It sometimes seems as if curbing entropy is our quixotic purpose in this universe. James Gleick More Quotes by James Gleick More Quotes From James Gleick Ideas that require people to reorganize their picture of the world provoke hostility. James Gleick people world ideas I have seen the future, and it is still in the future. James Gleick stills It is not the amount of knowledge that makes a brain. It is not even the distribution of knowledge. It is the interconnectedness. James Gleick amount distribution brain The microwave oven is one of the modern objects that convey the most elemental feeling of power over the passing seconds ... If you suffer from hurry sickness in its most advanced stages, you may find yourself punching 88 seconds instead of 90 because it is faster to tap the same digit twice. James Gleick finding-yourself suffering feelings Every new medium transforms the nature of human thought. In the long run, history is the story of information becoming aware of itself. James Gleick stories running long In the mind's eye, a fractal is a way of seeing infinity. James Gleick eye mind way Google is where we go for answers. People used to go elsewhere or, more likely, stagger along not knowing. James Gleick google knowing people Information is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom. James Gleick information The library will endure; it is the universe... We walk the corridors, searching the shelves and rearranging them, looking for lines of meaning amid leagues of cacophony and incoherence, reading the history of the past and of the future, collecting our thoughts and collecting the thoughts of others, and every so often glimpsing mirrors, in which we may recognize creatures of the information. James Gleick mirrors reading past When information is cheap, attention becomes expensive. James Gleick information consciousness attention You can't waste time and you can't save time; you can only choose what you do at any given moment. James Gleick waste moments time One of the ways the telegraph changed us as humans was it gave us a new sense of what time it is. It gave us an understanding of simultaneity. It gave us the ability to synchronize clocks from one place to another. It made it possible for the world to have standard time and time zones and then Daylight Savings Time and then after that jetlag. All of that is due to the telegraph because, before that, the time was whatever it was wherever you were. James Gleick understanding change time The basic idea of Western science is that you don't have to take into account the falling of a leaf on some planet in another galaxy when you're trying to account for the motion of a billiard ball on a pool table on earth. Very small influences can be neglected. There's a convergence in the way things work, and arbitrarily small influences don't blow up to have arbitrarily large effects. James Gleick blow ideas fall Life sucks order from a sea of disorder. James Gleick life-sucks sea order Geniuses of certain kinds - mathematicians, chess players, computer programmers - seem, if not mad, at least lacking in the social skills most easily identified with sanity. James Gleick mad skills player The history of life is written in terms of negative entropy. James Gleick history-of-life life-is negative Running for president is the new selfie. James Gleick president running The universe is computing its own destiny. James Gleick computing destiny universe To some physicists chaos is a science of process rather than state, of becoming rather than being. James Gleick chaos becoming states We choose mania over boredom every time. James Gleick mania boredom
