Kevin Kelly Quotes

We are infected by our own misunderstanding of how our own minds work.
Kevin Kelly

Work, Minds, Infected

A brain is a society of very small, simple modules that cannot be said to be thinking, that are not smart in themselves. But when you have a network of them together, out of that arises a kind of smartness.
Kevin Kelly

Society, Smart, Simple

All imaginable futures are not equally possible.
Kevin Kelly

Equality, Possible, Equally

It's more along the lines of raising a child: we train the system to a certain range of behaviors that we find most useful. But then we let it go, because we don't want to have to be babysitting it the whole time.
Kevin Kelly

Time, Find, Whole

An organization is a set of relationships that are persistent over time.
Kevin Kelly

Time, Persistent

An organization's intelligence is distributed to the point of being ubiquitous.
Kevin Kelly

Point, Ubiquitous

An organization's reason for being, like that of any organism, is to help the parts that are in relationship to each other, to be able to deal with change in the environment.
Kevin Kelly

Change, Help, Reason

And they discovered something very interesting: when it comes to walking, most of the ant's thinking and decision-making is not in its brain at all. It's distributed. It's in its legs.
Kevin Kelly

Thinking, Brain, Walking

Basins of attraction, of self organization, show up as well in our complex social environment, in human organizations. Here again, while we cannot predict the result of any given input, we can say that it will likely fall within one of several areas.
Kevin Kelly

Human, Self, Cannot

But in a turbulent environment the change is so widespread that it just routes around any kind of central authority. So it is best to manage the bottom-up change rather than try to institute it from the top down.
Kevin Kelly

Change, Best, Down

But in fact, when you try to model that on a computer you find that because of the very structure of matter and of the chemical bonds that are the basis of every organism, evolution is not random at all. It will tend to follow certain paths.
Kevin Kelly

Find, Try, Matter

But when you are embodied in a location, in a physical plant, in a set of people, and in a common history, that constrains your evolution and your ability to evolve in certain directions.
Kevin Kelly

History, Common, Ability

Changing things from the top down works when things are stable.
Kevin Kelly

Down, Top, Works

Complexity that works is built up out of modules that work perfectly, layered one over the other.
Kevin Kelly

Work, Works, Complexity

Each organism's environment, for the most part, consists of other organisms.
Kevin Kelly

Consists, Organism, Organisms

Each system is trying to anticipate change in the environment.
Kevin Kelly

Change, Trying, System

Everything that we are making, we are making more and more complex.
Kevin Kelly

Everything, Making, Complex

In a broad systems sense, an organism's environment is indistinguishable from the organism itself.
Kevin Kelly

Sense, Systems, Broad

It has become evident that the primary lesson of the study of evolution is that all evolution is coevolution: every organism is evolving in tandem with the organisms around it.
Kevin Kelly

Study, Become, Around

It's generally much easier to kill an organization than to change it substantially.
Kevin Kelly

Change, Easier, Generally

Managers tend to treat organizations as if they are infinitely plastic. They hire and fire, merge, downsize, terminate programs, add capacities. But there are limits to the shifts that organizations can absorb.
Kevin Kelly

Fire, Treat, Plastic

Managing bottom-up change is its own art.
Kevin Kelly

Change, Art, Managing

Much of outcomes research is a systematic attempt to exploit what is known and make it better.
Kevin Kelly

Research, Known, Attempt

One of the functions of an organization, of any organism, is to anticipate the future, so that those relationships can persist over time.
Kevin Kelly

Time, Future, Persist

Organisms by their design are not made to adapt too far.
Kevin Kelly

Design, Made, Far

Share with your Friends

Everyone likes a good quote - don't forget to share.

Biography

Nationality: American

Type: Editor

Born: 1952

Links

Find on Amazon: Kevin Kelly

Cite this Page: Citation

Popular Topics

Friendship Quotes

Motivational Quotes

Inspirational Quotes

Related Authors

George Jean Nathan
Diana Vreeland
William Allen White
Horace Greeley
George Matthew Adams
Helen Gurley Brown
Bill Walsh
Herbert Bayard Swope
More

Get Social with BrainyQuote

BrainyQuote Desktop

BrainyQuote Mobile

Site

Quote of the Day

Social

BQ on Pinterest

Syndication

Funny Quote Feed

Love Quote Feed

Nature Quote Feed

About Us