It is not always possible to know what one has learned, or when the dawning will arrive. You will continue read more

It is not always possible to know what one has learned, or when the dawning will arrive. You will continue to shift, sift, to shake out and to double back. The synthesis that finally occurs can be in the most unexpected place and the most unexpected time. My charge ... is to be alert to the dawnings.

When you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research.

When you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research.

It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.

It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.

The cell phone has transformed public places into giant phone-a-thons in which callers exist within narcissistic cocoons of private conversations. read more

The cell phone has transformed public places into giant phone-a-thons in which callers exist within narcissistic cocoons of private conversations. Like faxes, computer modems and other modern gadgets that have clogged out lives with phony urgency, cell phones represent the 20th Century's escalation of imaginary need. We didn't need cell phones until we had them. Clearly, cell phones cause not only a breakdown of courtesy, but the atrophy of basic skills.

It's very good for an idea to be commonplace. The important thing is that a new idea should develop out read more

It's very good for an idea to be commonplace. The important thing is that a new idea should develop out of what is already there so that it soon becomes an old acquaintance. Old acquaintances aren't by any means always welcome, but at least one can't be mistaken as to who or what they are.

Spending an evening on the World Wide Web is much like sitting down to a dinner of Cheetos, two hours read more

Spending an evening on the World Wide Web is much like sitting down to a dinner of Cheetos, two hours later your fingers are yellow and you're no longer hungry, but you haven't been nourished.

The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it.

The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it.

It's impossible to move, to live, to operate at any level without leaving traces, bits, seemingly meaningless fragments of personal read more

It's impossible to move, to live, to operate at any level without leaving traces, bits, seemingly meaningless fragments of personal information.

The science of today is the technology of tomorrow.

The science of today is the technology of tomorrow.