You do not get to cut that chain of evidence and start over. You're always going to be pursued by your data shadow, which is forming from thousands and thousands of little leaks and tributaries of information.- Bruce Sterling
Well, they didn't lack for topics after Hiroshima. Why should 9/11 slow them down? I know it got a lot of press, but it's just a few large buildings and aircraft, it's not like D-Day and the Seige of Berlin.
We might be on the brink of an apocalypse if, instead of poor people with suicide bombs killing middle class guys, middle-class people with suicide bombs started killing rich guys.
We may yet work up to some serious shooting war, or maybe some acts of urban genocide committed with rogue nuclear weapons. But if that were the case, why would we call that "9/11"? If Washington disappeared in a mushroom cloud, we'd give that huge event a different name.
War as Napoleon knew it just not possible any more. However, we are very unlikely to accept or recognize "world peace" even when we get it.
They used to be seen as insane or unthinkable acts of madmen. But if they take place they'll be called "war" too. And there will still be no conventional war.
The level of ignorance is declining, and the ability to accumulate data and manipulate it for various ends is increasing.
The Bollywood distribution system is so corrupt that they have trouble making money off movies. So they sell shoes that an actress stepped in. If they turned up the amps some, maybe they could sell the actresses.
Saying you have a political solution is like saying you can write a pop song that is going to stay at the top of the list forever. I do not have many illusions about this, but I am not cynical about it.
Privacy under what circumstance? Privacy at home under what circumstances? You have more privacy if everyone's illiterate, but you wouldn't really call that privacy. That's ignorance.
Political people do not solve stuff - not really. Political people are like guys in pop music.
People in the Pentagon had colleagues killed and maimed by bin Laden. They're trying to find bin Laden and kill him and his cult. Naturally they consider that a legitimate thing to do, but they're having mixed success at the job.
One of the points about distractions is that everything that they do is destabilizing.
My idea of an amusement park story is getting adventurers to go tour environmental disaster areas. After all, if the entire Great Barrier Reef gets killed, which seems like an extremely lively possibility, what are you going to do with all that rotting limestone?
It's going to be really interesting to see what the heroin market does in the next two years or so. One thing you can be pretty sure of. The Afghan peasants who grow poppies would not get rich. The money will end up in places like Dubai.
