203 - Kevin Kelly on Excellent Advice for Living, Playing with AI, and Staying Curious

Pardon the delay, as I’ve been gathering more conversations than I’ve shared. Future Fossils is about to go into the rapids with three amazing back-to-back episodes! The next will be with Jamie Joyce of The Society Library and then it’s Greg Thomas of The Jazz Leadership Project with producer/futurist Stephanie Lepp (formerly The Center for Humane Technology and The Institute for Cultural Evolution). BUT FIRST! Our guest for this episode is technologist, best-selling author, and WIRED founder Kevin Kelly, who sits on the board of one of my most-beloved projects, The Long Now Foundation (I wrote a bunch of pieces for their blog that you can find here and presented at their 2020 Ignite Talks here). I had Kevin on in episodes 128 to discuss his thoughts on the evolution of technology and augmented reality in particular, and again in 165 to discuss his book Vanishing Asia and the tensions between the economic opportunity and ecological/cultural erosion of urbanization, but today we’re having a far more grounded conversation about the wisdom he’s accumulated in his 71 years of living — much of which he has generously encapsulated for us in his latest book, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier. We also meander into banter about cognitive pluralism and the tango with generative AI, with specific references to rants here and here. Kevin’s a treasure. I’m honored to share this with you. ✨ Support Future Fossils: Subscribe anywhere you go for podcasts. Subscribe to the podcast PLUS essays, music, and news on Substack or Patreon.Buy my original paintings or commission new work. Buy my music on Bandcamp! (This episode features “Throwing Sparks” and “Delta Pavonis.”) Or if you’re into lo-fi audio, follow me and my listening recommendations on Spotify. This conversation continues with lively and respectful interaction every single day in the members-only Facebook Group and public-facing Discord Server (with patron channels). Join us! The next Jurassic Park Book Club call will be on June 13th at 3 pm Mountain! I’ll share the call link to Discord. ✨ Tip Jars: @futurefossils on Venmo$manfredmacx on CashAppmichaelgarfield on PayPal ✨ Affiliate Links: • Find all the books I mention in the show at the Future Fossils Bookshop.org page! • Podium.Page is a very cool new AI service for podcast show notes I’m happy to endorse. Sign up here and get three free hours and 50% off your first month. • BioTech Life Sciences makes anti-aging and performance enhancement formulas that work directly at the level of cellular nutrition, both for ingestion and direct topical application. I’m a firm believer in keeping NAD+ levels up and their skin solution helped me erase a year of pandemic burnout from my face. • Help regulate stress, get better sleep, recover from exercise, and/or stay alert and focused without stimulants, with the Apollo Neuro wearable. I have one and while I don’t wear it all the time, when I do it’s sober healthy drugs. • Musicians, let me recommend you get yourself a Jamstik Studio, the coolest MIDI guitar I’ve ever played. I LOVE mine. You can hear it playing all the synths on my song about Jurassic Park (and that’s a link to a new AI music video). ✨ And listen, folks…if you haven’t seen my AI music videos yet…get on it: This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe