Karl Schroeder: Humanity

Karl Schroeder is Author. Technology consultant. Explore interesting quotes on humanity.

Karl Schroeder: 50 quotes0 likes

“They see something they may never have seen before: a normal human reacting normally to a traumatic situation. Livia, these people have been insulated within inscape their whole lives. They have lived in a world where their merest whim could be granted with a thought. Reality has always conformed to their desires—never the other way around. Now they find themselves in a world that obstinately refuses to change itself to fit their imagination. They literally have no idea how to respond.”

Source: Lady of Mazes (2005), Chapter 14 (p. 159).

““You know I was once a human being, too, Doran. I remember how hard it was to marshal all the resources I needed to cure myself of the affliction. I also remember, quite clearly, how I always told people I had no interest in self-deification. It was a useful and sometimes necessary shield against interference.”
“Blow off,” said Doran. “Unless you have some specific threat you want to use on me.”
Choronzon laughed. “Not a threat. Just curiosity as to why someone so violently opposed to improving on the human model should decide to go against all his principles.”
“Sometimes,” said Doran icily, “mature people do things they don’t want to do. It’s called following higher principles. But someone without mortal concerns, say, like yourself, wouldn’t understand that.””

Source: Lady of Mazes (2005), Chapter 14 (p. 161).

“I am the Government,” she said. “I am a force of omniscience and unparalleled power within the human part of the Archipelago. I am a public-domain distributed artificial intelligence. I have made all human institutions redundant, for I am the personal and intimate friend of each and every one of the trillion humans under my domain. I am the selfless advocate of each of them, from the lowliest to the greatest.
The only problem is…Well, nobody listens to me much anymore.”

Source: Lady of Mazes (2005), Chapter 12 (p. 126).

“Each technology equated to some human value or set of values, she saw. She’d known that. But on Earth, in the Archipelago and everywhere else, technologies came first, and values changed to accommodate them. Under the locks, values were the keys to access or shut away technologies…
The locks proclaimed that there were no neutral technologies. The devices and methods people used didn’t just represent certain values—they were those values, in some way.”

Source: Lady of Mazes (2005), Chapter 23 (pp. 255-256).

“That’s what being human means: to be master of your own fate.”

Source: Lady of Mazes (2005), Chapter 23 (p. 262).

“Humans become violent when they feel their interest are threatened.”

Karl Schroeder book Ventus

Galas scowled. “They were never threatened! Parliament is a rumor mill staffed by trough-fed clods who abuse the tongue of their birth every time they open their mouths. They all gabble at once and confuse one another mightily, and when this confusion is committed to paper they refer to it as ‘policy.’”
Source: Ventus (2000), Chapter 17 (p. 246)