“But the Modern Utopia must not be static but kinetic, must shape not as a permanent state but as a hopeful stage, leading to a long ascent of stages. Nowadays we do not resist and overcome the great stream of things, but rather float upon it. We build now not citadels, but ships of state.”
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“Utopia confronts reality not with a measured assessment of the possibilities of change but with the demand for change. 'This is the way the world should be.' It refuses to accept current definitions of the possible because it knows these to be part of the reality that it seeks to change... Wilde was right: 'A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at.”
― Utopianism
― Utopianism
“Now comes the second machine age. Computers and other digital advances are doing for mental power—the ability to use our brains to understand and shape our environments—what the steam engine and its descendants did for muscle power.”
― The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies
― The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies
“One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.” —Elbert Hubbard”
― The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies
― The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies
“The fatal error of much science fiction has been to subscribe to an optimism based on the idea that revolution, or a new gimmick, or a bunch of strong men, or an invasion of aliens, or the conquest of other planets, or the annihilation of half the world--in short, pretty nearly anything but the facing up to the integral and irredeemable nature of mankind--can bring about utopian situations. It is the old error of the externalization of evil.”
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Libby’s 2025 Year in Books
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