Quote

It is exciting to discover electrons and figure out the equations that govern their movement it is boring to use those principles to design electric can openers. From here on out, it's all can openers.

Neal Stephenson

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Neal Stephenson
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: October 31
Author
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Camp Annapolis Junction
Neal Town Stephenson
Stephen Bury
Design
Equations
Movement
Govern
Principles
Electric
Use
Discover
Boring
Figure
Exciting
Openers
Figures
Electrons

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When you are wrestling for possession of a sword, the man with the handle always wins.
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Am I a technocrat? Im just a guy who went down to the bookstore and bought a couple of textbooks on TCP/IP, which is the underlying protocol of the Internet, and read them. And then I signed on to a computer, which anyone can do nowadays, and I messed around with it for a few years, and now I know all about it. Does that make me a technocrat?
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This is one of the two great labyrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination.
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Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come at you in so many ways.
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I use emacs, which might be thought of as a thermonuclear word processor.
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A few dud universes can really clutter up your basement.
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Southern California doesn't know whether to bustle or just strangle itself on the spot.
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It is commonly the case with technologies that you can get the best insight about how they work by watching them fail.
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You should not believe a thing only because you like to believe it. We call that 'Diax's Rake.
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It was, of course, nothing more than sexism, the especially virulent type espoused by male techies who sincerely believe that they are too smart to be sexists.
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Which path do you intend to take, Nell?' said the Constable, sounding very interested. 'Conformity or rebellion?' Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded - they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity.
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They knew many things but had no idea why. And strangely this made them more, rather than less, certain that they were right.
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Most countries are static, all they need to do is keep having babies. But America's like this big old clanking smoking machine that just lumbers across the landscape scooping up and eating everything in sight.
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The story is everything, so it always begins with a story.And research is a kind of scaffolding built underneath the story as I go along. My enjoyment level varies, but in general, I'm writing about topics I find interesting, so I can't gripe too much.
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Constable Moore had reached the age when men can subject their bodies to the worst irritations - whisky, cigars, woolen clothes, bagpipes - without feeling a thing or, at least, without letting on.
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What are letters?” “Kinda like mediaglyphics except they’re all black, and they’re tiny, they don’t move, they’re old and boring and really hard to read. But you can use ’em to make short words for long words.
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It is the fate of operating systems to become free.
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This is exactly how the World Wide Web works: the HTML files are the pithy description on the paper tape, and your Web browser is Ronald Reagan.
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So, you're worried that a pink dragon will fly over the concent and fart nerve gas on us?
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The science fiction approach doesn't mean it's always about the future it's an awareness that this is different.
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