...and the whole earth was google

'When looking from a window and saying I see men who pass in the street, I really do not see them, but infer that what I see is men.And yet what do I see from the window but hats and coats which may cover automatic machines? Yet I judge these to be men.By the faculty of judgment which rests in my mind, I comprehend that which I believed I saw with my eyes'.

When do you think that was written? Don't google it!

Okay, okay, 1650, believe it or not!

And then there is this:

In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently to one or two. But the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments.

The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.

The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life.

---Adam Smith.

Well, I'm not a particularly big fan of computers or computer-people, techies (who are often, I think, really just geeks masquerading as intelligent people). In thrall to precision, certainty, and to quick, reliable,and simple answers, they are not too dissimilar to the businessman who wants to get down to the bottom dollar.

My pet theory is that there's a hidden affinity between accountants, computer-people, and maulvis. Balance the books, 0/1, black and white, don't read between the lines. I remember one such irritated chap asking me: why do you bother reading fiction, why not just stick to the facts? (this was the very same perosn who thought his grandmother was especially religious because she had never taken a step outside of the house).

Idleness:

I remember a senior colleague, when asked why we should have summer classes, replying: "we should keep the students busy". Yeah, right:input/output and all that.

"I want it,and I want it now".

--Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Slowness, laziness as a form of resistance to the modern world.As opposed to the obsession with quantification and condensed, bite-sized "information" (wiki), skimming, surfing, and browsing. The 60-seconds news. Even the language is revealing here: "the marketplace for ideas".