Quotes from 2019

The Web, he saw, allowed everyone everywhere to develop the same otaku obsessions—with television, coffee, sneakers, guns. The mere possibility of such knowledge lay like a scrim over the world. A physical object was also a search term: an espresso wasn’t just an espresso; it was also Web pages about crema, fair trade, roasting techniques, varieties of beans. Things were texts; reality had been augmented. Brand strategists revised the knowledge around objects to make them more desirable, and companies, places, Presidents, wars, and people could be advantageously rebranded, as though the world itself could be reprogrammed. It seemed to Gibson that this constant reprogramming, which had become a major driver of economic life, was imbuing the present with a feeling—something like fatigue, or jet lag, or loss.

Well, here I am on the floor, he thought. Is life so much worse here than it would be on the bed, or even in a totally different location? No, life is exactly the same. Life is the thing you bring with you inside your own head.

Nobody truly decided for themselves. There was too much information. What they actually did was scope around, decide who was looking out for their clan, and sign on for the memos on a wide array of topics.

Technologies are not value-free. If you choose a technology, you are implicitly accepting the political imperatives that provide the context the technology operates within. If you want railroads, you must accept coal and steel industries, compulsory seizure of land for rights-of-way, standard railway time, and central stations.

Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay.

How to be more present, more mindful? Of ourselves, of others? For others? You need to build an ability to just be yourself and not be doing something. That’s what the phones are taking away, the ability to just sit there … That’s being a person … Because underneath everything in your life there is that thing, that empty – forever empty.

Software is not neutral. Different software embeds different philosophies, and these philosophies, as they become ubiquitous, become invisible.

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.

It is the nature of the idea to be communicated, written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass it craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows stronger from being stepped on.

Something we don’t usually notice—but which becomes apparent if we zoom out as far as possible—is that Google Maps is giving us the world in an aggressively distorted form. Google tweaks our perception by using a version of the classic projection called Web Mercator, which is identical to its forebear save for one crucial difference. GPS receivers translate GPS data into latitude and longitude points using, as reference, an irregularly shaped model of the world called an ellipsoid, which closely approximates the actual shape of the earth. Web Mercator considers the earth to be a perfect sphere. Google Maps receives latitude and longitude computed using one model of the planet, and then does its own computation to project it onto a visual interface that uses a different model.