#96: Kevin Kelly on Artificial Intelligence and Designer Babies

Kevin Kelly (@kevin2kelly https://twitter.com/kevin2kelly) returns to the podcast http://fourhourworkweek.com/2014/08/29/kevin-kelly/ due to popular demand. Kevin continues to be perhaps the Most Interesting Man in the World. He is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine http://www.wired.com/, which he co-founded in 1993. He also co-founded the All Species Foundation, a non-profit aimed at cataloging and identifying every living species on earth. In his spare time, he co-founded the Rosetta Project http://rosettaproject.org/, which is building an archive of all documented human languages, writes bestselling books,and serves on the board of the Long Now Foundation http://longnow.org/. As part of the last, he's investigating how to revive and restore endangered or extinct species, including the Wooly Mammoth. As usual, Kevin's responses and answers are fascinating. For all links, show notes, resources from this episode, please visit fourhourworkweek.com/podcast https://rss.libsyn.com/shows/52710/destinations/fourhourworkweek.com/podcast This podcast is brought to you by Vimeo Pro https://vimeo.com/business, which is ideal for entrepreneurs. In fact, a bunch of my start-ups are already using Vimeo Pro https://vimeo.com/business. WealthFront https://www.wealthfront.com/ uses it to explain how it develops personalized investment portfolios. TaskRabbit https://www.taskrabbit.com/ uses it to tell the company's story. Twitter uses it to showcase Periscope https://www.periscope.tv/. Why are they using it instead of other options out there? Vimeo Pro https://vimeo.com/business provides enterprise level video hosting that typically costs thousands of dollars for a tiny fraction of the cost. Features include: Gorgeous high-quality playback with no ads Up to 20 GB of video storage every week Unlimited plays and views A fully customizable video player, which can include your company logo, custom outro, and more You get all this for just $199 per year (that's only $17 per/mo.) https://vimeo.com/business There are no complicated bandwidth calculations or hidden fees. Just go to Vimeo.com/business https://vimeo.com/business to check it out. If you like it, you can use the promo code "Tim" to get 25% off https://vimeo.com/business. This is the deepest discount you will find anywhere for Vimeo Pro https://vimeo.com/business. This podcast is also brought to you by Mizzen + Main http://mizzenandmain.com/collections/tim. These are the only "dress" shirts I now travel with — fancy enough for important dinners but made from athletic, sweat-wicking material http://fourhourworkweek.com/shirts. No more ironing, no more steaming, no more hassle. Click here for the exact shirts I wear most often http://mizzenandmain.com/collections/tim. Don't forget to use the code "TIM" at checkout. Enjoy!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start to shake. Can I answer your personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Well, we're the same appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 00

  I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Vimeo Pro, which is the ideal video hosting platform for entrepreneurs. And in fact, a bunch of my startups already use Vimeo Pro, including Wealthfront, who uses it to explain how Wealthfront works. TaskRabbit uses it to tell their company's story. And there are many other names you would recognize among their customers: Airbnb, Etsy, etc. Why do they use it? Well, Vimeo Pro provides enterprise-level video hosting for a fraction of the usual cost. Features include gorgeous, high-quality playback with no ads, up to 20 gigabytes of video storage every week, unlimited plays and views, and a fully customizable video player, which can include your logo, custom outro, etc. You also get VIP support. And you get all of this for just $1.99 per year.

• 1:05Tim Ferriss?

  That's $17 a month with no complicated bandwidth calculations or hidden fees. And you can try it risk-free for 30 days. So check it out. Vimeo.com/business, that's V-I-M-E-O.com/business, and use promo code TIM to get 25% off. That's a special discount just for you guys. So check it out. Vimeo.com/business, promo code TIM.

• 1:31Tim Ferriss?

  This podcast is brought to you by Mizzen & Maine. Don't worry about the spelling. All you need to know is this. I have organized my entire life around avoiding fancy shirts, because you have to iron them, you sweat through them, they smell really easily, they're a pain in the ass. Mizzen & Maine has given me the only shirt that I need. And what I mean by that, and Kelly Starrett loves these shirts as well, is that you can trick people. They look really fancy, so you can take them out to nice dinners, whatever. But they're made from athletic sweat-wicking material. So you can throw this thing into your luggage in a heap or on your kitchen table like I did recently, and then pull it out. Just robe it on with no ironing, no steaming, no nothing.

