Kevin Kelly

Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists.

Renting a car is easier than ever today, even in developing countries, and oftentimes the best bet for getting around if you are headed for many places outside of cities. It is an option worth considering, especially if you are 2 to 3 people traveling. On the other hand, there are still plenty of places where you don’t want to drive because of chaotic roads, lawless attitudes, and unfavorable liabilities. In those places hiring a driver plus car for a multi-day trip is often a surprisingly appealing bargain—especially if you have 2 to 3 people to split the costs. The total could be less than taking trains and taxis, and you get door to door service, and often a built-in guide who knows the local roads and also local festivities and best places to eat. They will be at least 2x the cost of renting a car, but for some kinds of travel 2x as good. If you are a spontaneous traveler, a hired driver is by far the best option allowing you to change your itinerary immediately as mood, weather, or lucky timing dictate. I usually find drivers by searching travel forums for recommendations. I score candidates primarily by their communication skills. #KKtraveltips

As in any art, constraints breed creativity. Give your travel creative constraints: Try traveling by bicycle, or with only a day bag for luggage, or below the minimum budget, or sleep only on overnight trains. Mix it up. Even vagabonding can become a rut. #KKtraveltips

The most significant criteria to use when selecting travel companions is: do they complain or not, even when complaints are justified? No complaining! Complaints are for the debriefing afterwards when travel is over. #KKtraveltips

@zander @pootlepress Cool work and congrats on the placement!

@pootlepress I did the final renders for my design that was selected for this years Man Base for Burning Man with Leonardo AI. I started with a hand drawn sketch and then fed in some technical drawings and tree imagery and was able to craft renderings like this one from it.

Drop a comment with something cool you’ve built with AI recently. Curious what people are making 👀

When visiting a foreign city for the first time, take a street food tour. Depending on the region, the tour will include food carts, food trucks, food courts, or smaller eateries. It will last a few hours, and the cost will include the food. You’ll get some of the best food available, and usually the host will also deliver a great introduction to the culture. Google “street food tour for city X.” #KKtraveltips

Google maps will give you very detailed and reliable directions for taking public transit, including where to make transfers in most cities. #KKtraveltips

@mattyglesias I consistently find nostalgia for the "best times" to be the decade that the nostalgic person was 10 years old, which is the peak of human existance.

There are all these “why are people nostalgic for the 90s” takes floating around this week and isn’t nostalgia just literally always focused on the period 30 years ago? In related news, I got my son to watch “Broken Arrow” and “Goldeneye” with me this weekend.

Don’t balk at the spendy price of admission for a museum or performance. It will be a tiny fraction of your trip’s total cost and you invested too much and have come too far to let those relative minor fees stop you from seeing what you came to see. #KKtraveltips

@zeldapoem Good for you! Keep it up.

@kevin2kelly Agreed! That's me crashing a wedding in Bali on my first big solo trip at 18 years old

Crash a wedding. You are not a nuisance; you are the celebrity guest! The easiest way to do this is to find the local wedding hall where weddings happen on schedule and approach a wedding party with a request to attend. They will usually feel honored. You can offer the newlyweds a small token gift of cash if you want. You will be obliged to dance. Take photos of them; they will take photos of you. It will make your day and theirs. (I’ve crashed a wedding in most of the countries I have visited.) #KKtraveltips

@eliotpeper Doing research on animal intelligence 20 years ago is what got me to stop eating them.

Reading books about animal cognition like Metazoa and An Immense World is especially useful in a moment when so many people are trying to grasp machine cognition. If human intelligence is your only reference point when considering machine intelligence, it’s hard to draw interesting conclusions.

@Techgnostik That would make a great round the world passion trip.

@kevin2kelly Will travel for psychedelics

Organize your travel around passions instead of destinations. An itinerary based on obscure cheeses, or naval history, or dinosaur digs, or jazz joints will lead to far more adventures, and memorable times than a grand tour of famous places. It doesn’t even have to be your passions; it could be a friend’s, family member’s, or even one you've read about. The point is to get away from the expected into the unexpected. #KKtraveltips

@michael_nielsen That wasn't a theorectical statement. I was using Nupedia, which was its precusor, and it wasn't very good. It was hard for me to imagine that scale alone would remedy it. Also for the record I am far more optimistic now than back then.

@kevin2kelly "radical optimist" is a very interesting term IIRC, somewhere I saw you (and Larry Page, too, another optimist) say that at first you didn't think Wikipedia would succeed. I've always thought that was a real indicator of just how remarkable Wikipedia was (and is)

Who is the most optimistic person you know? (DMs welcome)

@michael_nielsen I do. It's probably in my profile.

A curiosity: I've met a lot more self-proclaimed pessimists than self-proclaimed optimists in my life I don't know why this is If you self-identity as an optimist, I'd love to hear about *why*. Do you share this identity with others? (If not, why not?)

Make no assumptions about whether something will be open, no matter how conventional. If possible check at the last minute, if not, have a plan B. #KKtraveltips

This is new: open source AI-powered military intelligence.

@ashleevance I don't understand the dilemma. If you can afford it, why would you have them go in a different class than yourself? Or are you asking whether they should sit in biz class while you sit in economy?

Should children ever fly business class (let's say for overseas flights) even if you're wealthy enough to afford it?

The Particle Consensus: Electrons for computing Photons for communication Ions for storage Quantons for simulations

If you hire a driver, or use a taxi, offer to pay the driver to take you to visit their mother. They will ordinarily jump at the chance. They fulfill their filial duty and you will get easy entry into a local’s home, and a very high chance to taste some home cooking. Mother, driver, and you leave happy. This trick rarely fails. #KKtraveltips