Usually when I see a list of quotes, there might be one or two that I like. Here they are all zingers:

• “I’ve always been very careful never to predict anything that has not already happened.” — Marshall McLuhan

• “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” — Dorothy Parker

• “Decisions are made by those who show up.” — Jennifer Pahlka

• “If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.” — Albert Einstein

• “Not long ago what we have today was so implausible that nobody bothered to say it would never happen.“ — Marc Andreessen

• “The first 90% of a project is a lot easier than the second 90%.” — Tim Sweeney

• “If you don’t like change, you are going to like irrelevance even less.” — General Shinseki

 — Kevin Kelly

This is from Recomendo, a weekly newsletter from Kevin Kelly,  Mark Frauenfelder, and Claudia Dawson that “…gives you 6 brief personal recommendations of cool stuff”: https://recomendo.com/

Also from Recomendo:

Unlocking phone:

If you bought a phone that’s locked to a specific mobile carrier, you won’t be able to use it with another carrier until you get it unlocked. AT&T says they will unlock phones you’ve had for two years, but the process is so arduous that it’s never worked for me. They make it difficult on purpose, I suspect. But I’ve unlocked phones using an unlocking service on eBay and paying $6 per phone. I gave them the phone’s 15-digit IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) serial number and a day later they sent me an email to let me know it’s been unlocked. I have no idea how they do it, but it works. — MF

As I’ve said before, this is the 21st century online Whole Earth Catalog. Same M.O.: People like us writing reviews of cool stuff for other people like us. It’s embarrassing how many things I’ve obtained after reading about them here. These aren’t frivolous purchases; all the stuff is useful to me, stuff I’d never have known about otherwise.

I must point out I have a massive conflict of interest here. I’ve written a lot of CT reviews, and these guys are good friends.

That said, I periodically want to turn people onto this rich source of ad-free advice. It’s just madly useful. Take a look: https://kk.org/cooltools

Write a review and they’ll send you an email of new tools weekly.

I got interviewed via Skype (with which I’m not too comfortable, at least doing an intercontinental interview) by the BBC yesterday. A last-minute deal.

The Victoria and Albert Museum has an exhibit opening next week titled:

“You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966-1970”

“How have the finished and unfinished revolutions of the late 1960s changed the way we live today and think about the future?”

They’ve been working on this a long time; they came to our house with a camera crew about a year ago; then a month or so ago, V&A personnel along with four British reporters interviewed Stewart Brand and me for several hours in San Francisco. What were the 60s like? What role do the Whole Earth Catalog have in the countercultural revolution? Etc.

 Here’s the news program that ran in the UK last night: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p046zwdy

 Here’s info on the exhibit: https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/you-say-you-want-a-revolution-records-and-rebels-1966-70

“We’re at just the beginning of the beginning of the digital world for humanity, says Kevin Kelly.  But some deep trends have already emerged that can reliably be conjured with and braced for.  Kelly calls them inevitable.

The internet was inevitable, he says, but Wikipedia was not.  Smart phones were inevitable, the iPhone not.  The twelve deepest trends he labels: Becoming; Cognifying; Flowing; Screening; Accessing; Sharing; Filtering; Remixing; Interacting; Tracking; Questioning; and Beginning.

Kevin Kelly is the author of Out of Control, New Rules for the New Economy, Cool Tools, What Technology Wants, and now, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future.  He is one of the founding board members of The Long Now Foundation.…”

-Stewart Brand

“The Next 30 Digital Years,” Kevin Kelly, the Herbst Theater, Civic Center, San Francisco, 7pm, Thursday July 14.  The show starts promptly at 7:30pm.

https://longnow.org/seminars/02016/jul/14/next-30-digital-years/

I went to see the Rainbow Girls Friday night and thought they were fantastic. Great vocal harmonies, and they all kept switching instruments. After they finished, my son Will (a drummer) and I were talking to them outside the bar and Will mentioned that I had published Tiny Homes and one of them screamed, “Oh I love that book!” Pretty soon we were hanging out with all 4 of them. They all knew at least one of our books.

Check them out:

People in Oregon: they’ll be there August 26th-30th: https://www.rainbowgirlsmusic.com/