James Gleick
James Gleick
James Gleickis an American author, historian of science, and sometime Internet pioneer whose work has chronicled the cultural impact of modern technology. Recognized for illuminating complex subjects through the techniques of narrative nonfiction, he has been called “one of the great science writers of all time.” Gleick's books include the international bestsellers Chaos: Making a New Science and The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. Three of them have been Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalists; and The...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth1 August 1954
CountryUnited States of America
Cyberspace, especially, draws us into the instant.
The microwave oven is one of the modern objects that convey the most elemental feeling of power over the passing seconds ... If you suffer from hurry sickness in its most advanced stages, you may find yourself punching 88 seconds instead of 90 because it is faster to tap the same digit twice.
The quotation-business is booming. No subdivision of the culture seems too narrow to have a quotation book of its own.... It would be an understatement to say that these books lean on one another. To compare them is to stroll through a glorious jungle of incestuous mutual plagiarism.
The universe is computing its own destiny.
Life sucks order from a sea of disorder.
To some physicists chaos is a science of process rather than state, of becoming rather than being.
When information is cheap, attention becomes expensive.
We choose mania over boredom every time.
Running for president is the new selfie.
In the mind's eye, a fractal is a way of seeing infinity.
The basic idea of Western science is that you don't have to take into account the falling of a leaf on some planet in another galaxy when you're trying to account for the motion of a billiard ball on a pool table on earth. Very small influences can be neglected. There's a convergence in the way things work, and arbitrarily small influences don't blow up to have arbitrarily large effects.
Google is where we go for answers. People used to go elsewhere or, more likely, stagger along not knowing.
Every new medium transforms the nature of human thought. In the long run, history is the story of information becoming aware of itself.
It is not the amount of knowledge that makes a brain. It is not even the distribution of knowledge. It is the interconnectedness.