• 2:13Tim Ferriss?

  Walk out and you could probably wear this thing for a week straight or make it your only dress shirt and take it on trips for weeks at a time. Never wash it, it will not smell, you will not sweat through it. You gotta check these things out. So, go to fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, fourhourworkweek.com/shirts. Check it out, fourhourworkweek.com/shirts and you'll see some of my favorite gear, including the one shirt that I've been traveling with.

• 2:41Tim Ferriss?

  Hello ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. This is an AMA episode featuring the one and only Kevin Kelly. So Kevin Kelly, I've said this before, might be the real life most interesting man in the world. He is senior maverick at Wired Magazine, he was founding editor, so I suppose co-founder. That was in 1993. He also co-founded the All Species Foundation, a nonprofit aimed at cataloging and identifying every living species on earth. That's not a joke. In his other spare time, he writes bestselling books, co-founded The Rosetta Project, which is building an archive of all documented human languages, and serves on the board of the Long Now Foundation.

• 3:21Tim Ferriss?

  And he's a fascinating guy, so imagine, if you will, trying to revive and restore endangered or extinct species, including the woolly mammoth. Yeah, he does that too. So anyway, I have a previous interview with Kevin Kelly, which is in three parts. It's very long and we delve into all sorts of fascinating stuff and his background and so on, so I encourage you to check that out. That's fourhourworkweek, all spelled out, dot com forward slash Kevin. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com forward slash Kevin. This episode, however, this AMA, meaning Ask Me Anything, episode, which is comprised of your questions that were voted up on Reddit. And if you want to see future submissions like this, you can just go to reddit.com,

• 4:06Tim Ferriss?

  R-E-D-D-I-T dot com forward slash R forward slash Tim Ferriss with two Rs and two S's. That's where I'll be putting up more of these polls, where you can submit questions and vote them up and so on. In this episode, we ...on we, I say, the royal we, meaning Kevin, on a bunch of stuff. Whether that is AI, artificial intelligence as a service like electricity. There are a couple of questions that I really enjoyed his answers to. Specifically, what's the threat that no one is expecting? I think a lot of people will be surprised by that answer. His thoughts on startups over his 30-plus years of watching them. What is he afraid of? Does he think the singularity is going to happen?

• 4:51Tim Ferriss?

  And designer babies, which I also really, really enjoyed. There is a question about me in there that I swear to God was not a plant, but you'll notice it when it comes up. Did not ask to have that one put in. All organic. In any case, Kevin Kelly is a close friend. Much like the interview that I did with Rick Rubin, Kevin is a very, he is very subtle in some ways, and what he says has kind of layers upon layers. So, listen to some of his answers, and there are certain things that sound very short and perhaps even obvious in some cases, that if you contemplate for a minute or two, are actually very profound and have immediate applications in multiple areas.

• 5:36Tim Ferriss?

  So, that's all I'll say for now. I hope you enjoy this. It is a different type of episode. Let me know what you think. @Tferres on Twitter. And certainly also say hi to Kevin on Twitter. He is @Kevin2Kelly. So, Kevin, the number 2, Kelly. And that is all I'll say about that. Please enjoy, round two with Kevin Kelly.

• 6:04Kevin Kelly?

  Well, hello innovators, self-improvers, travelers, fans of Tim Ferriss, citizens of the future, and Rediturs. This is Kevin Kelly. Thank you, Tim, for having me on. Another part of your podcast is always a privilege and pleasure to be part of your never-ending quest for betterment. I had before me a bunch of questions from Reddit on all kinds of diverse topics, and in the interest of maximizing your time and mine...

• 6:41Kevin Kelly?

