But the initial choice to have email at all is to open a loop. The choice to open a particular email, though, constitutes entry into something more like static information. The problem is that the sender may have spring-loaded a whole lot of time and energy into that message, so that clicking on it…
— Douglas Rushkoff, Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now
Flowing information, like twenty-four-hour news or MTV videos, is more like the nonnarrative experience of electronic music or extreme sports. We get a textural experience, we learn the weather, or we catch the drift. We do not get to the end; we shut it off and it continues without us.
— Douglas Rushkoff, Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now
Catching up with Twitter is like staying up all night to catch up on live streaming stock quotes from yesterday.
— Douglas Rushkoff, Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now
Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last. Imagine that you are doing this but that it is essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature... Would you consent to be the architect on t…
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ivan Karamazov, The Brothers Karamazov
I am the prototype, the perfect American. Half out of control, violent, drunk, high on drugs, carrying a .44 Magnum. Rather than being strange, I may be the embodiment of the national character... all the twisted notions that have made this country the beast it is.
Content is king, but context is God.
— Gary Vaynerchuk, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World
A great storyteller is keenly attuned to his audience; he knows when to slow down for maximum suspense and when to speed up for comic effect.
— Gary Vaynerchuk, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World
Tell your prospective client what your weak points are, before he notices them. This will make you more credible when you boast about your strong points.
There was no system to any of this. At that point Chloe Byrnes wasn't a real person to me and on that afternoon in the house on Ocean Drive a few decisions had to be made, the priority being: I would never dream of leaving any of this. At first I was confused by what passed for love in this world: p…
The new trend is no trend.
A young girl, a freshman, I met in a bar in Cambridge my junior year at Harvard told me early one fall that 'Life is full of endless possibilities.' I tried valiantly not to choke on the beer nuts I was chewing while she gushed this kidney stone of wisdom, and I calmly washed them down with the rest…
Day by day: night by night: lifted, flooded and let fall. Lord, they are weary; and, whispered to, they sigh. Saint Ambrose heard it, sigh of leaves and waves, waiting, awaiting the fullness of their times, diebus ac noctibus iniurias patiens ingemiscit. To no end gathered; vainly then released, for…
God becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain.
Who chose this face for me?
The cords of all link back, strandentwining cable of all flesh.
Later, predictably, she's tied to the floor, naked, on her back, both feet, both hands, tied to makeshift posts that are connected to boards which are weighted down with metal. The hands are shot full of nails and her legs are spread as wide as possible. A pillow props her ass up and cheese, Brie, h…
The more advanced the technology, on the whole, the more possible it is for a considerable number of human beings to imagine being somebody else.
The lowest-paid burger flipper working at McDonald's is in many respects better off than King Henry or any of the richest people living not too long ago. Although the burger flipper barely makes enough to pay the rent, he or she can afford many things that King Henry could not. King Henry's wealth —…
An awful realization that I have been fooling myself all my life thinking there was a next thing to do to keep the show going and actually I'm just a sick clown and so is everybody else. All my tricks laid bare, even the realization that they're laid bare itself laid bare as a lotta bunk.
If I'm wrong, and you find yourself in an organization where sucking up is in fact a good way to get ahead, look for a new job. It's not a quality organization after all, no matter how glittering its public reputation may be. Life is too short to work there.
— Charles Murray, The Curmudgeon's Guide to Getting Ahead: Dos and Don'ts of Right Behavior, Tough Thinking, Clear Writing, and Living a Good Life