The Art of Manliness - #267： The Technological Forces That Are Shaping Our World

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast where we're living

00:00:19.180 in a time which the landscape is changing quickly thanks to technology steady jobs provided a living

00:00:24.660 for our fathers and grandfathers no longer exist and jobs that didn't exist 10 years ago are now

00:00:29.920 providing paychecks for hundreds of thousands of people and even the way we consume has changed in

00:00:34.460 the past 10 years thanks to streaming digital services and rental services like uber and airbnb

00:00:38.900 but where are these technological trends taking us how will they shape the future in 10 20 and even

00:00:45.280 30 years down the road well my guest today has written a book where he lays out his idea of what

00:00:49.540 the future looks like his name is kevin kelly he's the founding executive editor of wired magazine and

00:00:54.160 the former editor of the whole earth catalog he's also a consultant on minority report as a futurist

00:00:59.400 and he spent his career thinking and writing about how technology particularly the web how it

00:01:04.480 intersects with culture business and politics and in his latest book the inevitable kevin takes a look

00:01:09.740 at 12 technological forces that are shaping our future provides a glimpse of what that future

00:01:14.340 might look like today on the show kevin and i discuss the process he uses in making predictions

00:01:19.100 about the future the misconceptions he thinks people have about artificial intelligence why people are

00:01:25.040 likely going to own less stuff in the future and the business opportunities that will emerge as time

00:01:30.080 marches on we also discuss the technological trends that worry kevin the most so if you're looking for

00:01:36.860 a roadmap to navigate the brave new world we're entering you don't want to miss this podcast after

00:01:41.820 the show's over check out the show notes at aom.is inevitable kevin kelly welcome to the show hey it's

00:01:57.120 my pleasure thanks for inviting me i'm really excited to have you here because you came out with a new book

00:02:01.480 called the inevitable um and it's all about the 12 technological forces that are shaping our future

00:02:07.820 and before we get into um the specifics of your book let's talk about your career in general because

00:02:14.300 it's fascinating you um worked for whole earth magazine you were the founding executive editor of

00:02:19.180 wired magazine so you've been spending your career thinking and writing about technology particularly the web

00:02:25.480 and how it's influencing culture economics business law governments etc and oftentimes you make

00:02:34.760 predictions about where you see these trends are going to take us so i'm curious as a futurist as a

00:02:41.960 prophet which is a hard job to have um what's the process you go through when you you sort of lay out

00:02:48.180 your vision of where these trends are going with technology and how it's going to shape our future

00:02:53.240 because it's easy to get wrong in fact it's very likely that i'm wrong um even today um

00:03:00.760 um the general rule of thumb would be um uh anything specific um is basically inherently unpredictable um

00:03:13.480 what i'm trying to look at are the the kind of the bias the leaning in technologies which derive from

00:03:23.000 the fact that they're physical systems and that they run according to the law of physics or chemistry

00:03:28.680 and um that kind of constrains where they can go so i i look for those biases which will shape

00:03:39.560 the larger form and direction but um and that's all that you can kind of really um predict

00:03:50.040 so so i would say in a certain sense um like a quadruped four legs on an animal

00:03:57.640 that's that's something that's inevitable and just like we have four wheel vehicles that kind of

00:04:05.640 larger form is inevitable but you know a particular quadruped like a zebra is inherently unpredictable

00:04:12.840 so telephones were inevitable once you had electricity and wires but the iphone was not

00:04:20.040 um the internet was inevitable and would occur on any planet in any political regime once you have

00:04:27.320 have telephones but you know um twitter is not so um what i'm looking for are these um inherent

00:04:38.680 trends biases leanings that are occur in their kind of directions and i'm trying to identify those and

00:04:48.280 where i look for those is in places where the technology is unsupervised outwalled prohibited or

00:04:57.880 or used uh unsupervised you know by kids it's it's sort of where you can listen to it

00:05:03.880 kind of be what it wants to be and it kind of exhibits um

00:05:10.040 its true color so to speak and you can see this you can listen to where it wants to lean so so that's

00:05:15.320 where i'm looking i'm looking kind of at the edge of technology to see where the center will go

00:05:21.240 right so you're not like looking for specifics because that's hard to predict it's impossible

00:05:25.640 to predict and so if people want to know well is is apple going to see will continue us like

00:05:32.200 we cannot tell nobody can tell us it's there's so many variables that impact on that you know business

00:05:39.560 decisions executive personalities market weather that those are inherently unpredictable but if we

00:05:46.760 can say um what's the general directions of say like you know um mobility or phones in general or

00:05:55.720 screens then we can do something with that and that's actually very powerful so if 40 years ago

00:06:03.320 you had truly believed in moore's law that for the next 50 five decades computers would get

00:06:15.400 twice as fast and half as cheap every 18 months for the next 50 years if you truly believe it that's all

00:06:22.360 you needed to know to you know make a lot of money to invent lots of things to bend the culture to

00:06:31.320 you know um harvest tremendous abundance just if you just really believed that that was the direction

00:06:39.960 it was going and you kind of you worked on that and that was all you need you didn't know need to

00:06:43.960 know anything about ibm or apple you just needed to know that every year they would get twice as fast

00:06:50.200 half as cheap and you know half the size and so that was that was the trend that was

00:06:57.480 beginning to show itself back then and that's the kinds of things i tried to identify in my book okay

00:07:05.880 so let's talk about some of these trends in deep detail um the first one you talk about is becoming is

00:07:12.360 the trend um what do you mean by that and how does becoming manifest itself today in our technology

00:07:19.000 so the the general large-scale trend that that's either a sign of or a subset of is the fact that

00:07:30.520 you know beginning at least 50 years ago we have been moving to a world that's becoming more liquid more

00:07:40.440 more more about processes rather than products uh services rather than products things that