  I'll try to read the most interesting questions that I have useful answers to. As usual, the quality and volume of Quidditch is really amazing. It's as par with Reddit. The intelligence is really sterling, and I could answer almost every one of these, but I really do want to leverage our time here. And so I've gone through and marked 15 or so, maybe a few more that I think would be useful. I'm going to read the names of the people who have asked a question, but in the kind

• 7:22Kevin Kelly?

  of way in which a lot of these handles are deliberately ambiguous, I'm sure to garble some of these in trying to pronounce them, so my pre-apologies. I hope you know who you are. So, first off, a question from ZeroStyle. "If you had to invest your entire life savings into one area of technology today, which would it be?" ZeroStyle, that is just a really, really bad idea. You don't want to invest your entire life savings into any one thing.

• 8:02Kevin Kelly?

  Hundreds of studies throughout the decades past have shown that by far the best investment strategy is to have something that's much broader and not as much of a lottery as taking all your things into one specified investment, even in an area of technology. It's just not a very good idea if that's actually what you're attempting to do. But if you were thinking of this in a more of a metaphorical way in terms of a way to answer the question of where should you put your energy, or where should you look to

• 8:44Kevin Kelly?

  do some investing of part of your savings, then I would combine this with two other questions that people have asked. One is under a question from Letters for Reddit, who asks, "What future technology do I think will have the most impact on our lives that we don't see coming?" And a question from...

• 9:10Kevin Kelly?

  The Plank Constant, who asks, "What do you see as today's low-hanging fruit in tech or internet that will be analogous to the dot-com domain names in 1985?" And so I think I have a single answer for those three questions, which is sort of like, what's the next big thing that one might invest either money or time into? The thing that I'm most excited that I think is really just about coming is AI, artificial intelligence. And this is the AI that would be a service, something that you plug into and get, not

• 9:55Kevin Kelly?

  something necessarily that is roaming around in a robot head, but it's closer to web servicing or maybe even electricity, where you just purchase it and then use it in your product or service. And so this is in many ways kind of a very boring enterprise-level arrangement. It's not necessarily consumer, but I think, like electricity 100, 150 years ago, it will transform everything, and there is tons and tons of opportunities to take this utility and make it useful and into a business of some sort.

• 10:40Kevin Kelly?

  And there aren't really that many big companies that were generating electricity that made money. It was more the companies who made appliances, services, gadgets that depended on electricity where the wealth was made. And so I think the same thing, that there may be only a few companies actually creating the AI that's being sold, but there are 1,000 to 10,000

• 11:07Kevin Kelly?

  Different opportunities to take that commercial-grade AI that will be coming along very soon, and using it in some ways to make something new and exciting that hasn't been made before. And so the question is like, well, what can I take where I can add some intelligence to it, either a human-like or an unhuman-like intelligence, and make it interesting and useful? And there's almost no end to that. And so in that very broad landscape, I think there are many, many opportunities. And I think that it's completely unknown and unsettled, but it's also maybe not something that's going to happen

• 11:50Kevin Kelly?

  next year or the year after that. There actually is very few demos of AI that really are convincing right now. There's many hints of it. So this may be still years away. And if you were investing your life savings in it, you're going to have to go in for the long term. And if you were going to invest into it as a career, I think it's still something that you would have to understand is going to be years from now before it even has a huge demand for it.

• 12:35Kevin Kelly?

  So AI is what I would say is the next frontier. Question two from W. Luft. What is something, a certain habit, skill, hobby, that you believe can have a life-changing impact for most people? I think if you can read 10 books a year, all the way through, beginning to end, books of your choice, it would really change your life. And believe it or not, that's actually a big thing for most people, particularly younger people today, to actually accomplish. Every year, read 10 books, and your life will be changed forever. Question three.

• 13:20Kevin Kelly?

