm, I'm absolutely not. I'm too calm to be great.
It's sort of like, I'm, I'm much more balanced and, um, uh, not that extreme.
What trade offs have you had to make in order to be Kevin Kelly?
Oh man, that's such a good question. You're not going
to like this answer. But to be Kevin Kelly. I couldn't be great, you know, let me kind of define
great as something, you know, somebody who might be remembered for maybe a generation or two by.
People outside their family. And so it's like, you know, in a generation two, no one will
remember my name or anything that I did. Okay. And so that's, so I'm not in that league
of what I would call great where, where you're going to be remembered for a generation later
by people outside of your family. And so to, um, to be me now, I surrendered that path towards
greatness because I just am not that extreme or fanatical obsessive about a larger thing.
I am much more kind of like a gadfly with lots of little different things going around.
And so, that doesn't cohere into the kind of extremity that you need to be great.
From the time that you've spent with people who are great, maybe great writers we
can focus on, do you think that they have a story inside of their head that they want to be
great figures and that that really drives them? Or what are some of the underlying
messages that they're telling themselves? Sometimes I think it's closer to obsessions
and things where, where, where they, they maybe might even recognize the cost to their
families or other things by this dedication to perfectionism or the next thing, or the
number of hours are putting into it. There might be, but they can't
help themselves. It's just like, you know, I got to do this. And oftentimes their
spouses might have understood that that was the, That was the bargain. We're going to go into the
room in seven hours. We won't see them. And that's just what it is. I've had the privilege, pleasure,
whatever you want to call it, of being around some billionaires and, and people that, whose names
will be remembered for, for many generations. And their greatness is something that
they're sort of grappling with right now, the consequences of that and the price
that they're paying for it still, um, and so, um, so yeah, look at that.
It's like, yeah, that's not what I want. What's a typical writing
session look like for you? So, in the generative phase, it's fairly short.
You know, I can... Um, maybe go a couple of hours, maybe an hour and a half of writing before I get bored. Bored. Or, or
I, before I reach the limit of having something to say. Yeah. So, so I'm not, uh, let me, let me
distinguish it. Most of my writing is non fiction. Um, um, fiction is a different thing and
I have a limited experience in fiction. But fiction is different than. Most of the writing
that I do and I'm there, it's like, I just sort of, I reached the end of what I know or can say at
that moment, whether I need to research more or, um, it's too muddled and I am just like not
happy, whatever. The other writing component, the editing thing and improving
stuff, I can go much longer there. That's, um, You know, I, I, I, I tend to
have bigger blocks of time to work on that partly because I kind of feel like I have
to load the whole thing into the buffer, put the whole thing into the buffer and it's
in the buffer and I can start to going. And so that needs to kind of a bigger block of time.
And how do you make space in your life in order to have that time?
Oh, oh. So, I define, and that's another bit of advice, I defined, um, there's a difference
between being rich and being wealthy. The rich have a lot of money, the wealthy have time and
control of their time. I am one of the wealthiest people on the planet because I have total
control of my time and every day is different. And so I work best with deadlines. So I need
a deadline. Give me a deadline. You set your own deadline? I can set my own deadlines,
but I have to have a deadline. And, um, um, there's a great book called The Writer's Time.
Stuart Brand turned me on to it when he was writing his first book. And the major insight from
that was, look, the work, the work of creating anything, but particularly a book, is infinite.
It's bottomless. The amount of, of work, energy, research, writing that could go into your book
is unlimited. You can always add more. So you can't manage the work, you can only manage your
time. So there was this idea that you say, like, basically, I'm not going to write the best book.
I'm going to write the best book I can in a year. Okay. So you're going to manage your time. And
so, and so deadlines do that for me, it's like, yeah, I'm going to do the best article I can
for the deadline. And the deadline is like, you know, it's, it's fantastic because
then after the deadline is done, I don't, I abandoned the book. I mean, that's,
books are abandoned as far as I can tell. And so, um, and so yeah, I can set my own
deadlines. And then, um, so I'm always looking forward to that moment when the first
draft is done and I can. Then, um, you know, work on these blocks of things and try and edit.