00:07:52.440 um are constantly uh changing being changed diversion numbers i mean the idea that you buy something is

00:08:00.840 version one and you then you get version two that's that's a very contemporary recent idea

00:08:06.200 um and and and the idea that the the thing itself remains the same and it changes itself over time you

00:08:14.120 know it gets its updates it's it's updated that also is part of this shift a large scale um from things

00:08:23.720 that are static and fixed to things that are moving and updatable and becoming something else and so there is a

00:08:33.960 sense in which everything is mutable everything is pliable everything is

00:08:42.280 upgradable and instead of you know trying to produce a fixed product like a car we think about

00:08:51.480 transportation services it's like you don't really care what it is you just want to move from a to b

00:08:56.200 how you get there serve not as important to i mean what the the the actual form or shape of that is not as

00:09:05.240 important as the other you know um benefits and so in general we're moving away from things that are

00:09:14.920 tangible to the intangible that's another way of talking about this dematerialization where the value

00:09:20.200 the things that we find most valuable the things that are not fixed in a um you know a rigid

00:09:29.640 physical form but actually more the value is in the intangible aspects so part of that shift means that

00:09:41.480 one that services become more important than products and two um everything

00:09:50.200 is being upgraded all the time and that's a new that's a new relationship that we have to

00:09:59.880 um come to terms with the stuff that we have that that we're in this um that it's always

00:10:06.280 um that when you buy something you're just going to assume that it's going to get better or improved

00:10:10.840 or change i just bought um an amazon echo dot which is this little thing it's an ai interface basically

00:10:18.920 that you talk to i know that there'll be firmware updates and the thing will get smarter over time

00:10:27.160 and so i mean in some senses you know i'm anticipating that i'm i'm banking on that

00:10:32.760 and um the way the cars are going these days it's not just your phone will upgrade itself is that even

00:10:39.560 cars will get these upgrades over time and we we have to understand that because there's also downsides to

00:10:45.640 that which is that um if if you don't upgrade everything together something will break so

00:10:53.320 when you upgrade one thing it usually requires that everything else in that ecosystem also come along

00:10:59.160 and so we are kind of in this constant um state of having to keep it's like gardening is having to keep

00:11:07.080 everything going and weeding and having hygienic purges and cleaning things and there's this there's

00:11:14.040 this kind of active gardening approach to things rather than just owning it and the third way that it

00:11:21.880 changes is is that it it forces us whatever our age is to be a newbie a perpetual newbie we're always

00:11:32.680 having to learn in some cases kind of relearn um these basic uh technoliterary skills where where you

00:11:42.840 know how to use a phone um how to use a computer we think we know today but there's a massive upgrade or

00:11:50.840 it's a new platform shift and we have to relearn it or there's a very complex software thing and

00:11:56.600 two years later there's they move the menu and we have to kind of learn again or there's a new brand

00:12:02.200 new um programming language that we have to learn even though we thought that we have mastered the last one

00:12:11.560 so there is this state of being lifelong learning uh of of always being the newbie and having to

00:12:23.800 start from scratch again and um that is going to be the default

00:12:29.000 for everybody in the future where um it's just not if you're 60 it's like even if you're 16

00:12:39.000 um you're going to be learning um something new next year that you didn't have to know the year before

00:12:47.320 right i thought that that last point is i've even noticed that in my own life you know i'm 30

00:12:51.400 and us 30 year olds often make fun of our parents like why don't you get the internet like why don't you

00:12:56.200 get email why don't they come over and help you but like even now i'm noticing there's like snapchat

00:13:00.920 for example that's right that's like i tried downloading snapchat like i don't know how this

00:13:04.120 works and so i'm just like i talk to like these teenagers can you guys can you show me how this

00:13:09.000 works i felt like parents probably felt yeah exactly and and you'll be you'll like oh i'm not going to

00:13:14.200 bother with gab or whatever it is and you know and and um you're kind of opt out things and you'll be

00:13:20.360 seen as kind of old fuddy-duddy because you didn't try you didn't even try and bother to to try it

00:13:28.440 and the well all this constant upgrading i mean is this eventually going to lead us to some sort of

00:13:33.720 utopia and i know everyone thinks utopia sounds great but like whenever i see like utopian futures

00:13:39.400 i'm like man it looks really boring yeah i mean that's why most of the hobby of movies about the

00:13:44.840 future are all dystopian because um it's dramatic it's um uh it makes good storytelling and in fact

00:13:52.360 i think the future will be boring uh because it will work and um the uh but i don't think it's be utopia

00:14:02.920 i i think it's as you say i think uh if we try to imagine utopia as everything perfect and static and um

00:14:14.840 it would not change very much and we'd be totally bored out of our minds but it also simply doesn't

00:14:20.200 work that's that's the reality so so there's really no fear of it but i think that it's an incorrect

00:14:27.640 vision of where to aim for i think a better vision of where to aim or or or efforts is what i call

00:14:35.960 protopia which is this idea that we're just trying to progress to progress to to move forward

00:14:45.080 in an incremental tiny creeping improvements and that that minor improvement every year when it's

00:14:55.800 compounded over decades or centuries become civilization so this is a big thing but we won't

00:15:02.200 even see it really except in retrospect because it's a one percent improvement in the world is drowned

00:15:09.320 out overwhelmed by the news of disasters and all the other ills that are present and there are many of

00:15:17.080 them and a lot of them are actually brought about by the new technology themselves and so

00:15:22.760 it is hard to see a one percent improvement overall on average and yet that i think that is

00:15:30.920 is that's something good to aim for is is that um if we can keep improving one percent a year

00:15:38.520 on average overall then we compound that annually and we have something magnificent

00:15:44.520 over the long term right so the kaizen effect right like is that from toyota the manufacturers improve

