Hilaritas podcast releases Kevin Kelly segment

 

The folks at Hilaritas Press have released a bonus episode (above and probably on your favorite podcast app) with author and pundit Kevin Kelly of "Wired" magazine fame, here is the official show link. I have not had time to listen yet so I don't know the purported link to RAW, but I think Kelly's brand of techno optimism is a good fit with RAW's own philosophy, and I am a Kevin Kelly fan and look forward to the podcast.

Here is the official show blurb: "In this episode, Mike Gathers chats with Senior Maverick at Wired, author of the bestseller book, The Inevitable, Cool Tool maven, Recomendo chief, Asia-fan, and True Film buff, Kevin Kelly (@kevin2kelly) on his new book, Excellent Advice for Living, Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier, artificial intelligence, and more in this special episode of the Hilaritas Podcast."

Much of the advice consists of short aphorisms previously posted for free at Kelly's website, and I liked his advice well enough to bookmark it. When I went back to the bookmark the other day, I found that the advice has been removed except for a free sample of five bits of advice,  Kelly says this about the book: "I gathered the three lists, weeded out the weak ones, polished up the best, and then I wrote an additional 150 more bits of advice, until I had 450 of them. I put them all into a small book you can slip into your pocket."

Here is Mark Fraunfelder's post about the book,  with Mark's favorite ten pieces of advice. 

Mark Frauenfelder on 'Cosmic Trigger 2'

 

Cosmic Trigger 2: Down to Earth is my favorite underrated RAW book, so I am always happy to pass on a recommendation. Here is a sentence from an email from Boing Boing founder Mark Frauenfelder: "By the way, I recently finished Cosmic Trigger II, and was astounded by how relevant it is in today's uncertain world!"

One of the points RAW makes in the book is that technology has made life better for many people. When I think about current politics, I get depressed. When I think about advances in technology, I feel optimistic.

The above picture, a girl holding a flower in the style of Salvador Dali, was made by an artificial intelligence art program named Conjure, which I read about in Mark's Substack newsletter, The Magnet. I've tried making several pieces of art with Conjure, and the one above is the one I like the best so far. Below is another one that came out pretty well, when I told the program to give me a picture of a bush with berries on the Siberian taiga.

You have to pay to get all of the issues of The Magnet, but something else  Mark that's free for everyone is Recomendo, a weekly newsletter with six recommendations in each issue from Mark, Kevin Kelly and Claudia Dawson.

What Kevin Kelly has in common with Mark is that you can't go wrong paying attention to him.  Kelly just turned 70, and celebrated by offering "103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known." Some of his advice sounds like RAW, e.g., "If your opinions on one subject can be predicted from your opinions on another, you may be in the grip of an ideology. When you truly think for yourself your conclusions will not be predictable."

A 'long conversation' about RAW?

Kevin Kelly (Twitter account photo) 

I subscribe to the weekly Recomendo newsletter, put out by Mark Frauenfelder and others, that has recommendations on cool things to make your life more productive or interesting. The latest issue had an item by Kevin Kelly about "long conversations":

"A 'long conversation' is a new format for a conference. Two speakers begin a conversation on stage. After 15 minutes one of the two speakers is replaced by a new speaker and the conversation continues, and every 15 minutes for the next 8 hours a speaker is swapped out. (Each speaker converses for 30 minutes.) The day is engaging, unpredictable, passionate, diverse, informative, and entertaining. It’s a format invented by Long Now Foundation that is worth stealing. For an example, here are highlights from a long conversation held at the Smithsonian. "— KK

The item caught my imagination. It seems to me that such conversations don't have to last for eight hours, but that the idea could be adapted for a podcast lasting maybe an hour or an hour and a half. Topics could include single RAW works such as Masks of the Illuminati or single themes such as "RAW and Magick" or "RAW the libertarian." I don't have a lot of spare time these days, but I'm going to try to organize something within a reasonable time and see if it works.

Kevin Kelly was a co-founder of "Wired" magazine and has various cool interests.