How much do you think about structure in your writing? All
the time. Why is it so important? In fact, that's what I kind of realized the
function of the magazine editor was, was primarily structure. That's all we talked about.
The magazine or individual pieces or both? No, no, no. Both. But most of the conversation about
a writer who is writing a story for an article, 95 percent of it was about structure.
And that's the thing why? Because you want it to disappear. You want the structure to be so
graceful, intuitive, that you don't notice it. So, you notice structure when it's absent and you
notice it because like there's a jump, there's a logical hole, there's you're confused, um,
you're um, You're unsatisfied, you're distracted. All these things are happening because
of the lack of the right structure. And when you are kind of smoothly going on and
you're kind of like surprised but not confused and all these good stuff, that's because of great
structure. And if you read like John McPhee, he talks about this. All the time. Trash number four.
Exactly. It's about structure and, and, and, and that, and it's really hard to do and you
really do need someone outside to help you if it's at all complicated. Great people, writers
like John can, can really do that himself. Um, and that's really what it's about.
And so I, yes, it's, it's about structure and most of the feedback I get.
Uh, I gave as an editor was about structure and most of the feedback that
the editors give me is about structure. If you have the right structure, the words kind
of, it's not really about phrasing or other things. It's about structure. Talk to me about
enthusiasm. So I have a piece of advice that, you know, enthusiasm worth is worth 25 IQ points.
And um, That's a little bit more also about optimism and positivity. But it also
relates to your hiring advice. Yes. Hiring people who have that innate love for
whatever it is. Right. And not hiring so much around skills. Right. And you can
teach that. That was born out of my experience at Wired. Okay, so Wired, we had a
digital side of, of Wired magazine and Wired, um, you know, created the, uh, click through
ad banner, the thing that's ubiquitous now. Um, and so we were You guys created that? Yes.
Wow. Yes, I'm sorry to say. That's pretty cool. We were on our way to do all kinds of other things if
we didn't have the failed IPO. But the thing was, is we were hiring people To develop the
web before just as the web was being invented. So there were no web developers.
So we're hiring, um, so how do you hire? So we hire for attitude, aptitude, enthusiasm, and
then you train for skills. And you think that advice applies as well to
writers? I do. Um, it was really interesting hiring like writers and editors. I
didn't really look at the writing. It was like, the conversations, it's like, it was about
ideas, it was about, again, for me, writing is, clear writing comes from clear thinking and
it was your ability to, to think and to have, be creative and to have ideas and to
structure your arguments, blah, blah, blah. Those were, were the important things. Talk to so
many of our students and they're dejected because they think they missed the boat of online
writing. Mm. And I bring up something you wrote in 2014, You Are Not Too Late.
Yeah. So, that little mantra is that um, in 20 years from now, certainly 30, but
even in 20 years from now, the big thing that everybody will be, have.
That everybody will need, that everybody will talk about, does not exist today. So we
aren't going to be talking about Facebook, we aren't going to be talking about, um, even
Google. We aren't going to care about chat, GBT, we're going to care about something completely
different that hasn't been invented today. And that's going to be the biggest major thing,
and that's going to be the biggest company. And so it's going to be bigger than anything
we have today. And so you, whoever you are, have a chance to be that person inventing it,
creating it, writing about it and all those other things. And so, um, so you're not late.
You, you're the, the biggest, you know, looking back, people will say, you know, in
20 years they'll say, you thought you had AI, you had nothing like AI, AI, this is AI we'll have
in 20 years. This is not chess. This is not AI. And so, looking back to now, they're gonna say,
you know, um, I wished, what they're gonna say is, I wished that I was alive and working in
2023 because that's when it all started. But hasn't
all the content been created? There's nothing new to say?