00:15:52.120 one percent and then yeah right um and as you were talking about that sort of the the maintenance and

00:15:58.360 like upgrading that seems like there's an opportunity for a business possibly absolutely

00:16:06.440 it used to be an old joke in the very dawns of the software industry which was software is free but

00:16:12.280 the manual is a thousand dollars and that's still true in a certain sense um this is another kind of

00:16:18.920 trend where you know you can't stop the copying of things copies themselves are ubiquitous perfect and

00:16:27.480 basically worthless and so you have to sell things that you can't copy well and the the idea of sort of

00:16:34.120 training or guiding or giving guidance to things that are coming that may be free and and that the the

00:16:43.960 value the the thing that's in short supply the thing that becomes precious is the context the

00:16:52.040 understanding what to do with it um so yeah you can get this thing it costs nothing but how do you use

00:16:59.320 it how do you maximize it how do you bring make it beneficial to you that actually may be something

00:17:04.600 you're willing to pay for right all right so let's talk about the next force which is um

00:17:09.240 cognition or cognitive cognizing what you call it it's artificial and cognifying cognifying right

00:17:14.840 artificial intelligence this is freaking a lot of people out right elon musk and stephen hawking

00:17:19.800 they're saying that artificial intelligence could possibly the last invention humans make because it

00:17:25.000 will destroy us um i'm kind of freaked out about it uh we have an amazon echo in our family and it's

00:17:31.240 just really weird to see my kids talk to alexa um asking her for the weather and asking her for jokes

00:17:38.040 um it is it is sort of weird and uh discongruous um should people be freaked out about artificial

00:17:46.360 intelligence like that it's going to destroy all the jobs and it will become sentient and skynet

00:17:52.040 is born be born i i have divided somewhat arbitrarily these trends into 12 and they're kind of like braided

00:18:02.200 tributaries of a river you could kind of cut them in different ways but um i think by far

00:18:07.880 the most important the most fundamental the most disruptive the most beneficial of all those

00:18:15.480 trends is this cognification cognifying which which i use as the word to make things smarter

00:18:20.600 we have a lot of intellectual cultural baggage around the idea of artificial intelligence and the

00:18:25.880 main the main distraction of that word is that we tend to think of it as a human-like intelligence and

00:18:32.200 one of the things i really try to stress in the book is that ai for various scientific reasons

00:18:41.480 is not like human thinking the only way you can have human-like thinking is if it runs on human-like

00:18:48.280 tissue and as these run along other things emulation is not perfect because of

00:18:54.920 time and space and therefore these intelligences are different and that's actually in uh their benefit so

00:19:01.400 the reason why we want to put an ai into our cars to self-drive is because they are not driving like

00:19:07.000 us humans last year last 12 months humans around the world killed one million other humans driving

00:19:14.920 humans should not be allowed to drive we're just terrible drivers and so um we want these ais to drive 1.00

00:19:23.560 because they're not being distracted worrying about what they left the stove on they're just driving and

00:19:28.200 they're engineered and optimized to drive well and but that's kind of it's kind of an inhuman way your

00:19:34.840 calculator is inhumanly smart in arithmetic way smarter than you are google is inhumanly smart in its memory

00:19:46.760 it has memorized every single word on six trillion web pages that's how it finds stuff and so

00:19:56.440 we're making we're going to add further levels of complexities and our you know our own minds are

00:20:03.960 basically a suite of a symphony of different modes of thinking there's deductive reasoning there's

00:20:10.920 inductive there's symbolic uh uh reasoning there's long-term memory there's there's there's dozens of different

00:20:19.160 modes of thinking that go into our minds and we'll add more types and we'll invent whole new types of

00:20:28.200 thinking just like we invented new ways of flying we made artificial flight not by imitating the flapping

00:20:35.160 wings of a bird but you know we make a flat barn door and put it on a jet engine and if you can do

00:20:41.400 flying that way that's a new way of flying we will invent new ways of thinking and these will all be different

00:20:46.680 than humans and so the first thing is is that um we are likely to invent hundreds maybe thousands of

00:20:57.880 different species of thinking and they're all alien to us um and that's the virtue because in this new

00:21:05.080 economy the the real wealth the real value is being generated by thinking different and this is a

00:21:12.440 increasingly difficult challenge when we're all connected so so the more we're connected together

00:21:20.440 the more difficult it is to think differently and the more valuable it is and ai is actually

00:21:25.960 going to help us think differently because they fundamentally think differently so they will be

00:21:30.920 very creative but their creativity would be a little bit different than ours and that's actually going to

00:21:34.840 be an advantage and so um we are going to employ them i think these different kinds of these alien

00:21:41.880 intelligences um sometimes to solve problems say in business or science that are basically beyond

00:21:50.440 our own human capability of intelligence to solve by ourselves and so we'll have a two-step process

00:21:57.480 the first step is we're going to invent a different kind of mind that together will work with us to help

00:22:03.400 solve these problems and this idea of working teaming up with intelligences actually has a term now

00:22:11.720 it's called a centaur it's being used in the military it was invented in the chess field where um you could

00:22:19.240 have an open version of a chess match where you could play as a ai you could play as a chess master or

00:22:25.880 you could play as a team of ai and human and that was called a centaur and the remarkable thing is in the last

00:22:34.520 four or five years that the best chess player on this planet is not an ai it's not a human it's a

00:22:43.240 centaur it's a team of ai and humans and that is the model that we're going to have with the ais

00:22:51.320 they are already as i'm suggesting smarter than we are in certain dimensions but intelligence is not a

00:22:57.720 single dimension thing it's not like you know it's like a decibel getting louder like iq it's multi-dimensional

00:23:05.080 and um they are it's we have versions of it already smarter than we are but we're going to be working

