Tony Judt:

The question is not going to be, Will there be an activist state? The question is going to be, What kind of an activist state?

The question is, What do we do now, in a world where, in the absence of liberal aristocracies, in the absence of social democratic elites whose authority people accept, you have people who genuinely believe, in the majority, that their interest consists of maximizing self-interest at someone else's expense? The answer is, Either you re-educate them in some form of public conversation or we will move toward what the ancient Greeks understood very well, which is that the closest system to democracy is popular authoritarianism. And that's the risk we run. Not a risk of a sort of ultra-individualism in a disaggregated society but of a kind of de facto authoritarianism.

Decius:

This is the road to despotism. This is the fevered dream of theocracy. This is America.

M.T. Anderson:

Every culture has its own characteristic mode of anti-intellectualism -- some stronger, some weaker. Our American brand, paradoxically, equates knowledge and complexity with boredom. Thought becomes shameful. Best if not talked about.

David Foster Wallace:

One thing TV does is help us deny that we're lonely. The interesting thing is why we're so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness. You don't have to think very hard to realize that our dread of both relationships and loneliness, both of which are like sub-dreads of our dread of being trapped inside a self (a psychic self, not just a physical self), has to do with angst about death, the recognition that I'm going to die, and die very much alone, and the rest of the world is going to go merrily on without me.

Tim Kreider's married friend:

It's not as if being married means you're any less alone.

n+1:

From the first, and in no small part because of its fervent supporters, it has felt less like a technology and more like a social movement -- like communism, like feminism, like rock and roll. An ideology we could call webism.

One of the mysteries of webism has always been what exactly it wanted, and one of the paradoxes that emerged during the long death of print was that the webists wanted to help. ... They meant this in all sincerity; their anger at the publishers for failing to "use" them properly was proof of this. But to urge the "use" of something was to think of it as merely a technology. It was to forget that the amazing and powerful thing about the web was precisely that it was not a toaster; it was not a hammer. The web could not simply be "used."

The web is not your dream of the web. It is a real thing, playing out its destiny in the world of flesh and steel -- and pixels, and books. At this point the best thing the web and the book could do for one another would be to admit their essential difference. This would allow the web to develop as it wishes, with a clear conscience, and for literature to do what it's always done in periods of crisis: keep its eyes and ears open; take notes; and bide its time.

Nir Rosen:

"You Westerners have your watches," the leader observed. "But we Taliban have time."

Pascal Bruckner:

A revolution comes when what was taboo becomes mainstream.

Decius:

Money for me, databases for you.

danah boyd:

Never forget that Big Data is soylent green. Big Data is made of people.

Roger Highfield:

The reality is that, despite fears that our children are "pumped full of chemicals", everything is made of chemicals.

Phil Agre:

Data is made of bits. But data isn't just numbers -- it's also a way of thinking about the relationship between the abstract territory inside computers and the concrete territory outside them. Data has meaning -- it represents the world.

boyd:

Privacy is completely intermingled with Big Data. But in our obsession with Big Data, we've forgotten to ask some of the hard critical questions about what all this data means and how we should be engaging with it.

Cordelia Dean:

This technology might be useful, even life-saving. But it would inevitably produce environmental effects impossible to predict and impossible to undo. There are those who suggest humanity should collectively decide to turn away from some new technologies as inherently dangerous.

boyd:

The Uncertainty Principle doesn't just apply to physics. The more you try to formalize and model social interactions, the more you disturb the balance of them.

Felix Salmon:

His method ... became so deeply entrenched -- and was making people so much money -- that warnings about its limitations were largely ignored.

Then the model fell apart.

boyd:

Just because technology can record things doesn't mean that it brings attention to them. So people rely on being obscure, even when technology makes that really uncertain. You may think that they shouldn't rely on being obscure, but asking everyone to be paranoid about everyone else in the world is a very very very unhealthy thing.

Rattle:

Paranoia about the conspiracy is always justified. It's just usually misplaced.

Marc Lacey:

In other words, there has to be a line people will not cross, even for a suitcase full of cash.

Privacy and Publicity in the Context of Big Data

Cory Doctorow:

I am enough of a techno-pessimist to believe that baking surveillance, control and censorship into the very fabric of our networks, devices and laws is the absolute road to dictatorial hell.