  What current technology used by Western society would you like to see become obsolete in the next 10 years and why would you like to see it out of circulation? That's a question from What Comes Up Must. So, I'd like to see the gas-powered, petrol-fueled combustible engine disappear. There's almost nothing that it can do that is not done better by an electric motor. And there's fewer moving parts, it's simpler, it's more powerful in most cases, it integrates

• 14:04Kevin Kelly?

  easier to the rest of our lives. The pollution is not direct, it's actually kicked downstream a little bit to the generation of electricity, which can be made much more ecological. And so, all around, it's better and I think I don't have to do very much because I think it's on its way out anyway right now, just from the general trends in improvements in electric motors, brushless motors, batteries. And so, I think we're near a tipping point where, all of a sudden, I think petrol motors

• 14:46Kevin Kelly?

  are going to be scarcer and scarcer, electric motors will become more ubiquitous. And we see this happening in places like China, where I go a lot, and the entire city will have only electric motor scooters. And we're on our way to seeing places where they have only electric cars. And I think that's none too soon and much better. And again, this is not just for greenie karma, this is because electric cars are just better cars. Electric vehicles are just better in almost every dimension.

• 15:28Kevin Kelly?

  So, I think that's upset and a revolution and a disruption and a displacement that I'm really eager to see happen as soon as possible. Next question is from Helpful Hank. What's the threat, either technological, economic, or otherwise, that's that no one's expecting? Well, it's, again, literally, there's probably nothing that no one expected. There's many people looking forward. But I would say something that's underappreciated right now, in the range of, say, a 50-year

• 16:04Kevin Kelly?

  horizon, is underpopulation, global underpopulation, that the fact that we're not very far away from having fewer humans on the planet every year. And a lot of people would say that's a good thing because of the way that we consume resources, but we're actually decreasing our resources right now very, very fast. But we're not, we're not, we have a dearth of people.

• 16:45Kevin Kelly?

  And places like China with one child policy and many other places, including Mexico, are aging very, very rapidly, faster even than the US. US is sort of unusual in the world for a developed country that's maintaining its population. Most places in Europe, which is widely known, have birth rates way below the fertility replacement level, meaning that every year they have fewer and fewer people. Japan is famously like that. And many other countries are on the verge, including countries in the developing world. And so if we take a global population where there's a, immigration doesn't help, it helps

• 17:26Kevin Kelly?

  the US but doesn't help the globe, this is a serious thing because we have no experience in human history of rising living standards and decreasing population. All our experiences, the last couple hundred years of progress, have all... Relied on increasing population. And so this is something that I think we haven't really dealt with, which is having an economy and progress, which is a growth of some sort that doesn't rely on population growth.

• 18:08Kevin Kelly?

  And so I'm very, very worried about that. What can you do about it? Well, if you have the resources, I think you should have as many kids as you want to. So this is a question from EC20. Let's see what you think about Tim. What's the thing that you most admire about Tim Ferriss and wish you could make part of your own life? That's a really great question. I think one of the things that Tim Ferriss does that very few people do well, which is he's learned how to discipline his learning. I'm a lifelong learner.

• 18:53Kevin Kelly?

  I love learning and I spend my life trying to learn new things, but I'm not really not very disciplined about it. I'm not very methodical. I'm haphazard. I do it in kind of a unplanned messy way. But Tim is the expert in knowing how his own learning works and dissecting his learning and mastering it and then refining in a very disciplined way his ability to learn. And I find that completely admirable, amazing. It is sort of a superpower. I wish I had it. And I'm trying better through his own examples and his teaching

• 19:37Kevin Kelly?

  to try and improve my own life. And so I think that it's something that really distinguishes Tim is his discipline, ability to learn, or his ability to learn in a disciplined way. Next question is from Mayus. With proliferation of on-demand apps and products and technologies in general, how can one approach adding value to the lives of people in the mass market?

• 20:10Kevin Kelly?

  I've hung around a lot of people who've done startups and have businesses, not just in this kind of current era of the last decade, but I mean, over the past thirty or forty years. And some of these businesses weren't necessarily high-tech at all. They were dealing with products, or restaurants, or food, or clothing, shoes. And the most reliable place that I've noticed people start is with themselves as a dissatisfied customer. They sort of, there's something in their own experience, in their own interests, that

• 20:53Kevin Kelly?

  they notice that's not being met. They have either an expectation, a desire, a want, a frustration. There's something that they have experienced, and they have a visceral experience as being disappointed by. And they set out to rectify it. And it's important that when they begin, it's not something, a craving to solve the mass market. They're not thinking of the mass market. I think that way lies madness. They're thinking very, very specifically about something of value that begins with them.