00:23:15.000 with them to solve all these problems and um much of what we do in our lives or daily work

00:23:23.080 can be turned over to these other intelligences but you know there's so much still that we don't

00:23:32.280 know what we want that we are going to rely on our own selves our own humans to discover these new

00:23:38.200 things that we want and to make these new jobs and tasks that we will then give to to the robots and so

00:23:45.080 i i i think the the vision is yeah they're getting smarter and smarter but there's a different kind of

00:23:51.880 of intelligence and we're going to be working with them together to keep inventing new things

00:23:59.960 that we want to be made efficient and productive and then we give them to the bots and so in a

00:24:05.080 certain sense the human the job for humans becomes to invent new jobs to give to robots

00:24:12.120 and i think an interesting point you made too is there's not going to be a single ai because i think

00:24:16.280 that's what a lot of people imagine is like the machine stops so central computer that just does

00:24:22.360 everything but you say there's going to be multiple types of ai yeah and and it's you know there will be

00:24:29.240 these big ai companies whether they're google or amazon there'll be something like that there'll be some

00:24:34.600 network effects where the smarter the ai is the more people use it the more people use it it gets

00:24:40.680 smarter and smarter so there is this network effects this snowballing avalanche where everybody's kind

00:24:45.800 of drawn to a few um winners in a particular kind of intelligence and so um there will certainly be

00:24:56.120 a kind of ai that you ask questions for and that's what it that's what it does and so that will become

00:25:02.120 the kind of ubiquitous presence like alexa that's always there that we're constantly asking questions or

00:25:10.200 having it do things that kind of personal assistant but that way that's just one type and even though

00:25:15.560 it would be ubiquitous and common and everybody will will know about it there'll be another kind of ai 0.99

00:25:21.320 that maybe is really good at um doing science of working with scientists and trying to uh understand

00:25:28.440 really where you know detect these patterns of of reality to to understand what's going on um there'll be

00:25:35.000 maybe maybe another ai that would be um you know optimized for um driving and it could be an entirely

00:25:44.120 different mixture of types of thinking and the thing about this is this is there's an engineering maxim

00:25:53.800 that holds true here which is that you cannot optimize everything in a system there's always trade-offs

00:26:01.320 you just because of the because of reality of fixed times and resources and energy that you can't make

00:26:07.480 something an ai that's optimized in intelligence in every dimension at once that's just an engineering

00:26:16.200 fallacy so there's always these trade-offs where this particular one will be better here

00:26:23.400 and because it's going to be a little bit less in this department and for this function that's good so

00:26:30.280 it's like you can't have an organism in life that's optimized in survival in every direction it's

00:26:37.640 that's just not how reality works and the same thing with these ais is that there'll be different ones

00:26:45.400 optimized for different purposes for answering questions whenever so i i i think one of the the

00:26:52.600 mistakes is this idea of a general purpose intelligence human intelligence is often pointed to as a general

00:27:00.040 purpose intelligence human intelligence is not general purpose at all it is evolved over millions of

00:27:06.600 years for our survival on this planet when we begin to populate the the space of all possible

00:27:13.800 intelligences and we'll do that by making different kinds of thinking in ai and maybe someday we'll

00:27:20.600 discover other ones in the universe but as we imagine this space we're going to find out that our

00:27:26.040 intelligence is not like at the center it's not general purpose it's actually way out in a corner

00:27:30.600 it's it's it's a very specific niche kind of intelligence and um i think the i the the the thing that

00:27:41.240 misleads us the the incorrect notion is this idea of general purpose intelligence um and that's just um

00:27:49.560 that's like us believing that we're at the center of uh the solar system and it revolves around us that's

00:27:55.240 that's that's a very parochial view that comes to the fact that we have not really had much contact

00:28:00.840 with the other kind of intelligence so we assume that ours is the general purpose one right and this

00:28:06.440 this will be disruptive i mean going back to like self-driving cars um truck driving is the biggest job

00:28:13.960 in the united states the most common the most common job yeah right and it's probably a truck driver

00:28:18.600 listening to this right now um i mean how do how are we going to manage when there's a bunch of laid 0.96

00:28:25.320 off truck drivers because there's a an artificial intelligence yeah well so all those trucks that

00:28:30.840 have to drive themselves they all still need to be repaired they all still need to be i mean the

00:28:36.680 even the ai in them has to be maintained and upgraded um they're these are very complicated machines

00:28:44.360 and so i think our our driving of them moves up a level so instead of actually physically sitting

00:28:50.840 behind the wheel you are you're you're taking care of them you're guarding them you are you are um

00:28:57.240 directing them in other ways there's um uh there's plenty i mean moving things around in the physical

00:29:05.800 world will still require plenty of human attention because um in the beginning we don't know what we want

00:29:13.960 and humans are the best way to find out what we want and what robots and bots

00:29:20.280 ais are good for is in things that have to do with efficiency and productivity and so anything any

00:29:28.280 job any task where productivity or efficiency is important will go to the bots but that leaves

00:29:35.160 some of the most interesting and valuable things that we do um or have the aren't dependent on

00:29:42.120 uh efficiency or productivity like like innovation um uh like exploration like human relationships none

00:29:51.000 of those are efficient they're inherently inefficient and that's actually what humans are turns out to be

00:29:57.400 really good we're really good at the inefficient stuff we're really good at wasting time we're really

00:30:01.000 good at exploring dead ends and and trying stuff and that has nothing to do with being intellectual or

00:30:08.520 having a college degree it has a lot to do about being human and so i think there's going to be plenty of

00:30:17.240 new opportunities created even for like a truck driver who by the way aren't dumb they're smart they're

00:30:27.560 trucks like farming has become a very high-tech um industry even today um there'll be plenty of opportunities

00:30:36.760 for um moving and retraining people um to these new uh new roles and by the way um we know how as a

