Kevin Kelly Quotes (78 Quotes)

We had no rising water in our warehouse areas, and don't expect food inspectors to look at our buildings. There's no need for it.

This is actually a very important principle that science is learning about large systems like evolution and that futurists are learning about anticipating human society: just because a future scenario is plausible doesn't mean we can get there from here.

It was close, so it wasn't too nerve-racking, ... I was actually a lot better than I thought I would be. It's kind of different than practice right when I go out there and notice all of the people, but it goes away in those couple seconds.

It's generally much easier to kill an organization than to change it substantially.

On March 7, to get this packet of information is a little startling. Most of my immediate reaction is not printable.

The most interesting thing about change in the environment is that for the most part the environment isn't changing.

Much of outcomes research is a systematic attempt to exploit what is known and make it better.

He was signing a lot of autographs and doing a lot of interviews. But when he finally came out of the locker room, he had this huge smile on his face, and he hugged his mom and dad. It was the same old Steve that I had known all these years.

This year, Mardi Gras is a shadow of its former self, because its only 13rd of the city back, the rest of us are spread around the country such as myself. So it's good that they got together and held the celebration because it's a holiday, although it's not respected nationally, but like I said it's a shadow of its former self.

This is money in the bank earning interest, not bonds, not debt.

Everybody was telling me to stay relaxed, stay focused, don't worry about the first or second one, eventually you are going to get a third one. I was upset after I missed the first one, but I was upbeat after I missed the second one because I figured what are the chances of missing three in a row.

We're growing everything we do by adding complementary services above and beyond what we do for our client base and vice versa for IP's clients.

The current understanding was that it was impossible to predict how something would evolve because it was a very turbulent environment full of things interacting with each other.

Basins of attraction, of self organization, show up as well in our complex social environment, in human organizations. Here again, while we cannot predict the result of any given input, we can say that it will likely fall within one of several areas.

Managers tend to treat organizations as if they are infinitely plastic. They hire and fire, merge, downsize, terminate programs, add capacities. But there are limits to the shifts that organizations can absorb.

We did fine considering the weather.

All imaginable futures are not equally possible.

But in fact, when you try to model that on a computer you find that because of the very structure of matter and of the chemical bonds that are the basis of every organism, evolution is not random at all. It will tend to follow certain paths.

It would be a draw. If there were more things down here, even independent of a baseball game, sure, it's a good idea. It's someplace different to go.

Organizations get invested into a particular product. And sometimes the best thing is to stop making that product, even though it's profitable, because it has optimized at a local peak.

We tend to think of the mind of an organization residing in the CEO and the organization's top managers, perhaps with the help of outside consultants that they call in. But that is not really how an organization thinks.

The nature of an innovation is that it will arise at a fringe where it can afford to become prevalent enough to establish its usefulness without being overwhelmed by the inertia of the orthodox system.

They cannot allow this to die. We have a long fight ahead, but it's nice to start with a modest victory.

The most certain thing you can say about the environment tomorrow is that it probably is going to be just like today, for the most part.

The way that organizations and organisms anticipate the future is by taking signals from the past, most the time.

And they discovered something very interesting: when it comes to walking, most of the ant's thinking and decision-making is not in its brain at all. It's distributed. It's in its legs.

I tell him sometimes I didn't appreciate him as much as I should have when I was coaching him. But when I spent time putting together his highlight tape for recruiting, wow. His senior year against Archbishop Ryan, he must have broken six or seven tackles on a long run, put a hand down to keep his balance. He's got a heck of a will not to be tackled.

Each system is trying to anticipate change in the environment.