For me and many other new economy maniacs, Kevin Kelly was the Guru of the nineties. He was the founder of the cult magazin WIRED (which
is still an important source of inspiration for my future scenarios),
and the first to write a popular book about how complexity theory will
influence our daily life, 8 year before Michael Crichton published the
first nanotechnology fiction book (M. Crichton, 2002: PREY). Out of Control,
Kelly's first book, published in 1994 was a sometimes dark, sometimes
optimistic scenario of the fundamental impact technology will continue
to have on our societies, and for me as important as Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics.
Want to have a taste of Kevin Kelly?
"The future of machines is biology."
"An event is not triggered by a chain of being,
but by a field of causes spreading horizontally, like creeping tide."
"We don't have a word for learning and teaching
at the same time, but our schooling would improve if we did."
"One can imagine the future shape of
companies by stretching them until they are pure
network. It will be hard at times to tell who is working for whom."
(taken from Kevin Kelly, 1994: Out of Contol
The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems,
and the Economic World)
The second and equally important book was
New Rules for the New Economy (1998): 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World which described the Age of the New Economy:
The
dynamic of our society, and particularly our new economy, will
increasingly obey the logic of networks. Understanding how networks
work will be the key to understanding how the economy works.
The
great benefits reaped by the new economy in the coming decades will be
due in large part to exploring and exploiting the power of
decentralised and autonomous networks.
Mathematics
says the sum value of a network increases as the square of the number
of members. In other words, as the number of nodes in a network
increases arithmetically, the value of the network increases
exponentially. Adding a few more members can dramatically increase the
value of the network.
I
haven't looked for Kevin Kelly for years. His star sunk with the burst
of the dotcom bubble because he was the God of the NewTechies.
Revisiting his books shows that his ideas from the nineties point to
the future, there time is yet to come. He was (maybe still is) a
visionary. The first Internet economy was just the start. The latest
economic developments - symbolized by the latest buzz word
Web2.0
shows that Kelly was not fully understood at his time. His theses are
more valid and important as they were 10 years ago. The age of the
network company has just started. I have a lot to report how this will
impact organizations and the work of change facilitators.