“I wondered aloud to Renae why in our society the greatest sums of money tended to accrue from the sale of the least meaningful things, and why the dramatic improvements in efficiency and productivity at the heart of the Industrial Revolution so seldom extended beyond the provision of commonplace material goods. … I told Renae that our robots and engines were delivering the lion’s share of their benefits at the base of our pyramid of needs, that we were evident experts at swiftly assembling confectionery and yet we were still searching for reliable means of generating emotional stability or marital harmony.”

Source: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009), p. 84.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Alain de Botton146

Swiss writer 1969

Anselm Kiefer (1945) German painter and sculptor

(1986) n.p.
Structures are no longer valid', in "Ein Gespräch..."

“Like it or not, giant, vertically integrated corporate enterprises were the most efficient means of organizing the production and distribution of mass produced goods and services. Bringing together supply chains, production processes, and distribution channels in vertically integrated companies under centralized management dramatically reduced transaction costs, increased efficiencies and productivity, lowered the marginal cost of production and distribution, and, for the most part, lowered the price of goods and services to consumers, allowing the economy to flourish. While those at the top of the corporate pyramid disproportionately benefited from the increasing returns on investment, it’s only fair to acknowledge that the lives of millions of consumers also improved appreciably in industrialized nations.”

Jeremy Rifkin (1945) American economist

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism (2014)

“I have entire confidence in the improvements to our husbandry, and the other great advantages, which would accrue from judicious rotation of products.”

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852. Served as the Secretary of Sta…

On the Agriculture of England (1840)
Context: Is it practicable, on the soil and in the climate of Massachusetts, to pursue a succession of crops? I cannot question it; and I have entire confidence in the improvements to our husbandry, and the other great advantages, which would accrue from judicious rotation of products. The capacities of the soil of Massachusetts are undoubted. One hundred bushels of corn to an acre have been repeatedly produced, and other crops in like abundance. But this will not effect the proper ends of a judicious and profitable agriculture, unless we can so manage our husbandry that, by a judicious and proper succession of the crops, land will not only be restored after an exhausting crop, but gradually enriched by cultivation.

“I wondered why the head could move so swiftly while the heart dragged its feet.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

“Why is it so hard to keep the mind concentrated, and to live up to our good resolutions? The problem is the basically mechanical nature of our left-brain consciousness. We have a kind of robot servant who does things for us: we learn to type or drive a car, painfully and consciously, then our robot takes over, and does it far more quickly and efficiently. Because man is the most complex creature on Earth, he is forced to rely on his robot far more than other animals. The result is that, whenever he gets tired, the robot takes over. For the modern city dweller, most of his everyday living is done by the robot. This is why it takes an emergency to concentrate the mind 'wonderfully', and why we forget so quickly.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Alien Dawn (1998), p. 344

“We need to know why things fails. If we want to improve our system, we need to put that information into that system into logs or something.”

Joe Armstrong (1950–2019) British computer scientist

Faults, Scaling and Erlang concurrency

“We need to codify our values and build consensus around what we want from a free society and a free internet. We need to put into law protections for our privacy and our right to speak and assemble.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/20/we-should-all-be-hactivists "We should all be hacktivists now", Column in the Guardian, 20 April 2012. <br class="br">Attributed, In the Media

“Our methods were becoming more sophisticated, but their yield seemed increasingly commonplace. To stem a descent into triviality, I thought, we needed to search out the causes of the present in the past.”

Eric Wolf (1923–1999) American anthropologist

Preface (1982), p. xv.
Europe and the People Without History, 1982

“Our future as an industrial and trading nation depends on the success of our export drive. Increased production and increased exports are vital to the health of the shipping industry. … Our fundamental need is still increased production to enable us to increase our volume of exports and so pay for our imports. … That is the need of the country to-day.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Prime Minister
Source: Speech to the Chamber of Shipping of the United Kingdom at the Dorchester Hotel (13 October 1949), quoted in The Times (14 October 1949), p. 4

“The sky was incredibly far away, and beautiful enough to make a person wonder why our hearts are never so free.”

Banana Yoshimoto book The Lake

Source: The Lake

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