Words&Dirt

“‘All I’m saying is that if you’ve gone where I’ve already gone, in terms of thinking about that––’

‘If you’ve drunk the Singularity Kool-Aid, in other words?’ Doob said.

‘Yeah, Doob, as you know I’ve already done, then you’ve already made a fundamental break with trying to be Nature Boy. I am never going to be Nature Boy. I believe that the human mind is almost infinitely malleable and that people are going to adjust, within days or weeks, to life on the Cloud Ark. We will simply turn into a different civilization altogether from the one we grew up in. Our whole idea of nature will be forgotten. And a thousand years from now, people will go on “camping trips” that will consist of sleeping in arklets, drinking Tang, and peeing into tubes just like their ancestors did.’

‘To them,’ Doob said, ‘that’ll be a back-to-nature experience.’

‘I think that’s how we will see it, yes,’ Tav said.

Doob considered uttering the punch like to the famous joke: Who’s ‘we,’ white man? But he thought better of it.”

––Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson, pg. 211-2

“I have checked out of planet Earth. Nice place. Lovely people. But I have to focus on what comes next.”

––Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson, pg. 237

“I have to warn you that is this is the word–– ‘politics’ ––that nerds use whenever they feel impatient about the human realities of an organization.”

––Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson, pg. 238