Words&Dirt

“The Carmel is a lovely little river.  It isn’t very long but in its course it has everything a river should have.  It rises in the mountains, and tumbles down a while, runs through shallows, is dammed to make a lake, spills over the dam, crackles among round boulders, wanders lazily under sycamores, spills into pools where trout live, drops in against banks where crayfish live.  In the winter it becomes a torrent, a mean little fierce river, and in the summer it is a place for children to wade in and for fishermen to wander in.  Frogs blink from its banks and the deep ferns grow beside it.  Deer and foxes come to drink from it, secretly in the morning and evening, and now and then a mountain lion crouched flat laps its water.  The farms of the rich little valley back up to the river and take its water for the orchards and the vegetables.  The quail call beside it and the wild doves come whistling in at dusk.  Raccoons pace its edges looking for frogs.  It’s everything a river should be.”

––Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck, loc. 873

“A time may  come when simulated experiences burgeon in number and quality to such a degree that people start having trouble distinguishing them from reality.  Such brilliantly crafted hallucinations may help vastly expand human experience, carrying prudent ‘travelers’ to remote milieus, enlarging the horizons of those who retain volition and control.  Or else, simulations may be irresistibly addictive.  As the humorist Scott Adams explained, ‘Once anyone has a Holodeck, why would they ever leave?'”

––The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?, by David Brin, pg. 171