For [Richard] Feynman, the essence of the scientific imagination was a powerful and almost painful rule. What scientists create must match reality. It must match what is already known. Scientific creativity is imagination in a straitjacket.

It is not the amount of knowledge that makes a brain. It is not even the distribution of knowledge. It is the interconnectedness.

Every new medium transforms the nature of human thought. In the long run, history is the story of information becoming aware of itself.

It is significant that one says book lover and music lover and art lover but not record lover or CD lover or, conversely, text lover.

Ideas that require people to reorganize their picture of the world provoke hostility.

As a technology, the book is like a hammer. That is to say, it is perfect: a tool ideally suited to its task. Hammers can be tweaked and varied but will never go obsolete. Even when builders pound nails by the thousand with pneumatic nail guns, every household needs a hammer. Likewise, the bicycle is alive and well. It was invented in a world without automobiles, and for speed and range it was quickly surpassed by motorcycles and all kinds of powered scooters. But there is nothing quaint about bicycles. They outsell cars.

Google is where we go for answers. People used to go elsewhere or, more likely, stagger along not knowing.