• 21:34Kevin Kelly?

  And then if they find friends, or other people, that also have that same dissatisfaction, and then they can solve their problem. And so it grows in a very direct way. It's not, they don't step back abstractly and think about, "What can I do that will interest the most people in the world?" No, they start with something that begins with them, some itch that they're going to solve, something that they're going to create, some value. And then they extend that in very slow circles from out of them to others.

• 22:15Kevin Kelly?

  And I think that is a much better way to start something than working back from saying, "I want to appeal to the mass of humanity. What can I make?" I think it's very rare when that happens successfully and much more common and saying actually to start with some dissatisfaction or yearning you have for you personally. Next question is from Schizm, says I'd like to hear very much something along the lines of what are you afraid of, which Vox asked Bill Gates.

• 22:56Kevin Kelly?

  I am really concerned about nationalism and cyberwar. Nationalism, I think, is a real disease that we need to overcome. It's, I think, I hope that eventually we'll be seeing this, something equivalent to almost like racism. The idea that one nation's interests should somehow trump or be sovereign over other nations' interests, I mean, it's a really crazy idea. It somehow seems perfectly normal for people right now. I understand cheering on a sports team, but we're talking about a different kind of stakes

• 23:40Kevin Kelly?

  in nationalism where one nation claims the right to injure another nation. And I think cyberwar right now is a little bit like that in the sense that we don't have rules, we don't have a set of things that we agree on are accepted or unacceptable. We do in regular warfare where we say, you know, it's okay to shoot a person, but it's not okay to shoot a civilian. I mean, it's okay to shoot a soldier, but not a civilian. These seem, again, in an abstract, they seem really strange that we would have the wars for killing, but actually it's better than not having them. And so...

• 24:26Kevin Kelly?

  Because we have conflict now moving into the arena of the digital world, we don't have any rules. We don't. The nations like the US are doing offensive attacks. Other nation-states and rogue institutions are attacking the US. But there's no rules that we have agreed on to say, "Well, it's not fair to cause the infrastructure to collapse, or a bridge to go down, or a plane to go down," whatever it is. So, right now, there are no agreements anywhere.

• 25:08Kevin Kelly?

  And I think what will happen is that it may take some really bad disaster before nations begin to agree on it. And I think that's unnecessary. We could begin to agree on that right now. I would say one last thing about that, and that is, nations talk about national security. Well, in the cyber arena, in the world of the internet, there is no national security without global security. There's the interests of everybody to have a network that's secure from hackers, which I want.

• 25:51Kevin Kelly?

  I don't want hackers coming into my computer. I don't want Russian hackers, Chinese hackers, US hackers, NSA. I don't want those people infiltrating my computer. So, I want security. But there's no way to do that nationally. You have to do it globally. And so, as long as this is a national issue, it's not going to be solved. And so, there has to be a kind of a global approach to this, which will require a surrendering of this idea of sovereignty in cyberspace, and agreeing to some kind of a global consensus.

• 26:34Kevin Kelly?

  And I think that's a huge step, but it is something that we're risking, because I think without it, we're really set up to have some really nasty occurrences, events, happen without such an agreement. Next question is from Stevenio101. How does your view of the future affect how you live your life in the short term? I think, how do you plan for the future when you know so little about the landscape you will be operating in? All right, so things are moving so fast, faster and faster and faster. How can we plan for our lives in the future?

• 27:18Kevin Kelly?

  And yeah, I agree, this is a real challenge. It seems very hard because one wants to be ready for whatever comes, but what we know is that you cannot plan very far and there's going to be a lot of surprises. And I think the, I think the kinds of things that you hear about on this podcast from Tim are all about learning how to learn. And you aren't going to know which programming language is going to be used in the future.

• 28:02Kevin Kelly?