Everything has already been said but nobody was
listening, so we have to say it again. I think a lot about that with my teachers. I had
a high school physics teacher who was so impactful for me. You didn't come up with any of the ideas.
It's great at communicating them in a different way. Right, right. Exactly.
So, there will be new things to say, but there's always new ways to say them and
that's the joy. And I think some of the best people that we appreciate the writers are doing
exactly that. There's always this tension between saying something that's familiar in a familiar
way or something we have familiarity with and yet we're saying in a new way and there's
something new and connecting it to the news. So, so there is, there is, there is always
that tension between. What we know and what we don't know and the genius is really in,
is connecting those two together. How consciously did you think about
marketing throughout your career? When I began, I didn't really
have a clue about marketing or know to the extent that it was important.
Or any interest in it, and I think that is something that I have changed my mind about as I
went along. And um, you know, I think I had the kind of, a lot of people's aversion to sales and
selling. Um, I came to understand that in fact, packaging is a type of selling. Putting a
cover on a book is a kind of a marketing. Well, you love book covers. Exactly. And I, and
I, so I, I've come to understand that that is an inherent part of creation to being in that
communicating it and trying to share it is. Necessary and can be creative. And
so, um, I mean, we can talk specific things, um, but, but, but I have come to
appreciate it. I think Dan Pink wrote a book, um, to sell is to human.
And, and I really kind of have, have come, have arrived there to understand that that is
really an essential element of being creative that you have to. Communicate in some way if you're
going to share it. You have the total right to create things and not share it. We can't demand
it, but I think there is, as I said, some duty. to, to share things. And if we are going to share
it, then, then how we structure it, how we market it is an essential element. And I, um, have
realized now going into something like a book or even an article that there is, that there's a half
of a, half the job is in creating it and there's another Which is sharing it and marketing it.
And so, so I'm now prepared and understanding that when I finish writing the book and there's
the last sign off on the, on the final draft of the galley that I'm now half done. I've done
50 percent of the book. The other 50 percent is marketing it. And so, and I will spend probably
more time. In total hours than I did writing it. Wow. And that's what I'm going to sign
up for. And so, um, and that's because, and that's partly because there's been a change
in the, in the book publishing business. Okay. So the change is that, I mean, it's really weird
if you think about it, Random House Viking, um, books, uh, big publishers like that,
they do not have any names, any customers. Cause they sell to bookstores, so they don't
need, so they have no, this is the opposite of thousand true fans. They have no engagement with
their actual customers. Can you believe that? So here's the problem. The problem is people
are not buying books in bookstores anymore. So suddenly they're saying, what do we do?
And so here's what, here's what's happening. Here's the practical advice to, to authors
is they. When you come to sell a book, if they want to know, are you bringing us your
audience? Are you bringing the audience to us? And your value to them, because they don't
have the audience. People aren't going to bookstores, that's who they were selling to.
They don't, how are they going to sell? You have to bring the audience. To them as well. And that
means that you, that your own, if you have this, your own audience, then you got to do the work
of marketing to that audience. They'll help, but they're not really capable of it. So
basically I do all the marketing for my books. And I have a couple of things that I've been
doing that I've seen sell books. If you want to talk about that. Bring it on. So, uh, my book on,
uh, 2008, I can't remember what technology wants. I said, um, if, if you have a group that will
buy, um, 25 books, I think it was, and you're within a two hour drive from, in the Bay Area,
I'll come talk, I'll do a hour talk at your place. Buy 25 books. Which I thought was more than
most bookstores would sell at a book signing and I'll, um, come. And so I did that for a month, as many as I could fit into one month full time.
And it was absolutely fantastic because there was like a high school, there was like a church, there
was an architect's office, there was Google, there was, I mean, there was the whole range of people.
And it was this never ending Variety of, you know, going on location, meeting people that I would
not have met. And it was just fabulous. And they had people, 25 people read a book and they would
often have people who read the book before, um, I got there, which was really great. Then I, on the
next book, I decided to widen it up by saying I would do a, um, uh, conference call that wasn't,
it was before Zoom, um, and it was limited, I think it was like Google meet or something.