00:30:50.280 species as americans even we know how to retrain people on a mass scale and we do it in the military

00:30:57.560 all the time the military is fantastic at taking people who don't have many skills and giving them very

00:31:03.000 high-tech skills quickly in large massive scale so we have that ability uh what we need is the political

00:31:13.160 will to to do that okay um so the next trend uh you talked about book is flowing uh what do you mean by

00:31:23.960 by flowing well this goes a little bit back to what i was saying before about um the the large-scale

00:31:31.240 shift from things that were monumental fixed solid to things that were intangible and process and um

00:31:40.920 upgrading in in fluid and so um as we move from the solid to the to the liquid things have to flow and

00:31:52.040 there's a sense in which um uh the flows become more important than than than than the the fixed

00:32:02.520 stocks and so a a book in a certain sense

00:32:07.960 becomes less of a fixed printed object and more of something that might be updated over time have

00:32:13.800 footnotes or have some way you can interact with it or in some ways is uh is deepened by having

00:32:20.520 um hyperlinks into it um or embedded uh other media or ways in which it can be extracted and cut and

00:32:31.400 pasted and add um comments and so all these things that we have in the digital world are ways in which

00:32:40.280 things flow and um there's also the shift in the very culture away from

00:32:49.560 the fixed text that we had um in things like constitution law books the scripture um the great

00:32:59.560 authors that was the center of of of western culture and in eastern culture to some extent as well was was

00:33:06.440 the fixed page the text on the book the the immobile uh black and white precise letters on a on a on a

00:33:15.000 printed on a book and and we're now moved that during that time we were kind of people of the book and now

00:33:22.520 we've moved to become people of the screen because the screen is now the center of our culture and the

00:33:28.760 screen is this thing that that that that is forever changing is this kind of this this face that has this

00:33:37.640 flow of pixels across that are that are ephemeral that are passing that are that are moving never to be

00:33:45.800 the same and so there is a sense in which instead of getting truth from the authors and authority we have

00:33:51.960 to actually kind of assemble our own truth um looking at this network of related facts trying to discern

00:33:59.640 the experts and the anti-experts the fact and the anti-fact the counterfact where we're it it's a whole

00:34:07.320 different approach to deciding what's true and what we know and so that's one of the consequences of

00:34:15.880 this flows and as we as you do businesses as you make business as you make products we have to

00:34:21.080 understand that the flows is where it's happening this the sense of constant upgrades the sense of

00:34:29.480 the fleeting ephemeral so we move to you know up um twitter facebook walls updates flows streaming of media

00:34:41.400 um this is in this this is all that movement of this kind of eternal constant

00:34:49.080 changing streams of things and um that's the reality of the environment that you're going to work in

00:34:59.880 and make a new product in and i mean that sounds though uh like psychologically and intellectually

00:35:06.760 exhausting that we have to go to all multiple sources and figure out what is truth so i mean how

00:35:13.800 i guess like it goes to your next point is like filtering is going to be an important aspect

00:35:17.320 of the future right yeah yeah you go to the constitution like that's what the constitution

00:35:23.080 says now it's like well i don't know because things are changing all the time i don't know what is

00:35:29.160 right so so so the filter the filter the thing about filters is like your recommendation engines and

00:35:35.000 you know your amazon you feel like this you like that those are all kind of filters or your

00:35:39.320 filter um you filter your your streams um by choosing your friends and who you follow but

00:35:45.000 then there's also the filtering that facebook or twitter is doing because you can't see all of it so

00:35:49.560 they're filtering and there's some the the the one of the many dangers of or the downsides of filtering

00:35:57.480 is the fact that you can um have something called overfitting which is basically um if you are only ever

00:36:03.720 seeing um that which you already like in other words people who like these things will like this one here

00:36:12.760 um if you're only ever seeing that then you kind of spiral into this sort of um cloistered

00:36:23.560 provincial parochial

00:36:26.120 um ignorance basically and you and you you in terms of biology you're kind of you're you you have 0.75

00:36:35.240 a local premature optimization you you you've optimized yourself onto a peak onto the top of

00:36:43.560 a mountaintop that's not the highest peak so you're stuck basically you get stuck and um

00:36:51.400 so that's the danger of all this kind of filtering so a lot of people say well we need less of it and

00:36:55.480 and then and what i'm suggesting is no this is not the trend the trend is that there's going to be

00:36:59.480 more of it and that the way you kind of compensate for this filter these filter bubbles and this

00:37:06.200 overfitting and this kind of premature optimization of being seeing only that which you already know you

00:37:12.600 like is actually other types of filters so we're going to see more and more filtering that is inevitable

00:37:21.560 what we want is smarter and smarter kinds of filters different approaches different ways in

00:37:28.600 which they relate to us different ways that we relate to them ways in which you try to know what's

00:37:33.480 going on and and it's basically a literacy a type of literacy and understanding that everything's being

00:37:39.320 filtered and we have to become good at it and um good at it means that we need kind of um tools

00:37:50.760 that will take us that will show us things that we didn't know we wanted and that's sort of what

00:37:56.120 we got in the old world with tv and radio where they were playing you were listening to them and there was

00:38:03.160 some producer or editor who was saying well we'll do this and after this we'll do this one because the thing

00:38:10.040 is cool and you weren't you had no control over that and that was actually part of the benefit was that you were

00:38:16.600 being told and shown new things and so we need to reintroduce some of those kinds of dynamics into our

00:38:24.760 digital filtering where we are deliberately um encountering things that we either disagree with

00:38:34.040 or didn't even know existed and um that's where we're going so so the short answer about filtering

00:38:44.360 was yeah there's filtering it's we need it because there is far far more being produced every day

00:38:52.920 than we can deal with i mean not just and a lot of it's junk but there's even far far more great stuff