  You aren't going to know, you're going to have to relearn and you'll be a newbie in the next platform that comes along. You're going to have to start all over again. When we have electric cars and electric scooters and everything else, you're going to have to learn how to use those in a different way. So this idea of constantly being a student, constantly learning is the default mode that we're going to be in. And I think anyone who studies jazz or improv understands that there's kind of a particular stance that you take where you remain very nimble and agile, which is one of the reasons

• 28:46Kevin Kelly?

  why I keep traveling so much, and I recommend that for others, is because it keeps your mind flexible. So that's one of the things that you want to do, is do things that will keep your mind flexible and agile.

• 29:01Kevin Kelly?

  Keep changing your mind. And I think the third stance is one that maybe someone who does parkour or any kind of frantic, athletic, extreme sports, which is that you are always looking for your next step, to place your next step so that you constantly have options. And that you don't ever want to get into a place where you restrict your options, where you paint yourself into it so you are bound and can't back up or get out.

• 29:38Kevin Kelly?

  And so, the kind of move you want to make, the kind of judo move, is you want to always be moving towards a place where you have increased your options rather than decreased them. And it's more than just having a plan B, it's having multiple plans, having ways to keep maneuvering, keep going, rather than banking everything on a single plan that is unlikely to come true. Next question is from MD163. "What's your definition of journalism? What does it mean?

• 30:23Kevin Kelly?

  And what do I think the responsibility of a journalist should be?" I don't really consider myself a journalist. I think if you are authentic and ask honest questions and try very hard to be fair and accurate, fact-check, go to the sources, go to the prime documents, that's what it's about. It's about being true and honest. And I think a lot of the other stuff that journalism claims, I'm just not that interested in it. There are some responsibilities.

• 31:04Kevin Kelly?

  At a certain level, if you have access to certain levels of power, then maybe you have more duties, but I'm really not interested in that. I am interested in using writing as a way to help me think and talking to others as a way to learn.

• 31:27Kevin Kelly?

  Communicating what I learned to others as a way to make a living. And some people may call that journalism, but I think of it as as writing, as reporting, as sharing. And so I'm not very professional in that sense. I haven't been trained. I don't think that way. That may not answer your question, but that's how I see it. Next question from M. Kraft 4100. You mentioned doing things that only you could do and being disciplined to continually act in this way. Could you please elaborate on how you look for such opportunities?

• 32:10Kevin Kelly?

  Seems competition can actually be a hindrance to one's greatest work. Yeah, I think that's right. But there's a second question that follows that by Maestro Boss, I think. Can you say some more nice soothing words on being in your twenties and being like this little wisp in the world before plunging into your career? Yeah, I think those two are very similar. So the one thing that I would say about it is that don't be in a hurry.

• 32:51Kevin Kelly?

  It's incremental. It takes a long time. I think some of the most successful people are late bloomers rather than early bloomers. Some people know and have a very good idea of what it is that they do and they can harvest that and the benefits of that early. Others have to try lots of things because maybe what it is that they do very well is sort of hidden and not obvious in the culture at this time. And so that's something to keep in mind, too, is that imagine if you were the world's

• 33:34Kevin Kelly?

  best internet programmer guy, you were born in 1950.

• 33:39Kevin Kelly?

  I mean, it would just be really tough because what are you gonna do? Well, you, it would take a long time before you maybe found your way to the MIT Railway Club and you realize that here in this kind of systems approach to the world is where you really had something to offer. So whereas now, today, it would be a little bit more obvious to you. So that's part of the challenge is that in, in different times, you're, you're actually, what you do well is going to be appreciated differently. So it may take some people longer to, to really discover this.

• 34:20Kevin Kelly?

  And I think thinking broadly and trying as many different things as possible is really one of the ways that you're going to do this. So you, you, it may take, again, lots of attempts at trying things that don't seem very obvious in order to really come across what it is that you do with ease and that you do that few others can do. Question from Jared James. Have you tried out the Oculus Rift yet? And if so, did the experience change your view of the future? Yes, I have tried it.

• 35:03Kevin Kelly?

  But it, it's reinforced my idea of the future because 25 years ago, I tried virtual reality. And while the Oculus Rift is better, it's not qualitatively better than some of the best VR that has already been out there, stuff, stuff at Stanford and other places which I've been trying. So this is much more consumer oriented and it is better. But I was already convinced that this was going to be world changing and probably the next platform after the smartphone to really take off.