And they were limited to like, 10 people in total. So I said, if you had nine people purchase
a book, I'll spend an hour and we'll have a group chat with, with 10 people cause I
was a 10 and that was anywhere in the world. And so I did that for a month. And then the
other book I said, Oh, we'll do podcasts. If you have a podcast, I have a book and we'll
do a podcast anywhere. Um, this book has expanded to the same thing, which is, um, uh, if you
have a podcast with more than three episodes, I'll. You can sign up here and I'll be on your
podcast and I've done that for three months. I do six to eight a day and um, one after the
other and it's all self schedule on Calendly and I find that the podcast audience is very
intimate and they have time to go into the book. It's not like radio or TV where you have two
minutes and 15 seconds, it's like ridiculous and they're not your audience anyway. Yeah. They're
not going to buy books. Yeah. It's the podcasters and the newsletters and that kind of intimate, um,
personal take on it. So, I do all the marketing and I sign up for that and I think authors have
to understand that that is the landscape today. Talking about your
relationship with fame, because I see two interesting things going on where you're
a well known guy and on the other hand, you have this quote where you say you really don't want
to be famous, read the biography of any famous person. So, something... Yeah. You have a way of
thinking about fame, a way of curating your, your reputation, so to speak, that allows you to thread
the needle of this. Yeah. Again, you know, fame, like richness, it's
all very relative. Right. You know, it's like, uh, you know, if you're in Silicon Valley, what
does it take to be rich? It's like a pretty high number. Yeah. And it's the same kind of
thing. I'm around really famous people and so I'm not at all famous. I know what fame is.
It is like where you're walking down the street and I mean, literally everybody knows
who you are and they want the selfie. Um, that's the kind of fame that you don't want.
And, um, it's a burden. It's like having a billion dollars. The thing I know about, again, about
billionaires is that you don't, I can, I can tell you right now, you do not want a billion dollars.
Wow. You don't, because it's incredible burden. It takes over your life. You have to think about
it all the time. It just displaces all kinds of things. It's just not, it's not desirable
and you can't spend it anyway. So it's like, it's nice to have some kind of attention,
Notoriety. Notoriety, to be, to be respected. Um, and, and that's, that's, that's
nice, uh, and it can be, can be useful. Um, but I, you know, The way I handle it
is really to try and exploit the thing about which is an opportunity to meet people
either that I would not have ordinarily met or that I would enjoy. And so there's, it's an
opportunity and to be respectful of that, to, you know, I like to, people say they're
a fan, I want to know about them and, um, I mean, I generally do want to know about it.
So, so. Um, there are times I, you know, in China, I have a lot more fame and I sometimes need
bodyguards there. Is that right? Yeah. Big festivals where there are a lot of my fans, but,
um, and that's, that's really weird because I, well, there's language barriers as well, but, but
I don't get to find out about them and have more of a symmetrical contact, but that's what you get.
That's, I mean, so that's why I had some sense of like, well, I couldn't imagine that
being in the U. S. That would be terrible. You were talking about your writing earlier. When
you're writing, you're trying to say, is this true? Is this me? And on the other hand, every
idea is, is, is sort of this cross pollination. Yeah. Yeah. And those two
things operate in tension. Yeah. I may not see as much tension
there is, is, is that, um. I firmly believe that almost none of
our ideas are original or solo. So I reject entirely the trope of the lone genius,
okay? Because my investigation of the origins of science and innovation is
that simultaneous invention is the norm. And that's true, not just in science
and technology, but also in the arts. And so, um, so I think, um, that, that the
ideas and concepts and things are networks of things that are very tied to related stuff. And
that if, you know, if Einstein, which is true, had not done relatively, there was two other
people right behind him would have done so. And, you know, um, Alexander Graham
Bell who patented the telephone. Only won the patent because Alicia Gray filed
it on the same day, hours, just hours later. So these things are inevitable, including, you
know, like if you look at the weird things of suits with JK Rowling and Harry Potter and
Muggles and stuff, there were tons of writers who were talking about owl messengers
and Muggles and other kinds of stuff. That she claims she didn't read, and I believe
that, that these were just things that came up from other people. And so, and so in that
sense, yes, when we're being original, it's, uh, it's, it's just a tiny step. It's not wholly
disconnected from all the other things happening. Um, but we can still honor and respect that
little step, that little bit of addition. And so, um, someone else would
have come along and done it, but we're still going to reward that with a
copywriter monopoly temporarily in order to incent people to try and spend time doing it.