An unnamed intelligence official:

Every day, every week that goes by, there's just one more week of information that we're not collecting. You sit there and say, 'This is unbelievable that we have this gap.'

Markus Dohle:

If you want to make the right decision for the future, fear is not a very good consultant.

Paul Graham:

Just fix things that seem broken.

Ken Auletta:

At the Yerba Buena Center, it took a while for Jobs to mention books, and when he did he said that "Amazon has done a great job" with its Kindle. "We're going to stand on their shoulders and go a little bit farther." It would probably have been more accurate to say that Jobs planned to stand on Amazon's neck and press down hard, with publishers applauding.

Madeline McIntosh, on the publishing business:

It's a culture of lunches. Amazon doesn't play in that culture.

Alain de Botton, author of A Week at the Airport:

There is no one, however lonely or isolated, however pessimistic about the human race, however preoccupied with the payroll, who does not in the end expect that someone significant will come to say hello at arrivals. So what dignity must we possess not to show any hesitation when it becomes clear, in the course of a twelve-second scan of the line, that we are indeed alone, with nowhere to head to other than a long queue at the ticket machine for the Heathrow Express.

Whatever the benefits of prolific and convenient air travel, we may curse it for its smooth subversion of our attempts to use journeys to make lasting changes in our lives.

In a world without airplanes, everything would, of course, go very slowly. And yet there would be benefits tied up in this languor.

Virginie Tisseau:

I ride the tram because every day it takes me to a place less familiar.

David Gelernter:

Instead of letting the Internet solve the easy problems, it's time we got it to solve the important ones.

Louis CK:

Maybe we need some time ... because everything is amazing right now, and nobody's happy ...

Pete Warden:

Do we actually prefer that our information is for sale, rather than free? Or are we just comfortable with a 'privacy through obscurity' regime?

Chris Jay Hoofnagle, Jennifer King, Su Li, and Joseph Turow:

Young-adult Americans have an aspiration for increased privacy even while they participate in an online reality that is optimized to increase their revelation of personal data.

Decius:

Money for me, databases for you.

Hal Varian:

Data are widely available; what is scarce is the ability to extract wisdom from them.

Caterina Fake:

It's an incredible amount of data. And now, I'd say we're in the position where we can actually use this data. We can actually make assumptions.

Ellis:

All the time you spend tryin to get back what's been took from you there's more goin out the door. After a while you just try and get a tourniquet on it.

Mikel Maron:

Even a name may not be a name. The use of a structure changes more rapidly than the availability of money to repaint a sign. So the sign might show a beauty parlor, but it's currently used as a tailor, and everyone knows that and calls it by its 'spoken name'. How can the map reflect both what residents already know, and what an outsider might need to know to navigate?

An exchange:

The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes.'"

"Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to feel interested.

"No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little vexed. "That's what the name is called. The name really is 'The Aged, Aged Man.'"

"Then I ought to have said 'That's what the song is called'?" Alice corrected herself.

"No you oughtn't: that's another thing. The song is called 'Ways and Means' but that's only what it's called, you know!"

"Well, what is the song then?" said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered.

"I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is 'A-sitting On a Gate': and the tune's my own invention."

John Brockman:

Those of us involved in communicating ideas need to re-think the Internet. Many of the people that desperately need to know, don't even know that they don't know.

It's a culture. Call it the algorithmic culture. To get it, you need to be part of it, you need to come out of it. Otherwise, you spend the rest of your life dancing to the tune of other people's code.

Tony Judt:

The old egalitarian language has been transfigured into saying we all have the same opportunities, we are all equal, we will not talk about the fact that you are female and brown, or allow you to dress differently, because that would not be republican. This subterfuge enables very illiberal behavior in the name of a 'liberal ideal'.

The idea is that you can't have an elite, since elitism is undemocratic and unegalitarian. Therefore, you always make the point that people are in some important way the same. You describe everyone as having the same chances when actually some people have more chances than others. And with this cheating language of equality deep inequality is allowed to happen much more easily.

Courage is always missing in politicians. It is like saying basketball players aren't normally short. It isn't a useful attribute.

