Do we shape tech or does it shape us? Turns out it is both. And that is just 1 of the 12 big ideas Kevin Kelly explores in his latest bestseller, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future. The Inevitable is a playbook to guide us through the seismic changes in life and work, caused by technologies becoming exponentially faster and smarter.

Kelly, Co-founder, former Executive Editor, and now Senior Maverick at Wired Magazine, takes us on a futuristic -- and highly believable ride -- from start to finish. Former publisher and editor of Whole Earth Review and Cool Tools, he is the author of other thought-provoking and visionary books, like New Rules for the New Economy, Out of Control, The Silver Cord, and What Technology Wants.

Kelly embodies what it means to be curious!

In this interview, we talk about:

Why continual tech upgrades will make us perpetual newbies
Why Kevin favors protopia, instead of utopia or dystopia
What it means to cognify
Why artificial intelligence is a feature, not a bug
Why we want and need the different kinds of intelligence that comes with AI
How we will work with robots to solve big problems
How robots will free us up to be artists, scientists, inventors, and creatives
How many of our jobs will be to invent jobs for the robots around us
How our technology places us in streams and flows that are dynamic, interactive, and chronological
Why personalization and immediacy will be better than free
How filters may negotiate on our behalf and sharpen our understanding of who we are
Why virtual reality is about presence and, more importantly, interactivity
Why one day anything that is not interactive will be considered broken
How interactivity will one day extend beyond our bodies to our emotions, facial expressions, voices, and more
Why if it matters, we will be able to tell whether it is human or nonhuman
Why tracking is inevitable and transparency around our data is a must
What Kevin means by covalence when it comes to our data
How we will come to a deeper, more nuanced understanding of privacy
Two things Kevin worries about
As AIs become more capable and integrated into our lives, how will we treat them?
As cyber conflicts and cyber wars continue, what rules will we establish?
How will our technology change us?
The importance of thinking much longer term than a generation or a corporate quarter
What a global government might look like and how we might get there

Selected Links to Topics Mentioned

@kevin2kelly

http://kk.org/

Wired

Whole Earth Review

Protopia

Game of Thrones

The Third Wave by Steve Case

The Quantified Self

The Fitbit

Blockchain

Bitcoin

Boston Dynamics Quadrupeds

Star Trek

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Thank you to Emmy-award-winning Creative Director Vanida Vae for designing the Curious Minds logo, and thank you to Rob Mancabelli for all of his production expertise!

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