And so I believe that basically all ideas are coming from the commons and should return
to the commons as fast as possible. And that there should be a little tiny gap
where we try to incentivize people to spend more time doing it, but it should be as short as
possible. And the idea of extending copyright to like whatever it is, 99 years plus, this is crazy
because there's no incentive there. But you know, I think like 20 years or something, okay, that's
reasonable for a living artist, maybe for patents too, but maybe patents should be even shorter.
But there's this idea that actually the commons, these ideas are being generated by the commons
And should return there as soon as possible. Something I like to, when I'm talking to Rite
of Passage students and they're struggling, I'll ask them, what kind of information are you
consuming? And you have a word of advice in here, cultivate an allergy to average.
Right, right, right. So, if you want to be remarkable, read books. Everybody that I admire
in my life read more books than I do. Hmm. Okay. Great. And, and by the way, the best education you
can ever give your child is just to read to them. Well, so you had no TVs in the house? No TVs.
Books everywhere? Yes. Books everywhere. And we did a lot of reading to them, um,
and my daughter, who is the most reader, is still reading ferociously, uh, not on social
media. So um, uh, so books and, and, and reading are important, but you really do want to, to um,
read widely and differently and, and, and a really good trick, by the way, for reading is to read.
The authors that your favorite authors read, okay? That's a great way. So, you have
some favorite authors, read the people that they're reading and have read. That will get
you there. I have another friend whose passion is in reading the bestsellers of the past, which for
the most part we have completely forgotten about. Like, take a random year, like, I don't know,
1913 or whatever, and look at the bestseller lists. You'll recognize almost like none of
them. It's like, what happened there? They were like the best sellers. And so he'll go back
and read them. And they're, you know, peculiar, different, they're, there's something about them.
They were good enough to be the bestseller then, but they're completely forgotten now. Which is
another lesson about aiming for the bestseller list is that, you know, that's true in movies
too. If you've seen the year by year on the Oscar movies and which ones win Oscars and which
ones we remember, they're not at all related. Hmm.
Last question. Why has writing been worthy of devoting your life to
in the way you have? Whole Earth Catalog. Wired Magazine. All these books. All these blogs.
Yeah. It's a great question and um, no one's asked me that before, but I
think because I did not set out to be a writer, there was never a goal in my life.
I had a vision that once I wanted to be a photographer. I began to... Have something to say
or want to something to say. And mostly they were kind of like, I joke a little bit that my captions
got longer. All right. I was like, there's a lot more going on here. So for me, I think writing
was a way of sharing what I had learned. That wasn't enough. I think, as I said, it would
became a way for me. Um, to figure out what I thought and think, um, and then I would, and that
sharing part of it was sort of the, the obligation part of it, of, of sharing what I had learned
that also helped me to write and do it better, the feedback, what worked, what didn't work.
So that sharing, I came to see as part of that process of learning how to think and write better
was. What do people respond to? Do they get it? Where was I successful or not? And so, for me,
it's a way of, um, of two things, accessing and helping me think and then two, to accomplish
my mission because I write about technology and stuff is to increase the number of options
and opportunities in the world so that everybody would have a chance to express their genius.
What a beautiful answer. Thank you. Thank you.
