Kevin Kelly of Wired (and so much more) — The Modernist Society Ep. 12

Published in

The Modernist

2 min readDec 11, 2020

We talk with Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired magazine, former publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Catalogs, and co-founder of the Hackers’ Conference. Instead of talking to Kevin about AI, AR, or any of the other technological forces that are shaping our future, we take him back to 1988 to revisit one of his lesser-known books: Signal: Communications Tools for the Information Age. It’s a big, paperback, counter cultural handbook on self-empowerment, DIY education, and harnessing technology at a time when normal people did not know what the internet was.

We also talk to Kevin about his first trip overseas in 1972, and how it led to him bouncing around Asia for decades, taking the photographs which are collected in his forthcoming book, Vanishing Asia.

Finally, we ask Kevin–well known for being an optimist–to help us find the silver lining in the coronavirus pandemic.

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Here for your convenience, and in no particular order, are links to some of the things we talked about:

Wired

The AI Cargo Cult

The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

AR / Augmented Reality / The Mirrorworld

Signal: Communications Tools for the Information Age

68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, & the Economic World

Hackers’ Conference