Kevin Kelly Quotes

The way to build a complex system that works is to build it from very simple systems that work.

As we get more transparent with data sets about infrastructure and systems management, I have a feeling we'll see big changes in how we think about complexity and our relationship to our actions.

One of the things that Java is good at is giving you this homogeneous view of a reality that's usually very heterogeneous.

To process and close models in 50 states and 2,000-plus counties with the myriad of, just, tens of thousands of different regulations, customs, vendors - it's a monster. So the only way to do that is with technology. It really is rocket science.

The belief that complex systems require armies of designers and programmers is wrong. A system that is not understood in its entirety, or at least to a significant degree of detail by a single individual, should probably not be built.

There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.

The computing scientist's main challenge is not to get confused by the complexities of his own making.

The most fundamental problem in software development is complexity. There is only one basic way of dealing with complexity: divide and conquer

Software is inherently complicated. If you say to somebody I want an airline reservation system, to really say what you want in terms of overbooking and fares, and different airlines communicating with each or schedule changes, it's immensely complex. And so you can't write a program that's any simpler than that full specification.

Let us keep the discoveries and indisputable measurements of physics. But ... A more complete study of the movements of the world will oblige us, little by little, to turn it upside down; in other words, to discover that if things hold and hold together, it is only by reason of complexity, from above.

Modern physics has taught us that the nature of any system cannot be discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each part by itself... We must keep our attention fixed on the whole and on the interconnection between the parts. The same is true of our intellectual life. It is impossible to make a clear cut between science, religion, and art. The whole is never equal simply to the sum of its various parts.

Silos can't interoperate unless the technology does.

Chaos has come to be associated with the study of anything complex, but, in fact, the mathematical techniques are directly applicable only to simple systems that appear to be complex.

It is never possible to understand completely any other human being; and no individual will ever really understand himself - the complexity is too great and there is not the time to constantly take things apart and examine them.

People who espouse Intelligent Design believe nature is so complex as to require an intelligent designer-God. Similarly, liberals believe the economy is so complex as to require an intelligent designer-government.

This is a general law of the universe, overlooked by science, that out of complexity emerges greater complexity. We could almost say that the universe, nature, is a novelty-conserving, or complexity-conserving engine.

I, and all the complex things around me, exist only because many things were assembled in a very precise way. The 'emergent' properties are not magical. They are really there and eventually they may start re-arranging the environments that generated them. But they don't exist 'in' the bits and pieces that made them; they emerge from the arrangement of those bits and pieces in very precise ways. And that is also true of the emergent entities known as "you" and "me".

Sometimes people are layered like that. There's something totally different underneath than what's on the surface. But sometimes, there's a third, even deeper level, and that one is the same as the top surface one. Like with pie.

A natural hierarchy is simply an order of increasing wholeness, such as: particles to atoms to cells to organisms, or letters to words to sentences to paragraphs. The whole of one level becomes part of the whole of the next. In other words, natural hierarchies are composed of holons.

Injecting some confusion stabilizes the system.

The hardest thing in the world is to simplify your life; it’s so easy to make it complex.

If there is no randomness in the universe, then what do we mean by chaos?

Checklists turn out...to be among the basic tools of the quality and productivity revolution in aviation, engineering, construction - in virtually every field combining high risk and complexity. Checklists seem lowly and simplistic, but they help fill in for the gaps in our brains and between our brains.

All things are delicately interconnected.

You show me a successful complex system, and I will show you a system that has evolved through trial and error.