May 212017
 

Please watch part one first, earlier this month. These two posts work better together.

My optimism for the pace of progress continues to grow. Kevin Kelly has had a front row seat. From TED summary of Kevin, Kelly has been publisher of the Whole Earth Review, executive editor at Wired magazine (which he co-founded, and where he now holds the title of Senior Maverick), founder of visionary nonprofits and writer on biology, business and “cool tools.” He’s renounced all material things save his bicycle (which he then rode 3,000 miles), founded an organization (the All-Species Foundation) to catalog all life on Earth, championed projects that look 10,000 years into the future (at the Long Now Foundation), and more. He’s admired for his acute perspectives on technology and its relevance to history, biology and society. His new book, The Inevitable, explores 12 technological forces that will shape our future.

Kevin, on the future, recorded in 2007:

 

How can you not be optimistic about how digital transformation will add value to every life?

I.M. Optimisman

May 152017
 

Humans often — usually, in fact — have failures of imagination. We often don’t see the next leap, the next stair-step of significant progress. I find that looking back, at the imagination of future-oriented thinkers, at a point in time in the past but with proven success in the present, gives me a brilliant jolt of optimism.

Consider this TED discussion by Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon in 2003, now 15 years ago. It simultaneously reminds us how quickly so much has changed, and how much more opportunity is right on our doorstep:

large_Bezos_Jeff_3

I clearly see that we are only in the second inning of wiring up the world. Do you?

I.M. Optimisman