"Half genius and half buffoon," Freeman Dyson ... wrote. ... [Richard] Feynman struck him as uproariously American-unbuttoned and burning with physical energy. It took him a while to realize how obsessively his new friend was tunneling into the very bedrock of modern science.
James GleickNeither technology nor efficiency can acquire more time for you, because time is not a thing you have lost. It is not a thing you ever had.
James GleickOne 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 GleickIt is significant that one says book lover and music lover and art lover but not record lover or CD lover or, conversely, text lover.
James GleickTiny differences in input could quickly become overwhelming differences in output.... In weather, for example, this translates into what is only half-jokingly known as the Butter- fly Effectโthe notion that a butterfly stirring the air today in Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York.
James Gleick