00:38:58.360 being produced every day that we could ever pay attention to so we need ways to get through this

00:39:06.440 abundance and um uh there'll be sophisticated ways and we can constantly improve and there's huge

00:39:15.960 opportunities for people to invent new ways to do this um and uh but we're not going to get away from

00:39:26.600 having more more filtering so that's a non-starter is thinking well we'll just turn off the filters

00:39:33.240 no it doesn't work we just have to turn on more of them right that was interesting you talked about

00:39:37.960 how tv back in the 60s and 70s was you know introducing new stuff you never thought you'd be interested

00:39:44.040 but i thought like the early days of the web was often like that um i remember surfing around you

00:39:48.520 just end up in the weirdest places you can still do that now you can is it great there's a great page

00:39:53.560 calls like the the was a random there's a kind of a wikipedia of the day a random wikipedia page

00:39:59.320 it's like just go there and you'll find these amazing things you had no idea like this so there are tools

00:40:05.880 like that that can do that still um and i think we haven't we're not done with the idea

00:40:13.960 of having the kind of the strong producer editor who's curating a stream of things that are outside

00:40:22.280 of anything we would encounter and yet might appeal to us at some level and and so i think this idea of

00:40:31.480 you know like you know the magazine or the the show or whatever it is will continue because there's

00:40:38.600 still an appetite for having that really kind of informed cool curator saying you know how about

00:40:47.320 this yeah i know you like this one you like this one but have you ever heard of this one this is cool

00:40:51.240 this is cool and so we'll follow along to some degree in some part of our lives um to that so that i think

00:40:58.680 that that role is not gone and will continue and people will pay for that um you know in different

00:41:08.840 different ways okay so uh you also imagine a world where we're surrounded by screens like there's gonna

00:41:15.160 be screens in our mirrors on our walls there's gonna be paper that that's actually that are actually

00:41:21.000 screens um but people today have a lot of qualms about screens like you know we want to limit screen time

00:41:27.400 because you know screens make us easily distractible and anti-social yeah and i i do too i try to try to

00:41:34.360 limit but but it's it's um so there's there's another general rule about technology which is that

00:41:45.720 we tend to think of technology as anything that was invented after we were born

00:41:51.400 when in fact most of the technology that surrounds our lives you and i if we just look around wherever

00:41:57.240 as a listener just look around where you are most of the technology in your life is old it's

00:42:03.320 wood uh you know plywood maybe or concrete or um electrical wires there's a road outside um asphalt

00:42:14.120 there's it's ancient in some cases it's old and that forms the bulk of the technology in life most of it

00:42:22.760 and the new technologies is kind of a thin additional supplemental layer on top just like

00:42:31.880 most of your brain that you're listening that you're using right now to listen to me most of that brain

00:42:37.320 is reptilian mammalian or older it's um it's doing you know non-conscious things it's the bulk the

00:42:49.720 the majority of your brain is just you know doing things like learning you know to navigate to see

00:42:55.880 to breathe to to um react to you know hunger all those things and that the the layer that you kind

00:43:03.480 of identify yourself as this very thin layer of consciousness is a thin membrane around it's it's

00:43:09.720 it's it's minority it's not it's not a lot and that's the same with a new technology this digital

00:43:14.920 technology in itself it comes in layers and very rarely does the old go away so it's on top of

00:43:24.120 everything that's already existing so this new stuff is always going to be there in the context

00:43:32.680 of all the other things so we still have all these other options and so the screen

00:43:38.120 most flat surfaces i think we're going to go to the point where basically any flat surface

00:43:42.120 will become a screen because it becomes so cheap that you can you can make a wall out of it you

00:43:47.320 can make sight of a building you can put on clothes but at the same time um you know there'll be clothes

00:43:55.240 that don't have screens on them they'll be um uh you know there'll be areas where we go that you know

00:44:02.840 like nature that don't have screens and they will continue to be powerful for us and useful

00:44:10.680 because they aren't that because they're different and um uh and i think even though the screens will

00:44:18.760 become even more ubiquitous than they are and more important in understanding who we are um they will

00:44:26.360 always be in the context that we'll have time away from them that we'll come to see is as valuable as

00:44:32.760 the time on to them and so um the reason why the sabbath is a very powerful idea is not because

00:44:40.600 with the traditional sabbath was you didn't work one day a week it was not because work was bad it was

00:44:47.960 because work was good it was because it was you would keep working and so you you kind of we'd leave the screen

00:44:57.800 not because the screens are bad but because they're good because they're too good and so

00:45:03.960 we and we don't we leave the nature we go back to the city not because nature is bad but because

00:45:11.080 that difference that delta that shift that other way of doing and seeing the world

00:45:18.760 is valuable and that's so we will constantly add even more ways of seeing the world or doing

00:45:27.640 and the screen ubiquitous screen is one of those but it becomes even more valuable in the context that

00:45:33.960 we have say wilderness or or something in between a garden so i think while screens will become ubiquitous

00:45:41.240 taking time away from screens will become ever more valuable yeah so you think we'll develop uh

00:45:47.720 some sort of cultural hygiene i guess if you to manage those screens i don't think we really have

00:45:52.680 that figured out right now um you know i i think we're doing better than we than people say everybody

00:45:59.160 is wringing their hands over and everybody is sort of not happy necessarily with their choices but i think

00:46:06.360 if you actually look if you know people who have kids you know it's like they all all the families

00:46:15.160 with kids and screens are all um limiting screen time i mean in some fashion or another and they have

00:46:21.080 different rules i think i think there's a sense right now because it's a little brand new social media

00:46:26.200 is less than this is 2 000 days old right so it's like we shouldn't expect ourselves to have this figured

00:46:33.320 out yet it's going to take a couple of cycles a couple of revs to really understand what it's going

