Year 2021
I am currently raising funds for my new book Vanishing Asia. The book is a huge, oversized, 1,000-page celebration of old Asia. The campaign runs until May 4, 2021. During this time I am offering discounts for pre-sales purchases. Head over to my Kickstarter site for more details.
My title is Senior Maverick for Wired, a magazine I helped co-found 28 years ago. At most, I write one article for Wired per year now. My most recent article is a cover story about augmented reality called Mirrorworld. It describes what I believe will be what happens after the web and smart phones. My other published writings are listed here, in chronological order.
I have spent 40 years photographing the disappearing traditions of Asia. Some of the traditions I photographed in the 1970s are now gone. You can see images from the book as I post them on social media: Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook. This year I am putting 9,000 of my best images onto 1,080 pages in one book set. I have divided the pages into 3 volumes, each one 360 oversized pages. This 3 volume set is called Vanishing Asia. I am doing a Kickstarter campaign to make sure I reach at least 1,000 true fans. The books will be offered at a huge discount before going on sale on Amazon later in the year.
About five years ago I started a weekly newsletter, called Recomendo. Together with Mark Frauenfelder, of Boing Boing fame, and Claudia Dawson, our webmaster and my assistant, we give 6 very short recommendations each week. On one page we share the great stuff we using, watching, listening to, and tips we recommend. Recomendo now has 50,000 subscribers and we have published over 200 issues. It’s free. Sign up here.
I am creating YouTube videos. My first set are 36 lectures on the future that I produced for China Mobile. Each one is approximately 18-minutes long. I pontificate on the future of X, where X is anything from flying cars to genetic engineering. I am also creating videos of making complicated projects, such a toy bridge, or flower presses, or an ecosphere. The channel is called TRY, and it is a subchannel of the Cool Tools channel on YouTube.
Seven years ago I published my first fiction, The Silver Cord. I worked on it for 11 years! At 464 oversized pages, this huge book was fan-funded, the result of a successful Kickstarter-funded campaign. It is now available on Amazon. The Silver Cord contains two volumes of an epic story about angels and robots and a girl hero who must save the humans in between. The craftsmanship of the printing, including a 6-page fold out, is stunning. It has to be seen to be believed.
I refer all invitations to speak to the folks that represent me, Stern Speakers. They can help book me.
The Long Now Foundation (I am the co-chair) hosts a public seminar each month featuring a talk on long-term thinking. Past speakers include Brian Eno, Neil Gaiman, Neal Stephenson, Jared Diamond, Craig Venter, among the better known, and many other lesser-known but equally talented original thinkers. I often facilitate and ask questions after the talk. Pre-pandemic we hosted these talks live in San Francisco, but now we live stream the talks world-wide to anywhere with a net connection. All past talks are available online.
My further doings are outlined comprehensively in this narrative. My brushes with Hollywood are covered here. My history is recounted in this chronology. Details are summarized in this biography.
All my books and their translations can be found in this catalog. Official portraits of me are downloadable from here. Thanks to Joshua Swanbeck for the doodle of me, above.
I work in a sunny studio in Pacifica, California, along the coast in the San Francisco Bay Area.
I can be contacted by emailing kk@kk.org. On social media I am @kevin2kelly.
–KK