In AI, Spielberg is bleaching the dirt out of the human mind and leaving behind only the vacant gaze of machine 'love'. Coca Cola ads do much the same thing - and they don't take two hours.

Capitalism is a forest fire that is never extinguished, only contained.

Of course, the other thing about evolution is that anything can be said because very little can be disproved. Experimental evidence is minimal.

Scientists themselves are of surprisingly little help. They find it difficult to talk of what they do because they tend to assume detailed knowledge is required for generalities to be understood. They find it hard to grasp the concept of the meaning of their work, assuming this to be a debate that takes place at a lower level than the specialized discussions with their colleagues. When they do generalize, - or "popularize" as it is usually called with a noticeable degree of contempt - they tend to reveal a startling philosophical naiveté.

Science has taken away our religion.

That books, a commodity little changed since Caxton's day, should have turned out to be the trailblazers of retailing on the internet is one of the stranger cultural ironies of our time. If you've bought one thing on the net, the newest and most prodigiously high-tech communications system imaginable, then it is almost certain to be a book, the oldest and simplest.

Information is the new atom or electron, the fundamental building block of the universe ... We now see the world as entirely made of information: it's bits all the way down.