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A batch of the best highlights from what J's read, .
The punched card, the cash register, the nineteenth-century Difference Engine, the wires of telegraphy all played their parts in weaving the spiderweb of information to which we cling. Each new information technology, in its own time, set off blooms in storage and transmission.
The Information
James Gleick
High-techstasy is co-extensive with the world-sprawling capitalist machine, further intensifying its gaze upon the world as a territory for even greater machines of accumulation and production; mapping the world for the resources it needs to achieve its goals. The cybernation and communication revolutions have extended our abilities to sense.
The world does not need to be perfectly utopian to see progress. Some portion of our actions, such as war, are destructive. A bunch of what we produce is crap. Maybe nearly half of what we do. But if we create only 1 percent or 2 percent (or even one-tenth of 1 percent) more positive stuff than we destroy, then we have progress. This differential could be so small as to be almost imperceptible, and this may be why progress is not universally acknowledged. When measured against the large-scale imperfections of our society, 1 percent better seems trivial.
What Technology Wants
Kevin Kelly
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