The microwave oven is one of the modern objects that convey the most elemental feeling of power over the passing seconds ... If you suffer from hurry sickness in its most advanced stages, you may find yourself punching 88 seconds instead of 90 because it is faster to tap the same digit twice.

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.

Thinking about language, while thinking _in_ language, leads to puzzles and paradoxes.

Tiny 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 Effect—the notion that a butterfly stirring the air today in Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York.

The Internet is like a town that leaves its streets unmarked on the principle that people who don't already know don't belong

"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.

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