• 35:42Kevin Kelly?

  And I think even before AI, or I should say the AI will be part of making this virtual reality and augmented reality work. So there's much potential, still a few years away from becoming a consumer thing, but I think the Hololens from Microsoft, the Magic Leap goggles, all these things, not just the Oculus, all pointing to the fact that there's something big happening in the virtual reality space. Next question from Sir Arthur Dane. "Inventing yourself, finding yourself, do you have some examples of people you know who drifted along the years without any clear goal and stumbled upon their life task by chance?"

• 36:27Kevin Kelly?

  Hmm, not by chance. I think there's lots and lots of examples of people I know who came late to finding their thing. But in between, they weren't drifting and it didn't come by chance. They came because they were working constantly, even at the times it seemed very remote from what they ended up doing. They were really trying to maximize and get everything they could from it. In retrospect, it looks like they were far from where they ended up, but often, this is the only way they could get there. Often, the things that they learned, serving tables, driving a bus, you know, being a salesperson, whatever it was that they were doing in between, was often crucial to what

• 37:10Kevin Kelly?

  they were able to do later on. And then they wouldn't have gotten there unless they had gone through that. I'm not talking about something fatalistic, I'm just saying that the idea that they were drifting or wasting the time in between was not really accurate. They were just late in arriving where they had the ease and success, but they were working hard all the way along, even when it seemed to be going in 180 degrees from where they ended up. So, I don't think drifting for very long is good. I think sometimes you need to clutch between shifts, and I think wasting time and doing

• 37:52Kevin Kelly?

  nothing is very good for periods of time to unloosen and unlearn things. And I'm a big, big advocate of, as I said, travel, vacations, goofing off, trying stuff. But I think the idea that you drift around for decades is not really what I'm recommending. Next question from Helpful Hank. "In what ways does technology..."

• 38:20Kevin Kelly?

  Have the power to make people happy. And in what ways does it not have that power? I think in the end, all this technology that we're making in our lives and adding to our lives and that we're creating and inventing and trying to sell and buy, I think the only thing that technology gives us that could be sensed or reckoned in the happy column is it gives us more choices. And I think more choices make us happy. So sometimes those choices themselves don't lead to happiness. People choose to make, to weaponize technology, to make a laser gun that shoots people.

• 39:03Kevin Kelly?

  But the fact that we have more choices makes us happy, and I think that's what we get from technology in the end. And so I think, again, this is about keeping our options, increasing the options, opening up, and making more options in life. And I think that's something that we get from technology. Next question from Colby Seance says, "How far will technology take us by 2020?" It'll take us all the way. Next question from Cy Renity. "Do you see any possibilities or need for a new mythology to arise in the coming decades?

• 39:46Kevin Kelly?

  Mythology which integrates our understanding of science and technology and the pace of change with the actualities of human experience?" I do. And I think it's a big vacuum, and I think that we are going to see new mythologies arise. And in some senses, I think the singularity is a new mythology. It happens to be a myth that I think is just a myth. But it's a very powerful idea that will never go away. And so in that sense, it is a new mythology. But I think we're also going to make other mythologies that are new and that are in, you know, supported by science and technology and that have spiritual aspects.

• 40:31Kevin Kelly?

  And so there will definitely be new religions in the coming 50 to 100 years, and particularly in places like China or Russia, where there is a real vacuum right now for something big to believe in. Because communism doesn't work. They don't have constitutions that they believe in. There's very few other texts that are foundational. And so even religion is sort of in disrepute officially in China. So this is an empty vacuum that's going to be filled with new mythologies. So tweets happen, asks, "Do you have any tips for finding one's purpose or mission in life?

• 41:16Kevin Kelly?

