"...and you’re off to the manufactured normalcy races, where nobody wins because everyone goes to fucking sleep."
Quote from a keynote he did in September 2012. So we are already in the future, looking back and forward again. Would have loved to seen it as a video, but well worth reading in full.
The main takeaway (for me) is about how we need ideas to push us to make reality. Slapping a Hello Kitty case on a phone isn't innovation. But making a phone so slimmed down it almost NEEDS a case to protect it is.
It is the wild ideas and visions from art, books, movies that push us to try to make a different tomorrow.
Kevin Kelly touched upon a similar vibe in the 20 years celebration issue of Wired, it is about spreading ideas and opportunity out globally, at scale. Change the world one byte at a time. And if you can envision a better tomorrow, then somebody else is probably impatient enough to try to make it next week rather than next year.
The same idea was a foundation for the Ridley Scott show "Prophets of Science Ficiton" on Science, covering greats like Jules Verne, Asimov, Heinlein, Clark. How reading their books prompted a lot of people to not only study science, but try to make it a reality. And preferably before someone else did it. Not enough to get to the Moon, it has to be first, fastest, longest.
Because, if we settle for JUST pushing the button 3px to the left, we risk loosing that drive, the competition and the dream of a new tomorrow.