What we need is a return to a belief not in liberty, because that is easily converted into something else, as we saw, but in equality. Equality, which is not the same as sameness. Equality of access to information, equality of access to knowledge, equality of access to education, equality of access to power and to politics. We should be more concerned than we are about inequalities of opportunity, whether between young and old or between those with different skills or from different regions of a country. It is another way of talking about injustice. We need to rediscover a language of dissent.

William Deresiewicz:

Why is it so often that the best people are stuck in the middle and the people who are running things -- the leaders -- are the mediocrities? Because excellence isn't usually what gets you up the greasy pole. What gets you up is a talent for maneuvering.

Ed Tom Bell:

You can say it's my job to fight it but I don't know what it is anymore.

More than that, I don't want to know. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He would have to say, okay, I'll be part of this world.

Caterina Fake:

Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to work on.

David Gelernter:

Instead of letting the Internet solve the easy problems, it's time we got it to solve the important ones.

Decius:

Life is too short to spend 2300 hours a year working on someone else's idea of what the right problems are.

Notorious BIG:

Just stay hungry.

Homer:

You don't win friends with salad.

Yoda:

Try not. Do ... or do not. There is no try.

Cormac McCarthy:

Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.

Lauren Clark:

It's good to have a plan, but if something extraordinary comes your way, you should go for it.

Garrison Keillor, quoting you:

I could have done that. I could have done that while doing all the other things that I do. Why didn't I?

The Way Things Are and How They Might Be

Seth Godin:

Should I write blog posts that increase my traffic or that help change the way (a few) people think?

When there's no commitment of money or time in the interaction, can change or commerce really happen?

An exchange:

Lisa: Look at all those beautiful shoes! I know they're made from animals but WOW!
Marge: Mmmm, if only I didn't already have a pair of shoes.

PJ O'Rourke:

I wonder, when was the last time a talk show changed a mind?

Sheriff Ed Tom Bell:

You can say it's my job to fight it but I don't know what it is anymore.

More than that, I don't want to know. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He would have to say, okay, I'll be part of this world.

Richard Hamming:

If you do not work on an important problem, it's unlikely you'll do important work.

Caterina Fake:

Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to work on.

Alon Halevy, Peter Norvig, and Fernando Pereira:

Follow the data.

Driveby culture and the endless search for wow

David Shields / William Gibson:

Who owns the words?

Who owns the music and the rest of our culture?

We do -- all of us -- though not all of us know it yet.

Steven Johnson:

That's the thing about games without frontiers. You never really know when you're playing.

Jean-Luc Godard:

It's not where you take things from -- it's where you take them to.

Marisa Meltzer:

With blogs, everyone became a critic. With Tumblr, everyone's a curator.

With Tumblr, there is no "stealing" words or images, only reblogging. It encourages a delightful collectivity. The reblog button may currently only be available on tumblelogs, but it's only a matter of time until this quick-and-easy curation function is adapted for the rest of the Internet. Perhaps Tumblr's greatest innovation is that it has settled the question of who owns content on the Internet by eliminating the idea of ownership all together.

Matt Higgins:

One bear will teach another bear, and then that bear will do it.

The nice thing is, it's not a free for all. We're taking care of the problem responsibly. We're targeting the troublemakers, and we're hoping the troublemakers will be gone someday.

Gordon Crovitz:

Getting our heads around information abundance will mean becoming more discerning about what information is worth our time and what kinds of tasks require real focus.

Lapham's Quarterly:

Demosthenes composed his orations after shaving half his head so that he would be too embarrassed to show himself in public.

Caterina Fake:

It's an incredible amount of data. And now, I'd say we're in the position where we can actually use this data. We can actually make assumptions.

Decius:

Money for me, databases for you.

David Foster Wallace:

If anybody feels like perspiring, I'd advise you to go ahead, because I'm sure going to.

Fear not:

If you are a sufferer of Hyperhidrosis, then there is no reason for you to worry and feel embarrassed any more.

Texts Without Context

A Decius sampler:

Man, what a great time to be alive!

The best and brightest should be running at full speed at this point. The question is into what?

Eventually, the king always takes liberties ...

I continue to feel like I'm standing between poles that I cannot align myself with.

Ever wanted to know what life was like in the 30s? You will.

