07 June 2006

Kevin Kelly - Collected Quotes

"A network nurtures small failures in order that large failures don't happen as often." (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 1995)

"An event is not triggered by a chain of being, but by a field of causes spreading horizontally, like creeping tide." (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 1995)

"Artificial complex systems will be deliberately infused with organic principles simply to keep them going." (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 1995)

"At the other far extreme, we find many systems ordered as a patchwork of parallel operations, very much as in the neural network of a brain or in a colony of ants. Action in these systems proceeds in a messy cascade of interdependent events. Instead of the discrete ticks of cause and effect that run a clock, a thousand clock springs try to simultaneously run a parallel system. Since there is no chain of command, the particular action of any single spring diffuses into the whole, making it easier for the sum of the whole to overwhelm the parts of the whole. What emerges from the collective is not a series of critical individual actions but a multitude of simultaneous actions whose collective pattern is far more important. This is the swarm model." (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 1995)

"Complexity must be grown from simple systems that already work." (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 1995)

"Dumb parts, properly constituted into a swarm, yield smart results." (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 1995)

"Evolution is a technological, mathematical, informational, and biological process rolled into one. It could almost be said to be a law of physics, a principle that reigns over all created multitudes, whether they have genes or not." (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 1995)

"If machines knew as much about each other as we know about each other (even in our privacy), the ecology of machines would be indomitable." (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 1995)

"It has long been appreciated by science that large numbers behave differently than small numbers. Mobs breed a requisite measure of complexity for emergent entities. The total number of possible interactions between two or more members accumulates exponentially as the number of members increases. At a high level of connectivity, and a high number of members, the dynamics of mobs takes hold. " (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 1995)

"Swarm systems generate novelty for three reasons: (1) They are 'sensitive to initial conditions' - a scientific shorthand for saying that the size of the effect is not proportional to the size of the cause - so they can make a surprising mountain out of a molehill. (2) They hide countless novel possibilities in the exponential combinations of many interlinked individuals. (3) They don’t reckon individuals, so therefore individual variation and imperfection can be allowed. In swarm systems with heritability, individual variation and imperfection will lead to perpetual novelty, or what we call evolution." (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 1995)

"The central act of the coming era is to connect everything to everything." (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 1995)

"The hardest lesson for humans to learn: that organic complexity will entail organic time." (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 1995)

"The only organization capable of unprejudiced growth, or unguided learning, is a network. All other topologies limit what can happen." (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 1995)

"The work of managing a natural environment is inescapably a work of local knowledge." (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 1995) 

"The world of our own making has become so complicated that we must turn to the world of the born to understand how to manage it." (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 1995)

"To err is human; to manage error is system." (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 1995)

"When everything is connected to everything in a distributed network, everything happens at once. When everything happens at once, wide and fast moving problems simply route around any central authority. Therefore overall governance must arise from the most humble interdependent acts done locally in parallel, and not from a central command. A mob can steer itself, and in the territory of rapid, massive, and heterogeneous change, only a mob can steer. To get something from nothing, control must rest at the bottom within simplicity. " (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 1995)

"A standalone object, no matter how well designed, has limited potential for new weirdness. A connected object, one that is a node in a network that interacts in some way with other nodes, can give birth to a hundred unique relationships that it never could do while unconnected. Out of this tangle of possible links come myriad new niches for innovations and interactions." (Kevin Kelly, "New Rules for the New Economy: 10 radical strategies for a connected world", 1998)

"All things being equal, choose technology that connects. […] This aspect of technology has increasing importance, at times overshadowing such standbys as speed and price. If you are in doubt about what technology to purchase, get the stuff that will connect the most widely, the most often, and in the most ways. Avoid anything that resembles an island, no matter how well endowed that island is." (Kevin Kelly, "New Rules for the New Economy: 10 radical strategies for a connected world", 1998) 

"Any network has two ingredients: nodes and connections. In the grand network we are now assembling, the size of the nodes is collapsing while the quantity and quality of the connections are exploding." (Kevin Kelly, "New Rules for the New Economy: 10 radical strategies for a connected world", 1998)

"At present, there is far more to be gained by pushing the boundaries of what can be done by the bottom than by focusing on what can be done at the top. When it comes to control, there is plenty of room at the bottom. What we are discovering is that peer-based networks with millions of parts, minimal oversight, and maximum connection among them can do far more than anyone ever expected. We don’t yet know what the limits of decentralization are." (Kevin Kelly, "New Rules for the New Economy: 10 radical strategies for a connected world", 1998)

"Don’t solve problems; pursue opportunities. […] In both the short and long term, our ability to solve social and economic problems will be limited primarily to our lack of imagination in seizing opportunities, rather than trying to optimize solutions. There is more to be gained by producing more opportunities than by optimizing existing ones." (Kevin Kelly, "New Rules for the New Economy: 10 radical strategies for a connected world", 1998) 

"Mathematics says the sum value of a network increases as the square of the number of members. In other words, as the number of nodes in a network increases arithmetically, the value of the network increases exponentially. Adding a few more members can dramatically increase the value for all members." (Kevin Kelly, "New Rules for the New Economy: 10 radical strategies for a connected world", 1998)

"Networks have existed in every economy. What’s different now is that networks, enhanced and multiplied by technology, penetrate our lives so deeply that 'network' has become the central metaphor around which our thinking and our economy are organized. Unless we can understand the distinctive logic of networks, we can’t profit from the economic transformation now under way." (Kevin Kelly, "New Rules for the New Economy: 10 radical strategies for a connected world", 1998)

"Technology is no panacea. It will never solve the ills or injustices of society. Technology can do only one thing for us - but it is an astonishing thing: Technology brings us an increase in opportunities." (Kevin Kelly, "New Rules for the New Economy: 10 radical strategies for a connected world", 1998)

"The internet model has many lessons for the new economy but perhaps the most important is its embrace of dumb swarm power. The aim of swarm power is superior performance in a turbulent environment. When things happen fast and furious, they tend to route around central control. By interlinking many simple parts into a loose confederation, control devolves from the center to the lowest or outermost points, which collectively keep things on course. A successful system, though, requires more than simply relinquishing control completely to the networked mob." (Kevin Kelly, "New Rules for the New Economy: 10 radical strategies for a connected world", 1998)

"The distinguishing characteristic of networks is that they contain no clear center and no clear outside boundaries. Within a network everything is potentially equidistant from everything else." (Kevin Kelly, "New Rules for the New Economy: 10 radical strategies for a connected world", 1998)

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