Our technology forces us to live mythically

With the arrival of electric technology, man extended, or set outside himself, a live model of the central nervous system itself. To the degree that this is so, it is a development that suggests a desperate and suicidal autoamputation, as if the central nervous system could no longer depend on the physical organs to be protective buffers against the slings and arrows of outrageous mechanism.

There is a real, living unity in our time, as in any other, but it lies submerged under a superficial hubbub of sensation.

Radio affects most intimately, person-to-person, offering a world of unspoken communication between writer-speaker and the listener.

I am resolutely opposed to all innovation, all change, but I am determined to understand what’s happening. Because I don’t choose just to sit and let the juggernaut roll over me. Many people seem to think that if you talk about something recent, you’re in favor of it. The exact opposite is true in my case. Anything I talk about is almost certainly something I’m resolutely against. And it seems to me the best way to oppose it is to understand it. And then you know where to turn off the buttons.

The future masters of technology will have to be light-hearted and intelligent. The machine easily masters the grim and the dumb.

The story begins only when the book closes.