00:46:38.680 and i think right now we're just kind of you know people are saying well what are you doing what are

00:46:42.120 you doing is does that work does that work and and yeah that's we're doing this experiment right now

00:46:47.160 and but i think in general um everybody gets the idea that yeah you want to you want to limit it's like

00:46:52.920 sugar you just have to it's good you don't want too much of it how much is too much we don't know we'll

00:47:00.040 try it we'll try this we'll try that and um the other thing of course is that i think it's really

00:47:05.800 unfair to judge a technology strictly by how the youth use it because youth by definition are excessive

00:47:14.440 obsessive they're going to you know even if nothing else changed as kids grew older they would they would

00:47:23.720 use the social media differently just because as they aged and so we have all these dynamics going

00:47:31.240 on and i think that um the proper response right now is to be is to have this as an experiment and

00:47:39.560 to say i don't you i don't know what the right thing is but we'll keep trying stuff with our family

00:47:44.120 or with my friends or whatever it is um so i so i don't think of it as a problem i think of this as an

00:47:51.320 opportunity as as an experiment yeah i think that's a good point that last one because like

00:47:57.320 video games i played video games like all the time when i was a kid but i haven't played a video

00:48:01.400 game in three years yeah yeah exactly where i was like totally obsessed with science fiction reading

00:48:08.120 books you know i had my head in the book and you know there was plenty of uh of um rants from the

00:48:15.240 18th century about the old fuddy duddies um complaining about kids going up and reading books by themselves

00:48:23.640 those things it's just just immoral just the the um the mark of um low class you know whatever it

00:48:33.800 was it was it was completely frowned upon and you know i was doing the same thing i was i was uh lost in

00:48:42.200 escaping and i don't know i was just i was in this obsessive world of science fiction but then i didn't

00:48:47.320 read any for for a couple decades almost i'm reading more now i'm coming back to it but it's i think

00:48:56.440 um there there's phases and technologies um appeal at certain different phases in people's lives

00:49:04.440 and we'll sort that out as we go along so another trend um that i think a lot of people are seeing right

00:49:09.720 now but you think it's going to accelerate even more is this idea of um ownership being replaced

00:49:14.920 with accessibility right so instead of owning cars you'll summon an uber or do a ride share or something

00:49:21.800 like that or yeah it has to do with again with this flowing state where we value services more than

00:49:28.040 products and so if you can have instant access to the good that you want anywhere you are instantly

00:49:38.680 then the question is well why would you want to own it because owning has a lot of responsibilities

00:49:43.720 like you need to back it up or clean it or store it secure it and so many other things that you don't

00:49:50.680 have to do if you're just borrowing it accessing it and so um in the digital realm it's much it's very

00:49:57.240 easy to kind of make that access possible where you you know you're connected so you could have a movie

00:50:04.360 book or music there's really almost no reason to to need to own it with some caveats and um uh

00:50:16.040 i'm probably pretty typical where i you know basically stopped buying very many movies or music

00:50:24.360 and moving to the place where books are almost the same way where you subscribe to this aggregator

00:50:30.120 a netflix or an amazon or something and you have access to any book music game movie that you want

00:50:38.360 anytime and then you just use it and uh you get it back and so the question was well can that extend to

00:50:45.400 the physical and and and uber is one example showing that it actually can if you can supply something on

00:50:53.800 demand even a physical thing when everybody when someone some is it that that can be good or better

00:51:03.240 than than owning it so the question is well how what else could you do physically could you do clothes

00:51:10.680 where you kind of don't own clothes but you subscribe to clothes and clothes come to you on a regular

00:51:16.600 basis and you use them and then they move on either cleaned or passed on or whatever um and so then you

00:51:24.440 know um uh could you have it you know with like one hour delivery with amazon and other kinds of things you

00:51:32.600 could suddenly have all kinds of things that are almost simultaneous looks like for many people having

00:51:36.920 something available within an hour is actually something that's better than what they own it

00:51:42.440 might take you an hour to find something down in your basement or in your storage container or something

00:51:46.440 like that and um and oftentimes the kinds of lines we have an hour is plenty of time to get what it is

00:51:54.840 that we wanted um that we maybe formerly owned and so 3d printing uh and other types of kind of instant

00:52:07.160 delivery all move in this direction where um even physical things would take on some of the attributes

00:52:16.680 of being better having access to rather than owning and of course even workspaces and office spaces is

00:52:25.960 and you know we have lots of startups who are doing the same thing which is why own when you can just

00:52:31.640 have access to something airbnb that um is available and in many cases is superior to owning and since

00:52:40.280 ownership has been so foundational in capitalism this is a big shift um there's lots of consequences

00:52:47.400 that we haven't even worked through yet of what happens if people

00:52:53.560 generally don't own things well obviously somebody has to own something in order to i mean there has to

00:52:59.240 be whoever somebody's owning these things that we're using there may there may be less of them in total

00:53:05.640 but there's still ownership and the question is how is that ownership distributed and there's lots of

00:53:10.600 issues but um that's where we're going yeah well you mentioned there there were some caveats that like

00:53:17.880 have been accessible what would the i mean when would ownership be like that would be better than

00:53:22.760 yes so so one of the issues like um for a lot of people like say with music movies and books is

00:53:29.080 the issue of um if they're taken away or modified and this is and we're increasingly seeing this like

00:53:37.320 i don't know uh i've been i'm one of the very first ever netflix subscribers so i've been netflix for a

00:53:43.880 long time but it's just amazing to see things on netflix come and go like they're there and then they're

00:53:48.280 not there it's like so you um if if if there really was where you had or was everything available all the

00:53:57.160 time that wouldn't be an issue but there is an issue where things can be taken away and so if you

00:54:04.600 have some um if you have so what i'm what i'm what i think is going to happen is there'll be people who