  The thing that only you can do, which we talked about earlier, for someone who's completely unsure?" I don't, other than whatever is said, which is, "Take your time, make new mistakes, try as many things as you can, travel to keep your mind agile, and understand that it may take you longer than others, but don't worry about that." So I have just time for two last questions. One from Saty Sauce. "Do you think the technological singularity will happen?" I don't. I think it's a myth, a very powerful myth. But in the sense of it being an AI that takes over

• 42:01Kevin Kelly?

  and makes another AI so smart that becomes, through immediate generations, becomes God? No, I don't believe that myth. But I do think it's a very powerful idea. And last question from Simple Goy. "What do you think will be the impact of designer babies in the future? Will everyone eventually become super intelligent, blue-eyed people?"

• 42:26Kevin Kelly?

  You know, I do think we will have designer babies in the future. I'm not necessarily people want, I think, are gonna think blue eyes are such a good idea when they can make green or purple. And super intelligent is a problem because intelligence is not a single dimension. You know, a lot of harm is done by really smart people. I think we'll begin to understand through these attempts to make super intelligent people that there are all different kinds of intelligences. You know, a lot of books are written showing that there's EQ, emotional intelligence.

• 43:11Kevin Kelly?

  There's lots of different ways to be intelligent and some of those are actually much more important than say being a math genius. And so when we understand that and when we try to make our kids intelligent in different ways, I think that that's a much more interesting challenge and it's not gonna be a simple one. And I'm not even so sure that we'll come to regard it as a desirable thing to do. I suspect, and I could be wrong, I suspect that what we'll end up doing is trying to

• 43:54Kevin Kelly?

  make each person have their own kind of intelligence. And that's just not a matter of trying to move some genes around. That's a matter of moving their environment, their education, all kinds of things. And so I think what you really wanna have is you wanna have your child have their own unique, special intelligence. And I think that's a much wider thing than just genetic engineering, although that will be part of it. So, wow, those were amazing questions. Thank you for asking them. I hope I was helpful in some ways. Thanks again to Tim Ferriss for having me on.

• 44:37Kevin Kelly?

  And I really appreciate your attention to my work and I wish you the best. Go forth and thrive, prosper and thrive. Thanks.

• 44:56Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday? That provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend. And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short.

• 45:38Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.

• 45:59Tim Ferriss?

  This podcast is brought to you by Mizzen and Maine. Don't worry about the spelling. All you need to know is this. I have organized my entire life around avoiding fancy shirts because you have to iron them, you sweat through them, they smell really easily, they're a pain in the ass. Mizzen and Maine has given me the only shirt that I need. And what I mean by that, and Kelly Starrett loves these shirts as well, is that you can trick people. They look really fancy, so you can take them out to nice dinners, whatever, but they're made from athletic sweat-wicking material. So you can throw this thing into your luggage in a heap or on your kitchen table like I did recently and then pull it out, throw it on with no ironing, no steaming, no nothing,

• 46:41Tim Ferriss?

  walk out and you could probably wear this thing for a week straight or make it your only dress shirt and take it on trips for weeks at a time. Never wash it, it will not smell, you will not sweat through it. You gotta check these things out. So go to fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out. Fourhourworkweek.com/shirts. Check it out. Fourhourworkweek.com/shirts and you'll see some of my favorite gear, including the one shirt that I've been traveling with.

• 47:11Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Vimeo Pro, which is the ideal video hosting platform for entrepreneurs. And in fact, a bunch of my startups already use Vimeo Pro, including Wealthfront, who uses it to explain how Wealthfront works. TaskRabbit uses it to tell their company's story. And there are many other names you would recognize among their customers, Airbnb, Etsy, et cetera. Why do they use it? Well, Vimeo Pro provides enterprise-level video hosting for a fraction of the usual cost. Features include gorgeous, high-quality playback with no ads, up to 20 gigabytes of video storage every week, unlimited plays and views, and a fully customizable video player, which can include your logo, custom outro, et cetera. You also get VIP support. And you get all of this for just $1.99 per year. That's $17 a month,

• 47:55Tim Ferriss?

  with no complicated bandwidth calculations or hidden fees. And you can try it risk-free for 30 days. So check it out. Vimeo.com/business. That's V-I-M-E-O.com/business. And use promo code TIM to get 25% off. That's a special discount just for you guys. So check it out. Vimeo.com/business, promo code TIM. And until next time, thank you for listening.