Maybe we're about to radically change the operating system of the human condition. If so, then this would be a really good time to make backups of our civilization.

Privacy under what circumstance? Privacy at home under what circumstances? You have more privacy if everyone's illiterate, but you wouldn't really call that privacy. That's ignorance.

But from another, deeper perspective: we shouldn't involve outselves in lines of development where the ultimate victory condition is emulating dead people. There's no appeal in that. It's bad for us. That kind of inherent mournfulness is just not a good way to be human.

Science fiction is not about the freedom of imagination. It's about a free imagination pinched and howling in a vise that other people call real life.

I don't think there's much distinction between surveillance and media in general. Better media means better surveillance. Cams are everywhere.

We might be on the brink of an apocalypse if, instead of poor people with suicide bombs killing middle class guys, middle-class people with suicide bombs started killing rich guys.

A dagger is the noble weapon of Brutus. Everyone understands that tyrants fall to daggers. A bomb is a sordid modern device with many complex working parts. Only engineers understand bombs