00:54:11.720 have certain areas that they really really care about and are doing something in and then they want

00:54:17.400 that ownership for control purposes um and um there's also the issue of like what you can do with things

00:54:25.480 that you don't own and that's another issue of um you know uh what they call them terms of service

00:54:33.160 and stuff where you're prohibited from modifying things um that because you don't own them and

00:54:41.800 that's that's something that i think maybe a cultural default i think that's easier to imagine um

00:54:49.160 um if if that really does become a problem then you would just have you know the the aggregators

00:54:55.320 would would would move to allow that um that ability to to modify um where i think right now what they

00:55:05.880 say is well consumers aren't really demanding it um so so that's so so the caveat is i think um

00:55:12.600 um there is this uh issue of removability and modification that you don't get with access but

00:55:20.600 you could um so so i think technically there's no reason why you couldn't make a system like that

00:55:28.040 um but but it does not exist right now yeah with the um why most of my reading is done on

00:55:34.600 ebooks on the kindle but there's like a book i really really really enjoy i'll buy a physical copy sure

00:55:40.280 right right and i think that if and again going back somebody has to own these things and so

00:55:46.040 you might own something that you care about and that may actually become the business or you know

00:55:50.600 it's like somebody will own an apartment if you can have airbnb somebody has to own it and so there

00:55:55.400 may so there'll be um you know people who like to own apartments and run them you know a lot of these

00:56:00.680 airbnbs are run by people who have more than one there and um they like that they they do that

00:56:06.840 they're good at it and so they will own that but the rest of the lives they may not own other things

00:56:11.320 they may not own a car but someone else who cares about cars may own cars and so i think um uh ownership

00:56:18.600 doesn't disappear i think it's just kind of distributed differently okay um so there's yeah there's a lot

00:56:24.120 of business opportunities there let's talk about the trends you are worried about and then and maybe

00:56:30.600 kind of end on a positive note that maybe things are going to be better than we think they are

00:56:33.720 how does that sound yeah so the kinds of things uh there's a lot of as you can tell i'm extremely

00:56:41.880 optimistic about technology i think there's far more opportunities than there are um detriments

00:56:48.520 but but i want to say that most of the problems we have today are caused by technology from last from

00:56:55.880 the past and almost all the tech all the problems in the future are going to be caused by technologies

00:57:01.720 from today so i i believe a very techno-centric view of the world i believe that each new technology

00:57:08.520 invention creates almost as many problems as solutions and so the question will you like well

00:57:12.760 that's just uh is that just a kind of a wash and no what we get out of that is we get um this one

00:57:17.960 percent difference we get slightly more um opportunities so we get we get the opportunity to even choose that

00:57:27.080 that we didn't have before and so i i see what the gift of technology is is increasing opportunities and that's

00:57:34.280 what i believe in but there are some um i mean i think there are some choices in technology that decrease um

00:57:43.480 opportunities and that's like weaponization when you make a weapon of something you're you're using it to decrease

00:57:49.960 killing hurting other people decreases their choices and i'm and um i think the weaponization of new

00:57:58.200 technologies like ai and robots is something that i'm concerned about and um i you know it's going to happen

00:58:08.360 and so one of the questions is how do we make it civil how do we

00:58:13.880 you know how do we make how we make these new rules and so when my concern about say cyber warfare

00:58:21.640 and that is that there's no rules right now we don't have any agreement or consensus about what's

00:58:26.360 permissible and what's not and that goes to like hacking at the nation state um the us is is offensively

00:58:34.120 hacking just like china and russia are but but none of them are admitting it and because there's no 0.94

00:58:39.320 no admission there's no agreement on well you can't do this and you can do that you can't take

00:58:45.080 out the electrical system and hurt or or the banks whatever and so there's no agreement and my fear my

00:58:51.480 worry is that there'll be some horrible disaster or maybe several before there's any ownership and

00:58:59.800 admission and movement on a consensus about what we accept and don't accept and so i'm concerned about

00:59:08.520 that that that aspect of um the ai and stuff is is as we weaponize them that we be civil about it

00:59:18.680 well kevin this has been a great conversation where can people learn more about your work and your book

00:59:23.000 um i have a website that's based around my initials it's kk.org kk.org um you know i post everything

00:59:32.520 there um you can find more about the book translations of the book um other things i've written

00:59:38.440 like a graphic novel about angels and robots um i have a cool tool site where we review one cool tool

00:59:46.280 a day um and then on social media i'm usually kevin to kelly kevin number two kelly um kevin kelly's

00:59:56.040 very common name unfortunately so kevin to kelly on twitter and facebook and i for me it's mostly

01:00:03.480 outgoing i don't read much but i do post um and google plus is the same i think

01:00:11.480 um so uh my best way to reach me is email which has been public for 30 years easy to find on my

01:00:19.560 website well kevin kelly thanks so much for your time it's been a pleasure thanks for having me

01:00:23.880 thanks for the great questions um and i really appreciate your enthusiasm for the book my guest

01:00:30.440 today was kevin kelly he's the author of the book the inevitable it's available on amazon.com and

01:00:34.280 bookstores everywhere you can find more information about kevin's work at kk.org also check out our show

01:00:39.960 notes at aom.is inevitable where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this

01:00:45.480 topic

01:00:56.680 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

01:01:01.000 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com our show is edited

01:01:05.560 by creative audio lab here in tulsa oklahoma if you have any audio editing needs or audio production

01:01:09.560 needs check them out at creative audio lab dot com we appreciate your support reviews on itunes and

01:01:14.360 stitchers really helps us out a lot so thank you if you do that and until next time this is brett

01:01:18.920 mckay telling you to stay manly

The Art of Manliness - January 06, 2017

#267： The Technological Forces That Are Shaping Our World

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