Kevin Kelly had a birthday party earlier this month. There was a giant bubble maker, a magic show, an ice cream truck, a toy train demonstration, and a man making balloon hats. Kelly, who did not turn 6 but 71, invited guests such as Matt Mullenweg, Hugh Howey, Stewart Brand and Jaron Lanier. The atmosphere in second grade was unintentional, says Kelly — “I was just trying to do things I thought were fun, and I don’t care about being a stripper” — but it was very Kelly, who has made a career and lived a life of applying a childlike openness to complicated issues of science, technology and culture. At a time when ubiquitous AI is looming, it’s an attitude we can all benefit from.
His new book, Excellent Advice for Living, attempts to condense what he has learned throughout his life into a series of several hundred aphorisms. Here’s one: “Don’t be the best. Be the only one.” He started putting these together a few years ago to share with his children, now young adults. It’s like Handy meets Household Hints by Heloise the Dalai Lama. The book contains exhortations to virtue, practical survival tips, and rewordings of worn-out chestnuts, such as “This is true: It is hard to deceive an honest person.” (WC Fields, your sack has been picked!)
As I leafed through his book, the accumulation of ghost grenade bonbons, as pithy and profound as they were, became a little presumptuous. I told Kelly it reminded me of pompous Polonius’s “Neither a borrower nor a lender” speech in Hamlet. “I don’t know who that is,” Kelly says when I bring it up. He does admit, however, that it might be exaggerated to keep hammering on his aphorisms in one session. “I think their original habitat is a little tweet online,” he says. Nevertheless, consuming his almanac in one gulp reveals a series of themes in Kelly’s thought process. Prioritize quality of life over money. Be nice. Be practical. Don’t let anyone stop you from being yourself. And always cut yourself off when using a knife.
Anyway, the book is pure Kelly, who lifehacking guru Tim Ferris once said was arguably “the most interesting guy in the world.” Kelly is a podcast star (appearing on 120 pods this year alone), an AI oracle, and a digital artist who posted a photo every day for a year. He’s the ultimate early adopter: computer conferencing in the early 1980s, a VR headset in 1989, decades of praise for AI. After dropping out of college in his freshman year, he embarked on a decades-long on-and-off tour of unseen Asia with his camera, which he self-published last year in a £30 three-volume photo book of 9,000 images. . (It sold out on Kickstarter.) His This American life episode – about finding Jesus in Jerusalem and expecting to die in six months – is a classic. He is a cult figure in China. Until the pandemic, he made most of his income from paid appearances there, accompanied by bodyguards to oversee the hour-long selfie lines that emerged after his talks.
He’s also – brace yourself for the Godzilla of revelations – a friend, who edited me, gave me some of my best story ideas, and came up with the idea of a Hackers Conference to celebrate my first book. Oh, and he’s WIRED’s founding editor-in-chief and continues to contribute as the official Senior Maverick. Thank you!
Gratitude unlocks all other virtues and is something you can get better at.
