Skip to content

Kevin Kelly Quotes

born 1952 United States

Kevin Kelly (born 1952) is the founding executive editor of Wired magazine, and a former editor/publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog. Kelly is considered an expert in digital culture, and is said to have helped make technology part of popular culture.

United States
Activists
Businesspeople
Editors
Environmentalists

Also known as: Kevin Kelly

Random Kevin Kelly quote

141 quotes

The network economy is founded on technology, but can only be built on relationships. It starts with chips and ends with trust.

New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

It takes a village to make a mall. Community precedes commerce.

New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

Change comes in various wavelengths. There are changes in the game, changes in the rules of the game, and changes in how the rules are changed.

New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

One can imagine the future shape of companies by stretching them until they are pure network. It will be hard at times to tell who is working for whom.

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995)

Communication – which in the end is what the digital technology and media are all about – is not just a sector of the economy. Communication IS the economy.

New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

The "I" of a vivisystem is a ghost. Like the transient form of a whirlpool held upright by a million spinning atoms of water, it can be scattered with a fingertip.

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995)

Following the free also works in the other direction. If one way to increase product value is to make products free, then many things now free may contain potential value not yet perceived.

New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

Privacy is a type of conversation. Firms should view privacy not as some inconvenient obsession of customers that must be snuck around but more as a way to cultivate a genuine relationship.

New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

Without some element of governance from the top, bottom-up control will freeze when options are many. Without some element of leadership, the many at the bottom will be paralysed with choices.

New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

In the network economy, producing and consuming fuse into a single verb: prosuming. Since a relationship involves two members investing in it, its value increases twice as fast as one's investment.

New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

The great benefits reaped by the new economy in the coming decades will be due in large part to exploring and exploiting the power of decentralised and autonomous networks.

New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

We should not be surprised that life, having subjugated the bulk of inert matter on Earth, would go on to subjugate technology, and bring it also under its reign of constant evolution.

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995)

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.

New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

Expertise now resides in fanatical customers. The world's best experts on your product or service, don't work for your company. They are your customers, or a hobby tribe.

New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

In the network economy, ever-less energy is needed to complete a single transaction, but ever-more effort is needed to agree on what pattern the transaction should follow.

New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

Outsiders act as employees, employees act as outsiders. New relationships blur the roles of employees and customers to the point of unity. They reveal the customer and the company as one.

New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

In the past, an innovationÕs momentum indicated significance. Now, in the network environment, where biological behaviour reigns, significance precedes momentum.

New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

The dynamic of our society, and particularly our new economy, will increasingly obey the logic of networks. Understanding how networks work will be the key to understanding how the economy works.

New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

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.

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995)

The big will have a different kind of bigness. The network economy encourages the middle space. It supplies technology (which the industrial age could not) to nurture mid-sized wonders.

New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Kevin Kelly (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.