This is the road to despotism. This is the fevered dream of theocracy. This is America.

The ship has already sailed ... This is just another brick in the wall. Hold on to your hats.

I've come to the conclusion that you actually want shifty, dishonest politicians elected by an apathetic populace. This means that things are working.

There are certain basic pleasures of the ancient world that one has to work very hard to come by today. We've cut ourselves off from things that even our grandfathers took for granted.

I've gotten old enough that I now understand why adults seek to escape reality. Paradoxically, I think I was better at escaping reality when I was younger.

Life is too short to spend 2300 hours a year working on someone else's idea of what the right problems are.

It's important to understand that it isn't Congress that must change -- it is us.

More hacking less talking.

Buy my shit!

I don't have a solution for the problem of bad taste.

I'm going to file "Giddy Anticipation of an Apocalypse" next to actually having an AK-47 on your flag as God's way of telling you that you're bat shit crazy.

It is our failure to avoid embracing fear and sensationalism that will be our undoing. We're still our own greatest threat.

Paul Graham asks what living in your city tells you. Living in the north Perimeter area for 6 odd years now has told me that everybody makes way, way more money than I do. It's not inspiring so much as it makes you sympathize with class warfare.

Al Qaeda is not an organization. It is a scene.

Wow, life is boring.

Happy Birthday Decius!

Christopher Ketcham:

The human form can only grow so big.

The United States, it would seem, is suffering its own kind of island gigantism.

Bigness worship permeates every layer of the culture; it is racked into our brains with every turn of the advertising screw; it is a totalizing force.

Paul Graham:

It will always suck to work for large organizations, and the larger the organization, the more it will suck.

Ketcham:

Look at IBM, where a senior vice-president once described the managerial hierarchy as "a giant pool of peanut butter we have to swim through."

John Bird:

They thought that if they had a bigger mortgage they could get a bigger house. They thought if they had a bigger house, they would be happy. It's pathetic. I've got four houses and I'm not happy.

J.B.S. Haldane:

For every type of animal there is a most convenient size, and a large change in size inevitably carries with it a change of form.

Umberto Eco:

What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible.

We have always been fascinated by infinite space, by the endless stars and by galaxies upon galaxies. How does a person feel when looking at the sky? He thinks that he doesn't have enough tongues to describe what he sees.

Ketcham:

Today we find ourselves in an unprecedented age of corporate gigantism. This situation is characterized not by the outright monopolies that worried Brandeis, but by the rise of oligopolies.

Decius, 2010:

The thing that sucks about freedom of speech is that rich people can afford more speech than you can.

Simon Johnson:

Recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we're running out of time.

Sheriff Ed Tom Bell:

The crime you see now, it's hard to even take its measure.

You can say it's my job to fight it but I don't know what it is anymore.

More than that, I don't want to know. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He would have to say, okay, I'll be part of this world.

An exchange:

Gas Station Proprietor: Look, I need to know what I stand to win.
Anton Chigurh: Everything.
Gas Station Proprietor: How's that?
Anton Chigurh: You stand to win everything.

Ketcham:

Creativity, in any case -- the radical's creativity, which is the only kind -- is not what the corporation looks for. Rather, it pursues what William Whyte called "the fight against genius." It looks for Whyte's "Organization Man," who seeks protection, safety, succor in bigness, who can be relied on to conform and submit. What it lacks in creativity, of course, the big corporation makes up for in coercion.

Richard Sennett:

From an executive perspective, the most desirable employees may no longer necessarily be those with proven ability and judgment, but those who can be counted on to follow orders and be good "team players."

The Curse of Bigness

Chris Jones, in the April 2010 issue of The Walrus:

I saw her only once, ten days before the earthquake.

Later, Phil ran into her in the laundry room. "Have you ever been to Haiti?" she asked.

Haruki Murakami:

One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl.

Lisa Moore:

It has always been this way.

Finite.

But at forty-five you realize it.

David Foster Wallace:

If you've never wept and want to, have a child.

Cormac McCarthy, "The Road":

We're going to be okay, aren't we Papa?
Yes. We are.
And nothing bad is going to happen to us.
That's right.
Because we're carrying the fire.
Yes. Because we're carrying the fire.

Aftershock