Kevin Kelly
The Inevitable
Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future
Viking, 2016
What's inside?
Twelve “trajectories” of technology are accelerating the world to “impossible” horizons.
Recommendation
Developing technologies are bending toward certain “trajectories” that seem likely to take the world to uncharted realms in the decades ahead. Though they don’t yield to detailed forecasting, these accelerating forces are carving out interconnected channels of societal change. Technology guru Kevin Kelly describes 12 of the most potent irresistible forces, conveying his message with insight based on immersion in cyberculture. People “screen” instead of reading. They “flow,” “access” and “share” instead of buying and owning. While accepting some of the negatives, he finds optimism and opportunity at this unparalleled “beginning” of the human-machine civilization. getAbstract recommends his provocative report to innovators, technologists, investors, entrepreneurs, futurists, VCs and progressive “hackers” of culture, business and life.
Summary
About the Author
Cyberculture writer and editor Kevin Kelly worked with Stewart Brand on the Whole Earth Catalog, The Whole Earth Review and Signal. In 1992, Kelly became executive editor of Wired magazine, where he is now “senior maverick.” He also wrote New Rules for the New Economy and What Technology Wants.
Comment on this summary
This all means that the world he describes is good for people, who are boring, bored with themselves, and thus easily bored. They have not been taught or trained to have patience, or to look for further and deeper meaning by re-exploring things. They consume and move on, like locusts. Ownership of intellectual property is crucial to creativity. Why shall I create if I do not own what I create? I quit the Air Force RotC, because I did all the work and some male got all of the credit. The kids today may think that's cool. As a woman, who has had to fight her way through the good-old-boy crap, I am disgusted.